ABSTRACT
The sovereign debt crisis not only led to the implementation of far-reaching fiscal austerity packages in the peripheral Eurozone countries such as Spain, it also triggered significant reforms of labour market institutions, industrial relations, and the welfare state. The political and economic context in which reforms occurred has certainly been propitious to the abandonment of tripartite social concertation. The explicit or implicit external pressure on various Spanish governments to comply with fiscal stability and pursue structural reforms has led in many cases to unilateral action. The temporary abandonment of tripartite concertation and the adoption of a unilateral approach to policymaking does not, however, constitute a novelty. Three factors are identified in explaining discontinuities in social concertation: a weak and late institutionalization, a strong distributional character of policies negotiated, and the role of economic and political cycles. The analysis of developments during the Great Recession confirmed the expected pattern of intermittent, context-dependent social concertation in Spain and its legitimating role.
