Applying an Actor Centered Institutional Approach to the Field of Minimum Wage Research

Traditionally minimum wage research was dominated by economic modelling to estimate employment effects. Recently we see an increase of studies in social science that typologise the different procedural regulations and institutional settings of minimum wage policies. Most innovative is the research on the interplay of minimum wage and collective bargaining institutions and their effect on the entire wage structure. So far, however, the perspective on collective actors and their strategies is neglected. Applying an actor centered institutional approach developed by Fritz Scharpf to the field of minimum wage policy may therefore open up a new research perspective. The outline of such an analytical framework should help to explain how different country or sector specific institutional settings and actors’ constellations may influence strategies of trade unions, employers or state representatives towards statutory minimum wage regulations and/or their change. Furthermore it should improve the understanding on how power resources of the different collective actors in the field of minimum wage policies may be influenced by different procedural regulations. Finally it will give way to systematic assumptions if and when the respective strategies are successful and to which extend they help to combat low wage employment.