Abstract
For scholars of labour and political economy, the transformations of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies represent important cases in systemic change within the era of global neo-liberalism. Understanding the commonalities and differences across the CEE states is a key challenge for students of supra-national regulation (particularly concerning ‘Europeanisation’ and its limits) and of the power and roles of multinational corporations (MNCs). The CEE economies pose significant questions for those interested in developing frameworks for comparative research that are operative in states that neither fit neatly into the standard categorisations of comparative political economy, nor have in modern times had the institutional capacity to develop national ‘models’.
This edited collection is an ambitious attempt to provide angles of analysis necessary to confront these questions. It builds on, but goes well beyond, previous edited collections in which the lead editor was involved which focused primarily on the role of MNCs (Contrepois et al., 2011; Richet et al., 2014), and develops a wide-ranging take on labour markets, employment and industrial relations across the CEE states.
Delteil and Kirov present a framework aimed at integrating an analysis of: Europeanisation, as it affects labour, employment and industrial relations; the notion of ‘dependent capitalisms’ as a conceptual anchor to understanding CEE economies; and processes of labour weakening but also ‘re-awakening’, the latter particularly following the 2008 crisis and its serious ramifications for any progressive vision of the European Union (EU). These organising principles of analysis are then deployed in a series of excellent analyses of particular parts of the empirical equation across an unusually wide range of CEE geographies.
The volume not only provides new research in some of the domains which have characterised research on labour and employment in CEE countries over the last 25 years (MNCs, and the complex, contradictory processes of Europeanisation), but also with excellent chapters covering, for example, the issue of migration and remittances (Markova), higher education (Ilieva-Trichkova and Boyadieva) and young workers and precarious employment (Mrozowicki et al.). The reader without specialist area know-ledge rapidly gains a very wide-ranging insight into the nature of the transformations which continue to affect labour across this group of countries.
As Meardi’s chapter and others underline, the EU has largely abandoned the social market pretensions which still had resonance at the start of the CEE countries’ transformation processes. In this context, the notion of ‘dependent capitalism’ represents a particularly interesting question for internationally comparative research on work and employment. In particular, it is worth considering whether the ‘dependent’ characterisation is a labelling device (a CEE counterpart to the ‘liberal’ ‘coordinated’, etc., characterisations of other EU member states), or whether ‘dependence’ is more of a variable shaping all national variants of capitalist political economy to a greater or lesser extent in the context of ‘variegated’ neo-liberalism (Peck, 2013).
Overall, the chapters here, taken as a whole, make a convincing argument that the near ubiquitous resort to ‘international anchors’ by multiple domestic actors attempting to advance or defend their specific interests, represents a particular form of ‘dependence’. This is particularly the case given a continued societal identification as having ‘weak states’ – sometimes, as Delteil and Kirov’s chapter on Bulgaria and Romania illustrates, propagated by domestic actors for somewhat cynical reasons.
Clearly, this ‘dependence’ is not equal across the CEE countries, across which labour, capital and state actors vary considerably in the institutional capacities that they have been able to build. Variegation in how organised labour, in particular, has been able to develop such capacities comes across clearly. Institutional innovation and experimentation is evident among union tactics ranging from attempts to create functioning forms of tripartism (Myert), through engagements with wider social movements (Mrozowicki et al.) and attempts to draw ideational and material resources from supranational regulation. Future work attempting to form a systemic basis for comparisons between such strategies and tactics would be highly welcome.
In sum, this is an important volume, which should be read beyond a core audience of area specialists, and is thus recommended for those with interests in the comparative sociology and political economy of labour and industrial relations more generally.