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A second generation of studies of post-communist labor has begun to take variations in labor relations more seriously despite continuing evidence of union decline and labor passivity. This paper is a contribution to this batch of studies, employing a paired "most similar systems" comparative analysis of Poland and the Czech Republic between 1989 and 2010. In lieu of familiar indicators such as union density or strike frequency, I look at the ability of labor to dilute or slow down efforts to boost employer flexibility in the process of revising labor codes and other regulations related to collective bargaining, job rights, and working conditions. Despite the role played by Solidarity in bringing down the communist regime and designing privatization in Poland, I show that Czech labor had more long run success in preempting the dilution of key provisions related to long-term contracts and collective bargaining coverage (among other things). In explaining the variation, I construct a modified version of the "labor and left" thesis once used to address variation across advanced capitalist economies in Europe, a thesis that has been viewed as irrelevant or inapplicable when it comes to Central and Eastern Europe. I point to the role of the main Czech legacy union (CMKOS) in preventing the dilution of labor power. I also emphasize the stability of the Czech party system and the crystallization of an electorally viable set of left parties (an ex-communist party AND a revived social democratic party) that, despite their differences, have lined up on the same side in opposing employer flexibility and courting working-class support. This argument also implies that history continues to matter, but not in a linear fashion: inherited legacies do not simply continue to exert the same causal effects across time and space, but key historical elements do matter in complex explanations of emergent differences as we move further beyond the crisis and uncertainty of the early years of postcommunist transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a two-dimensional concept of nonliberal capitalism: coordinated capitalism (as described in the varieties of capitalism framework) and organized capitalism. The organized capitalism framework distinguishes forms of capitalism with respect to the status of firms in society. Political economies are highly organized when firms are not only the private business of owners and insiders but, in addition, quasi-public infrastructures and, therefore, highly constrained in their economic decisions by institutionally sanctioned collective interests. I construct an index on organized capitalism by combining data on ownership structures, board level codetermination, the density of employers' associations and trade union density in order to allow for comparison between varying extents of coordination and organization in OECD countries. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the framework in qualitative terms, I describe the main features of German capitalism in terms of its organization and current disorganization. The distinction between two dimensions of nonliberal capitalism is particularly helpful for analysis of the current phase of transformation among European capitalisms as it allows for differentiation between two forms of liberalization: declining coordination and disorganization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now that the European Union has expanded to include ten new member states, the transformation of industrial relations in postcommunist eastern Europe has become increasingly important, not least for the future of the European "social model." Following the varieties of capitalism literature, which divides advanced capitalist economies into coordinated and liberal market models, we examine labor relations in eastern Europe to determine which of the types they most approximate. We then find that, despite the rigidities of the communist era, nine of the ten postcommunist (new and prospective) member states are much closer to the liberal than the coordinated types, and that they are also far from the European social model. Again following the varieties of capitalism approach, we find that the likelihood that the eastern European countries will converge or harmonize toward existing European labor and social standards to be unlikely. Rather, it seems more likely that the liberal approach of the new member states will push the European social model towards further liberalization. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence on the mechanisms of institutional change in European capitalism in the 1990s. The empirical cases studied are the institutions of corporate governance and of industrial relations in France, Germany, and Italy, the three largest non-liberal market economies in Europe. Rational choice institutionalism predicts change when an exogenous shock destabilizes pre-existing mechanisms of employer coordination, and historical institutionalism predicts institutional change when the public regulatory framework of such a system is corroded from within or overturned by a dramatic shift in control of the levers of government. In the cases examined here, the observed empirical patterns of both change and stability are more consistent with the rationalist emphasis on coordination than on the historical emphasis on regulation. This analysis suggests that past studies of the impact of business in politics, which have focused largely on the agenda-setting and lobbying power of business in parliamentary and bureaucratic arenas, fail to take into account the role of organized business in politics that never passes through legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]