ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with employment relations developments under the UK coalition government in a broader perspective, paying due regard to the comparative dimension as appropriate. For example, it also deals with tracing how far, and in what ways, the employment relations trajectory evident under the UK coalition government mirrored that of other advanced economies. The chapter explores the increasingly complex, multi-dimensional and multi-level nature of regulation, exemplifies by processes of devolution and their implications for employment relations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although the post-crisis emphasis on neo-liberal austerity and labour market reform pursued in the UK was evident elsewhere in Europe, for the coalition government this was a political choice, not something forced upon it by international financial markets or institutions. The primacy of neo-liberalism, and the specific characteristics of the neo-liberal trajectory evident in the UK under the coalition, was consistent with the UK's position as a financialized market economy in a global system of variegated capitalism.
