Still Two Models of Capitalism? Economic Adjustment in Spain.

The proponents of globalization contend that European countries are now converging in the model of capitalism. Contrary to this prediction, this paper will show that in Spain globalization and EMU have promoted rather that undermined coordination among economic actors. Unable to escape from economic interdependence the Spanish economic actors have developed coordinating capacities at the macro and micro levels to address and resolve tensions between economic interdependence and political sovereignty, and between monetary and exchange rate policies. In this paper I show that there is at least one more variety than the two--LME and CME--that Hall and Soskice cite and also that it is possible to develop coordination capacities in countries that lack such strong tradition. In particular, this paper analyses the resurgence of national-level social bargaining in Spain in the 1990s. This development was the result of the reorientation of the strategies of the social actors. In a new economic and political context, marked by a process of institutional learning, trade unions have supported social bargaining as a defensive strategy to retake the initiative and influence policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]