Social Solidarity for All? Trade Union Strategies, Labor Market Dualization, and the Welfare State in Italy and South Korea

Durazzi, Niccolo; Fleckenstein, Timo; Lee, Soohyun Christine

doi:10.1177/0032329218773712

Cited by 38 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…However, scholars now suggest that the trade unions have lost their position as partners in the social contract between the state, business and society at large. They have become an interest group just like any other (Culpepper & Regan, 2014;Durazzi, Fleckenstein & Lee, 2018). As unions lose their seat at the negotiating table, they might emphasise solidarity for all and engage in more contentions actions such as strikes (Upchurch & Taylor, 2016), shifting towards 'radical political unionism' (Gordon & Upchurch, 2012;Connolly & Darlington, 2012).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Türkoğlu

2019

Current Sociology

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Students have a long history of protesting the introduction or rise of tuition fees. However, political parties do not often endorse their demands. Even the centre-left, which is known for its redistributive policies, does not necessarily ally itself with the student opposition to fees. In this article, the author focuses on the impact of social movement–organised labour alliances on the opposition of political parties to government policy. The author argues that such alliances have a unique impact on centre-left parties, especially in relation to non-labour issues. Two examples of this alliance are presented, emerging from the quite different political contexts of Germany and Turkey. In Germany, student movements failed to block the introduction of tuition fees in 2006. However, in 2008–2011, after students established a deeper alliance with organised labour, tuition fees were scrapped. In Turkey, student movements had been protesting tuition fees for a quarter of a century before an alliance with labour gained the support of social democrats in 2011. These case studies suggest that labour–movement alliances are effective in shifting social democratic politics in higher education policy because of labour’s experience and know-how in alliance building with centre-left parties and the student mobilisation’s potential to make tuition fees an electoral issue cross-cutting party allegiances. This finding suggests that scholars need to take the degree of engagement in opposition alliances into account, in addition to union density, in order to more accurately measure the political power of organised labour. This point has implications for analysing a variety of policy outcomes in policy areas exposed to permanent austerity measures.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Türkoğlu

2019

Current Sociology

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“…Against this backdrop, for an all‐encompassing understanding of the politics of MIS across countries, two research routes appear particularly promising. First, it would be worth exploring the factors that shape socio‐political demand and foster interest groups to take up the issue of minimum income, in line with recent contributions on the condition under which trade unions adopt “pro‐outsiders” social policy (Durazzi et al, 2018). Second, minimum income protection constitutes a particularly interesting policy domain to disentangle the complex relations between “bottom up” domestic pressures and supra‐national responses in period of austerity and mounting social crisis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the comparative welfare state literature has recently shown particular interest in understanding the reasons behind Italian exceptionalism. Scholars have aimed to identify the factors behind the lack of a minimum income scheme in the traditional Italian welfare state configuration (Sacchi & Bastagli, 2005; Saraceno, 2006), as well as why in the so‐called “recalibration” phase (1992–2013) minimum income schemes were introduced and then almost immediately repealed (Jessoula et al, 2014; Kevins, 2015; Lalioti, 2016; Natili, 2018); finally, why, more recently, minimum income schemes have reached the very centre of the political debate (Durazzi, Fleckenstein, & Lee, 2018; Gori, 2020; Natili, 2019; Sacchi, 2018; Vesan & Ronchi, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Italian “exceptionalism” and its end: Minimum income from neglect to hyper‐politicization

Jessoula

Natili

2020

Soc Policy Adm

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Traditionally at the margins of the political debate, minimum income protection has recently become a key issue in Italian politics. After decades of social and political “neglect” letting Italy the only European country (with Greece) still lacking an anti‐poverty minimum income safety net in the 2010s, finally a national programme called Inclusion Income was introduced in 2018, then replaced by a more robustly financed scheme, the Citizenship Income in 2019. The introduction of these new programmes was the object of an intense political debate, which raises two main puzzles. Why a policy field characterized by the low political resources of would be beneficiaries and low incidence on the overall welfare budget has become so important in the political debate? How did it occur in Italy, where minimum income protection had been absent in political discourses for at least five decades after World War II? To answer these questions, this article first elaborates a novel theoretical framework which combines the main properties of socio‐political demand and political supply in order to explain the scope and direction of minimum income reforms. Second, it provides an analytically oriented reconstruction of MIS policy trajectory in Italy in the three different phases: the phase of MIS “neglect” (1948–1992) characterized by inertia; the period of political “contentiousness” (1993–2012), marked by attempts of path departure followed by policy reversals; the more recent phase leading to the introduction and institutionalization of a MIS. Third, the article provides a theoretically framed interpretation of the overall MIS trajectory in Italy.

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“…This initiative allowed remarkable access to training for atypical workers, with more than one third of temporary agency workers participating in training measures according to a European survey. This put Italy at the top of the league table, followed by the Netherlands where less than one fifth of temporary agency workers had access to training; and comparing training expenditure in Italy and the Netherlands, Italian temporary agency workers receive nearly three times the investment of their Dutch counterparts (Durazzi, 2017;Durazzi, Fleckenstein, & Lee, 2018).…”

Section: Italy: Unexpected Training Investment In Temporary Agency Womentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parliament, in 2017, decided to introduce a 'social inclusion income', filling a serious gap in Italian social protection. The change in trade union strategies in the face of greater labour market dualisation and social polarisationthat is, investing into the skills of labour market outsiders, and also providing them with better social protectionshows that insideroriented trade unions have the capacity to develop a wider notion of social solidarity, challenging insider/outsider theory (Durazzi et al, 2018).…”

Section: Italy: Unexpected Training Investment In Temporary Agency Womentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Fleckenstein

Lee

2019

Policy and Society

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Across the OECD world, social investment policies are on the rise, which Hemerijck describes as a 'quiet paradigm revolution'. Whilst Nordic countries are typically considered the pioneers in social investment policies, we observe that latecomer countries of not only Europe but also East Asia have made considerable efforts to catch-up with Northern European frontrunners. The rise of social investment policies, especially the expansion of family policy presents an important dimension of the recent transformation of advanced welfare capitalism, which despite the prominence of retrenchment cannot be reduced to welfare state regress. However, we observe great cross-national variation in the speed and scope of family policy expansion. Unlike family policy, labour market policy did not experience a similar social investment turn, but is instead rather characterised by retrenchment with declining efforts to improve the employability of the unemployed and labour market outsiders. In this article, we examine the 'uneven' social investment turn in advanced welfare capitalism and argue that family and labour market policies, and their very different outcomes, are underpinned by very different political dynamics, rather than by 'a politics of social investment'. Not only comparing family and labour market policy but also comparing across countries within each policy domain, we analyse the roads and barriers towards greater social investments.

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Social Solidarity for All? Trade Union Strategies, Labor Market Dualization, and the Welfare State in Italy and South Korea

Cited by 38 publications

References 27 publications

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Student protests and organised labour: Developing a research agenda for mobilisation in late neoliberalism

Explaining Italian “exceptionalism” and its end: Minimum income from neglect to hyper‐politicization

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

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