Book Review: Bernhard Ebbinghaus and J Timo Weishaupt The role of social partners in managing Europe’s great recession. Crisis corporatism or corporatism in crisis?

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2008 unleashed a serious economic crisis across the globe and, accordingly, across the European Union (EU). The so-called Great Recession hit Europe severely and caused both short-term and long-term consequences at different levels for economic growth and employment, but also with regard to income inequality (Brzezinski, 2018). The EU’s policy responses to this crisis focused strongly on European actors, which promoted structural reforms at the national level (De la Porte and Pochet, 2014). In this multi-level context, however, it is also the Member States’ duty to respond to such a crisis in order to absorb the economic, political and social consequences. When reading about EU Member State policy responses, the relevance of the respective institutional contexts becomes evident (Kiess et al., 2017). It is this institutional context in which the social partners come into play. Policy-making by governments together with collective actors in neo-corporatist settings is not new. However, neo-corporatist structures seem to be especially relevant in times of crisis. It is this perspective of collective crisis management and policymaking that the anthology The role of social partners in managing Europe’s great recession. Crisis corporatism or corporatism in crisis? (edited by Bernhard Ebbinghaus and J Timo Weishaupt) draws together. By means of a comparative analysis, they aim at understanding crossnational variations in Europe with regard to government involvement of the social partners in crisis management. Moreover, the authors ask ‘what have been the main consequences of such concertation efforts (or their failure or their absence) on labour relations and the future of neocorporatist policymaking?’ (p. 5). In this book, the authors make use of the traditional concept of crisis corporatism, which was initially theorised by Schmitter and Lehmbruch (1979). By including socio-economic, political (politics, elections, institutions) and power-resource factors in industrial relations, they analyse the involvement of social partners across European countries during the financial and economic crisis in 2008/2009 and afterwards. In the space of 293 pages, the book covers national as well as European perspectives on corporatism in times of crises, as analysed by 17 authors. The country chapters1 explain in detail the political situation, the economic context and the respective industrial relations systems. They thus systematically shed light on the role of corporatist actors in crisis management processes, the prompt establishment of social pacts between actors in the respective social dialogues, but also government activities without social partnership. 1160419 TRS0010.1177/10242589231160419TransferBook Reviews book-review2023