Friday, March 14, 2014
Diplomat (Omni Shoreham)
What is the role of organized interests and political parties in the expansion of new welfare programs? Recent works in political economy focusing on the role of employers and unions have limited their attention to traditional programs such as labor market polices, sickness insurance, and pensions. Instead we focus on work-family policies, in particular parental leave. We argue that centralized and powerful employers’ associations and trade unions respond to increases in the number of women with high skills and female union members, respectively, by pushing governments to enact leave policies. Employers do so to increase the labor force participation of high skilled labor, while unions do so to remain viable to their members. Since corporative systems facilitate cooperation and agreement between the social partners and give employers and unions a prominent place in policymaking, they reinforce their preferences and transform them into actual policy influence. Support for our claims is found using time-series cross-section analysis of parental leave generosity in 20 OECD countries from 1970 to 2012 and case studies of Norway and the United Kingdom. Our study shows how corporatism has revived itself in the face of major shifts in labor markets and in the economy. It shows that cross-class alliances among employers, unions, and parties are crucial for understanding states' reform capacity during times of austerity.
