Challenging varieties of capitalism’s account of business interests: Neoliberal think-tanks, discourse as a power resource and employers’ quest for liberalization in Germany and Sweden

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on employer preferences. It challenges varieties of capitalism's argument that manufacturing employers in Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs) will tend to defend non-liberal institutions because of the comparative institutional advantage that they provide. It examines Germany and Sweden, two critical cases in this debate. It is based on interviews with key officials and an in-depth examination of the Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM) and Timbro, think-tanks sponsored by German and Swedish employers to shape public opinion. In line with power resource theory, I find that both German and Swedish employers have a strong preference for liberalization. In both cases, they responded to left-wing threats, institutional constraints and situations of 'crisis' by launching a counteroffensive and promoting welfare state reform, labor market flexibility and deregulation. Employers have used discourse as a power resource to pursue an aggressive liberalizing agenda and to attack institutions that required active deregulation on the part of the state. Whether employers in CMEs seek to dismantle existing institutions altogether or soften and reengineer these institutions from within, one thing is clear: their use of radical neoliberal discourse is incompatible with the claim that they defend traditional institutions in any meaningful sense.

After the social crisis: the transformation of employment relations at France Télécom

“…unions are able to strengthen collective worker voice, or 'democracy at work', in financialized organizations. Labor faces significant obstacles in challenging the increased dominance of shareholder value-focused discourse (Kinderman, 2017;Rothstein 2018) and expanding managerial discretion within liberalizing social European countries (Baccaro and Howell, 2017).…”

“…However, it is becoming a truth universally acknowledged that these employers are no longer in want of strong and independent unions (if they ever were). European employers' move away from a public commitment to social partnership has been well documented at the national policy level (Kinderman 2017). At the organizational level, individual employers have sought (and gained) greater control 'over wage determination, hiring and firing and the organization of the workplace' (Baccaro and Howell, 2017:1).…”

“…Second, our findings contribute to debates concerning the conditions for unions to develop and mobilize new power resources. Here we draw on the comparative political economy literature on discursive or ideational forms of power (Schmidt, 2008;Kinderman, 2017;Rothstein, 2018), as well as employment relations research on communicative power (Müller and Platzer, 2017;Geelan, 2013) and narrative resources (Lévesque and Murray, 2013). We show that FT's unions succeeded in overcoming declining institutional power through developing new forms of 'communicative power', which we define as the capacity to communicate the value of a group's interests and concerns in a way that increases their legitimacy within a decision-making field.…”

Roads and Barriers towards Social Investments: Comparing Labour Market and Family Policy Reforms in Europe and East Asia

“…This had a huge impact on senior social-democratic policymakers and their perception of the feasibility of the traditional Swedish model in a globalised world (Ryner, 2004). Thus, with employers taking an "aggressive neoliberal posture" (Huber & Stephens, 2001: 241; see also Kinderman, 2017), one can no longer assume the cross-class coalition that previously supported inclusive labour market and social protection policies. Instead, we find organised business at the 'heart' of the rolling back of both social protection and investments in the unemployed, which signals the erosion of social solidarity in 'socialdemocratic' Sweden (Fleckenstein & Lee, 2017b).…”

“…Certainly, costly training programmes but also job-creation schemes were viewed most critically by employers, in addition to any generous unemployment protection. Importantly, increasingly aggressive neoliberal employer mobilisation not only had huge impact on Christian democracy but also, again as in the case of Sweden, on social-democratic modernisers (Fleckenstein & Lee, 2017b;Kinderman, 2017).…”