New versus Established Democracies
Jose Aleman
4
unemployment, high price stability, increased welfare spending,
13
and reduced
inequality and poverty.
14
Beginning in the mid 1980s, economic efficiency and competitiveness rather
than social peace became the paramount goal of policy-makers around the world.
15
Economic changes brought on by three major trends – globalization, privatization, and
liberalization – led governments and employers to search for new socio- economic
formulas that more readily accommodate flexibility in the production process and in
labor organization. Governments have sought to meet this challenge in two ways:
through the relaxation of hiring and firing statutes, and the decentralization of collective
bargaining. More generally, there has been a change in how labor is regulated, which in
fact, has redefined the relations between government, the markets, and labor unions.
According to Tokman, governments have moved from heteronomy to autonomy in
industrial relations.
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Heteronomy – which was common under Keynesian
macroeconomic coordination and import substitution industrialization (ISI) – refers to a
process where the state defines, sanctions, implements, and monitors labor regulations.
A challenge these policies pose is how to achieve flexibility without severely
reducing worker protection. Studies dealing with the effects of corporatist concertation
have often stressed that social pacts can decisively facilitate tradeoffs, contributing to
the reform of wage bargaining systems, labor markets and social policies.
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From
labor’s point of view, social pacts offer the chance to take part in the negotiation and
implementation of reform processes. Consequently, unions can at least try to use their
13
Crepaz 1996; Hicks 1999.
14
Nollert 1995; Brady 2003
15
Buchanan and Nicholls 2003, p. xx.
16
Tokman 2002.
17
Ebbinghaus and Hassel 2000.
Convention