The politics of pro-outsider labour market reforms: a configurational study

Paulo Marques, Rui Branco, Rita Henriques Guimarães

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Abstract

Over the past decades, the level of regulation of fixed-term contracts has been in flux. Many reforms deregulating these contracts were followed by a regulatory countertrend, a puzzling finding considering influential theoretical expectations like the ones developed by the dualization and liberalization literatures. This paper draws on the comparative employment relations and comparative political economy literatures to identify the drivers of pro-outsider reforms. Furthermore, it develops an innovative argument claiming that governments may rely on support from a ‘domestic coalition’ including workers in permanent contracts, or they can leverage the European link to support their intention of conducting a pro-outsider reform. Each of these paths relies on the assemblage of distinct pro-reform coalitions of policy actors. To test our argument, the paper uses fsQCA. We compare 38 reforms enacted in 16 European countries between 1985–2019. After the fsQCA analysis, we conduct a qualitative discussion of the different paths.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-26
Number of pages26
JournalComparative european politics
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 1 Jul 2024

Keywords

  • Comparative political economy
  • Dualization
  • Employment protection legislation
  • Fixed-term contracts
  • fsQCA
  • Solidarity

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