Interest groups in disjointed corporatism: social dialogue in Greece and European ‘competitive corporatism’

Abstract:

The article explores the strategic and political parameters influencing the ways in which the main economic interest groups become involved in policy in contemporary Greece. The fact that social dialogue in Greece remains an exercise with a limited scope has been largely due to the fact that there is a difficult match between Greece's 'disjointed corporatism' and the EU's emerging 'competitive corporatism'. A number of European trade unions have agreed to a new 'competitive bargain', which is asymmetrical but which gives them the opportunity to get involved in 'competitive corporatism'. Greek responses to this trend have been inconclusive: while there are clearly pockets within union leaderships which would welcome the opportunity to approve the basic liberalising goals in exchange for guarantees for established workers and participation in the political framing of their implementation, the structural features of the Greek interest intermediation system work against such a possibility. Whether this leads to an evolving 'segmented pluralism' or another form remains to be seen - the extent of the synchronicity of developments with other EU states will depend in part on the outcome of this transition. In previous decades, the country's transition from asymmetric state corporatism to disjointed corporatism went through the contours of an embracing strategy of Europeanisation. It is an open question whether an equivalent strategy for the twenty-first century will be able to restructure the socio-political scene.