According to the neo-corporatist approach to the “problem of compliance,†worker control over union policy is incompatible with centralized wage regulation, because only associations in which national leaders are insulated from their members are capable of delivering rank-and-file...

Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts...