Addressing the Legitimacy Gap in the Israeli Corporatist Revival
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Guy Mundlak |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00754.x |
ANNUAL REVIEW ARTICLE 2008
Addressing the Legitimacy Gap in
the Israeli Corporatist Revivalbjir_754765..787
Guy Mundlak
Abstract
Since the mid-1980s, Israel’s labour law and industrial relations have transi-
tioned from a Continental corporatist system to an Anglo-American pluralist
system. The process has been characterized by greater fragmentation of the
labour market and the system of interests’ representation. However, in recent
years, there have been several episodes of nationwide collective agreements and
social pacts. These agreements resonate with a second generation of social
corporatist bargaining that has been identified in some European countries. In
this article, I question the legitimacy of the new agreements. The legitimacy gap
evolves from the use of corporatist instruments against the backdrop of a
pluralist system. I discuss the attempts to increase the legitimacy of the corpo-
ratist instruments, pointing to their limited success. Future attempts must con-
sider solutions that track the hybrid nature of the industrial relations system and
devise institutions that bring together the traditional corporatist social partners
and the new pluralist agents. Of particular importance is the need to consider
the role of the new associations in civil society that voice the interests of the
growing segment of disadvantaged workers in the secondary labour market.
1. Introduction
The study of industrial relations and labour law in Israel has documented a
significant change in the nature of the system, from the corporatist past to
the present pluralist model (Mundlak 2007). As opposed to many classical
studies of corporatism, which cluster industrial relations regimes, award
scores to corporatism and then measure various outcomes, such as inflation,
inequality, growth and level of industrial action (cf. Visser 2007), the advan-
tage of a single-case study is that it allows for ambiguities, enables studies of
causation and accommodates a demonstration of institutional embeddedness
and path determinacy. In the Israeli context, the simple story of a transition
Guy Mundlak is at the Faculty of Law and Department of Labour Studies, Tel-Aviv University.
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00754.x
47:4 December 2009 0007–1080 pp. 765–787
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
from corporatism to pluralism is incomplete. The system was never perfectly
corporatist (Shalev 1992), and it does not neatly conform, at present, to the
pluralist script. For reasons of path determinacy, Israel is situated in an
interesting spot in which the agents in both the legal and industrial systems
have a broad repertoire of institutions at their disposal, some borrowed from
the corporatist toolkit, others from the pluralist.
Although the system has grown to resemble pluralist models, the tracks
of corporatism have not been erased. Over the last few years, the General
Histadrut, the largest trade union, and the Federation of Economic Organi-
zations (FEO — the employers’ associations) have, to some extent, retained
their central role in the industrial relations system, and there have been
several episodes of centralized bargaining arrangements that were extended
by executive orders. The fact that corporatist residues continue to stick
resonates with other attempts to identify a new type of ‘second-generation
social corporatism’ across Europe. The new corporatism is no longer con-
centrated or centralized; it does not huddle under the protection of a labour
party; and it is no longer separated from the heavy hand of the regulatory
state. These new forms of second-generation social corporatism may provide
an innovative, distinctive model that brings together the virtues of older-style
social corporatism and pluralism.
However, it is too easy to dismiss attempts at categorization by suggesting
that they are merely two ends of a continuum. In this case, moving along the
continuum from one point to another may also indicate a fundamental
disruption to the internal logic of each terminus. My objective in this article
is to observe the alleged corporatist revival in Israel and to question its
stability and endurance. The circumstances leading to four recent examples
of collective agreements with state-wide coverage or impact are outlined.
These examples are of help in distinguishing between the new and the old
corporatist agreements. I argue that the new episodes of corporatist negotia-
tions with broad coverage must be viewed against the backdrop of growing
pluralist fragmentation of the labour market, the regulatory regime that
governs it and the entry of new agents into the system of interests’ represen-
tation. This discrepancy yields a legitimacy gap. While the traditional cor-
poratist and pluralist models provided a coherent response to the legitimacy
problem, the fusion of both into a new model of second-generation corpo-
ratism runs the risk of losing moral and institutional coherence, eventually
failing to provide a lasting solution.
In Section 2 of the article, I briefly summarize the transition from corpo-
ratism to pluralism in Israel’s labour law and industrial relations, and the
fragmentation of the Israeli labour market and regulatory regime. Section 3
is devoted to describing four agreements that were negotiated over the last
few years and highlights the circumstances that enabled them as well as their
distinct features in comparison with the old corporatist agreements. In
Section 4, I discuss the legitimacy gap and the attempted means to address it.
These, I will argue, are in conflict with one another, casting doubt on the
future of the new corporatist revival.
766 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009.
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