Liberalizing Industrial Relations in Europe: Rethinking the Role of the State

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs

Center for European Studies

present

Liberalizing Industrial Relations in Europe: Rethinking the Role of the State 

A talk by Chris Howell, James Monroe Professor of Politics at Oberlin College  

Over the last three decades and more, the liberalization of industrial relations has become a generalized phenomenon in Western Europe. While the timing, pace and scope of liberalization have varied, and there have been moments of re-regulation, the overall trajectory of change is hard to dispute. At the same time, the use of state power to intervene in class relations, to transform the institutions that regulate them, and to do so in ways that weaken labor while expanding the power of employers, has spread far beyond countries with governments that enthusiastically tout neoliberal economic doctrines, or those with liberal market economies. What does this tell us about how industrial relations systems and institutions change, both generally and in the current neoliberal era?

Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and Center for European Studies

Contact Havva Karakas-Keles for more information: hkarakas@syr.edu