ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the politics of labour market deregulation in Italy from the early 1990s until the early 2000s and explain how and why the Italian government implemented labour market deregulation. The chapter analyses political factors such as the power distribution between labour unions and employers and labour policy-making structures explains the political processes of labour market deregulation during the centre-left governments and during the centre-right Berlusconi government in the early 2000s. The centre-left governments institutionalised labour policy-making based on concertation in the 1990s among the government, employer associations and national union confederations. It analyses the policy-making processes and contents of the Treu Law and the Biagi Law regarding temporary agency work as well as the deregulation of fixed-term contracts and part-time work. The Italian political economy in the early 1990s, such as the demise of the 'First Republic' and the emergence of an external obligation to satisfies the Maastricht convergence criteria for the European Monetary Union.
