Culpepper, p. 18
the institutions of Italian wage bargaining was consummated not by explicit concessions
but by the establishment of shared set of beliefs about how a vague text would be
interpreted. And without the beliefs, it is not clear that agreement could have been
reached on establishing a new wage-bargaining system.
Coordinating Institutional Change (2): Ireland
The dramatic change in Irish industrial relations institutions, and Irish social partnership
more generally, has been studied by numerous political scientists (Sabel 1996; Hardiman
2002; Ornston 2004). The moment of institutional change was the signing of the Program
for National Recovery (PNR) in October, 1987 by employers, unions, farming interests,
and the state. One of the central planks of the agreement was the move from
decentralized to centralized bargaining, including targets for wage growth from 1987 to
1990. Yet the agreement also included government commitments on macroeconomic and
social policy, and a joint commitment to membership of the narrow bands of the
exchange rate mechanism (O’Donnell 1998: 11). As has been emphasized by both
observers (Hardiman 2002) and participants (O’Donnell 1998), the framework for
agreement on the various policy reforms was hammered out in negotiations in the
National Economic and Social Council, whose final report, “A Strategy for Development,
1986-90,” was released in November, 1986. As summarized by Hardiman (2002: 8): “In
this forum, employer and union leaders developed a shared analysis of the nature of the
country’s economic problems and the priorities that needed to be addressed. [The
Strategy for Development] accepted that moderation in pay increases would be essential
Convention