ABSTRACT
Germany recovered from the Great Recession quicker than most other countries, with uninterrupted positive economic growth and falling unemployment from 2009 to the onset of the Corona crisis in early 2020. Much of this success can be attributed to its still generous corporatist welfare state, effective social concertation, and pragmatic social partnership. However, a one-sided focus on this neo-corporatist turn masks severe firm-level conflicts during the crisis era, a return to more conflictual industrial relations since the mid-2010s in the metal and electronics sector, and the continuous decline of the trade unions’ power resources in the service sector. Despite honing in on these more critical aspects, this chapter argues that the crisis has nevertheless contributed to a stabilization of core features of the coordinated market economy, as industrial relations are no longer a point of criticism by political parties, multipartite forums and platforms emerged to tackle major challenges, and trade unions receive broader popular legitimacy and support.
