European Social Policy after Maastricht: The 'Social Dialogue' and 'Subsidiarily'

Wolfgang Streeck
Additional contact information
Wolfgang Streeck: University of Wisconsin-Madison/Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 1994, vol. 15, issue 2, 151-177

Abstract: The paper reviews recent changes in the institutional conditions ofa European social policy, especially the new codecision rights of the 'social partners' under the Maastricht Social Protocol. To assess the potential of the new institutional framework to add a meaningful social dimension to the integrated European market, the paper places Maastricht and its aftermath in the context of both the history of social policy as well as the overall institutional structure of the European Community. Drawing on theory derived from the study of neo-corporatism, the paper argues that the key for a productive 'social dialogue' rests with business; that business has no incentives to promote an activist, market-correcting social policy at Community level and will therefore likely use its codecision rights to delay or prevent legislation; and that neither the unions nor the European Commission, the incipient European Community executive, have a capacity to make business change its strategic calculation.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X94152002 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:15:y:1994:i:2:p:151-177

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X94152002

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().