Using new data, the paper examines the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on aggregate and youth unemployment in advanced OECD economies and in Central and Eastern Europe during 1980–2009. The analysis assesses both the direct and indirect effects of EPL on levels of...

This paper provides the scientific framework for the NEWGOV project Distributive Politics, Learning and Reform. In Part I, we establish our own definition and conceptualization of social pacts. We distinguish four types of pacts with different scope and depth: shadow pacts, headline pacts,...

Abstract Europe's 'political space,' its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way...

The result of a four-year long comparative research study centered at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and financed by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme, Social Pacts in Europe presents the first full-length theoretical and comparative empirical study of...

Against the background of the changing relationships between trade unions and political parties in Western Europe, this paper examines the nature and outcomes of union-party alliances in East Central Europe. The paper advances two interrelated arguments. First, the nature of union-party ties in...

Are newly established institutions capable of shaping actors' strategies and coordinating behavior on a single path? Contrary to punctuated equilibrium analyses, this paper suggests that the constraining capacity of a range of newly established institutions in new European capitalisms is weak...

This paper offers an explanation for variations in the effectiveness of trade unions to obtain legislative and policy concessions in peak-level tripartite negotiations in post-communist East Central Europe. I examine the usefulness of some standard interpretations for such variations, namely...

"The financial crisis drew attention to the way in which workers in certain countries had been able to sustain consumption through housing and consumer credit despite insecure labour-market positions. This indicates a need to expand the analysis of the relationship between flexibility and...