ABSTRACT
Spanish and Italian governments have offered more social pacts to unions and employers between 1980 and 2006 (25 and 17 respectively) than most other governments in Western Europe; in contrast, their willingness to pursue reforms through legislation has been close to the cross-national average. This proclivity for social pacts is somewhat surprising considering the countries’ economic and industrial relations institutions. Both Spain and Italy are generally considered to be part of the “Mediterranean” variety of capitalism, alternatively referred to as “statist” or “mixed” (e.g. Hall and Soskice 2001b ). 1 Although the literature has not developed a coherent theoretical framework that establishes the characteristics that tie Mediterranean economies (MEs) together, MEs lack the “institutional complementarity” typical of both CMEs and LMEs and might thus be prone to “underperform” economically (see Hancké et al. 2007b : 13-14; Molina and Rhodes 2007a : 223). According to Molina and Rhodes ( 2007a : 225), MEs feature production systems that are relatively fragmented, a prominent role of the state in the economy, fragmented and unevenly developed welfare systems, and high rates of strike activity (see Hamann and Kelly 2008 ; Hale 2008 ). Bargaining centralization and coordination scores place Italy and Spain around mid-table for Western Europe even taking into account the declines since 1980. Thus, “the institutional preconditions for national pacts are particularly weak, and the potential for conflict – over both labor market and social policy reform – especially high” (Rhodes 2001 : 168). Nevertheless, the high incidence of social pacts in both countries has generated some discussion about the institutional and other factors driving this mode of policymaking (e.g. Baccaro and Lim 2007 ; Molina 2005 ; Molina and Rhodes 2007a ; Pérez 2000a ; Royo 2007 ). The other striking feature of both countries is that pact offers have fluctuated considerably over time and in ways that do not appear to be closely synchronized with economic trends. In the late 1980s, for instance, the number of pact offers declined sharply in both countries before rising again from the mid-1990s and tailing off again in the early 2000s (more so in Italy than Spain). Neither the stability of the economic institutions nor economic trends can account for these temporal fluctuations. Instead, we seek an explanation for these patterns in the varying electoral fortunes of the main political
parties and probe electoral variables to illuminate shifts over time in government preferences for pacts and legislation.
