Slovenia: neo-corporatism under the neo-liberal turn
| Published date | 04 June 2018 |
| Pages | 709-724 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2017-0008 |
| Date | 04 June 2018 |
| Author | Miroslav Stanojevic |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Slovenia: neo-corporatism under
the neo-liberal turn
Miroslav Stanojevic
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to reveal the formation and development of Slovenia’sneo-corporatist
industrial relations system in the 1990s, and its change which overlaps with Slovenia’s accession to the EU
and the eurozone.
Design/methodology/approach –The approach is based on the presumption that the transitional
processes engaged in by the societies of “real socialism”were merely part of a larger and deeper transition –
the great recommodification of the post-war decommodified societies of European democratic capitalism.
Findings –Already by the mid-1990s, the Slovenianindustrial relations system contained all key featuresof
the neo-corporatist regimes emerging after the Second World War in the European systems of democratic
capitalism. Like those systems, in the 1990s Slovenia also saw a system being formed of politicalexchanges
based on wagerestraint policy. The combinationof this wage policy and appropriatenational monetary policy
facilitated theSlovenian economy’s competitivenessand above-average growth. Slovenia was a success story.
Originality/value –The Slovenian system started to change in the middle of the last decade. The trigger of
this change was Slovenia’s entry to the eurozone. Since then, Slovenian neo-corporatism has been subject to
systematic deregulation. Despite this, the analysis suggests the Slovenian industrial relations system still
contains a coordinating mechanism that distinguishes it from other “post-communist”, and, generally
speaking, liberal market economies.
Keywords Industrial relations, Trade unions, Eastern Europe, Structural reforms, Real socialism,
Neo-corporatism, Global economic crisis, Eurozone
Paper type Research paper
At the end of the 1980s and startof the 1990s, in the context of “real socialism’s”downfall and
the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Slovenia emerged as an independent nation state –anew
parliamentary democracy. In the 1990s, this new state intensely prepared to join the EU and
the eurozone. It was thenthat a neo-corporatist industrial relations system was established in
Slovenia (Bohle and Greskovits, 2007, 2012; Feldmann, 2006).After Slovenia entered both the
EU and the eurozone, this system started to change (Guardiancich, 2016; Feldmann, 2017).
In the first part of the paper, I outline the analytical framework for identifying the
specificities and especially the latest changes in Slovenia. I then go on to present the three key
historical turning points marking the development of the Slovenian system of industrial
relations. First, the violent international conflict at the startof the period of “real socialism”in
former Yugoslavia/Slovenia (the Tito-Stalin conflict of 1948). It was followed by the early
marketisation of Yugoslav/Slovenian “real socialism”leading to a systematic rise in the
autonomy of companies and workers collectives within the companies. Second, I try to show
that a few decades later it was precisely this heritage that strongly marked the second big
turning point –the early period of Slovenia’s transition to capitalism (end 1980s, early 1990s) –
and thus influenced the formation of its key result: the neo-corporatist system of industrial
relations. Third, I present evidence suggesting that fol lowing the third big turning point –
Slovenia’s entry to both the EU and the eurozone, its neo-corporatist system –in the form that
occurred in the 1990s –has been becoming dysfunctional.I end with a few concludingremarks.
The analytical framework
According to Crouch (2005, p. 2), the biggest overall result of neo-institutionalism
(Hall and Soskice, 2001; Boyer, 2014; Crouch and Streeck, 1997; Streeck and Thelen, 2005) is
Employee Relations
Vol. 40 No. 4, 2018
pp. 709-724
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-01-2017-0008
Received 11 January 2017
Revised 9 March 2017
Accepted 20 March 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
709
Neo-
corporatism
under the neo-
liberal turn
that it has “re-established the role of political science and sociology in the study of economic
phenomena”. Upon the collapse of the “Soviet form of economic organisation”, previously
the only alternative to capitalism, differences among capitalist economies came to the
forefront. On the other hand, globalisation “throws into question the viability of diverse
forms of capitalism”; accordingly, the neo-institutional comparative analysis of capitalism is
particularly important.
Neo-institutionalism focuses on the differences among developed democratic capitalist
systems. It does not deal much with the results of the “real socialism”disintegration. It also
overlooks that the influence of the two post-war systems was mutual: the capitalist form of
economic organisation influenced the perception and understanding of “real socialism”,i.e.
“the Soviet form of economicorganisation”as a unified, internally non-differentiated system,
while the Soviet system also similarly influenced capitalism and its understanding at that
time. In fact, “the Sovietform of economic organisation”wasinternally diverse; its monolithic
structure was superficial. Arising from this superficially unified form of economic
organisation, new, obviously different “post-Soviet”types of economic organisations started
to appear in the 1990s(Bohle and Greskovits, 2012; Myantand Drahokoupil, 2011). These are
new varieties of capitalism that neo-institutional analysis simply cannot ignore.
The former “real socialist”societies used to have some basic common denominators.
The key common denominator of all such societies was the involvement of big state-owned
companies –hierarchical systems of the formal economy –in the strongly centralised
system of an interventionist state. This regime, which in principle excluded the operation of
the markets, could not operate in reality without at least some rudimentary “horizontal”
market interactions. The real societies of “real socialism”were thus hybrids: in these
societies, markets could be limited to the underground economy, have the status of a more or
less legitimate informal economy, or partly even frame companies’operations within the
formal economy. In these societies autonomous interest groups emerged in the form of
dissidence, occasional mass uprisings and as the (more or less unintended effect of the)
operation of institutions that provided the regimes or political elites with legitimacy.
All societies of “real socialism”were foundedon a typical, direct,pronouncedly paternalistic
general political exchange between the political elite and the “working people”(Županov, 1983,
1989). This meant that, inexchange for the state ensuring stable employment in the sphereof
the formal economy (and the corresponding social protection) and tolerating the second or
informaleconomy, the workersprovided the political elite withthe political support it required.
This mechanism systematically closed off the option of workers raising their voice within the
formal economy and at the same time opened up their exit (Hirschman, 1979) into the second
economy. This was a general, systemic feature of all variants of centrally planned economies.
In these systems, trade unions were not a marginal but a vital element of the entire state-
paternalistic mechanism; by ensuring services for workers without a voice, they preserved the
relations in which a voice was not possible. Correspondingly, the option of exiting was
systematically made available. It was precisely this combination in “real socialist”societies –
the blockadeof voice and the openingof exit that stronglyencouraged workerindividualism –
the atomisation of labour interests (Feher et al., 1983); it prevented the elementary
collectivisation of labour interests at the micro level. Consequently, as a rule, trade unions in
post-socialist societies could not establish themselves as a relevant actor of social change. As
shown below, a more significant partial deviation from this formula, related to subsequent
details of the Slovenian transition, only occurred in the Yugoslav variant of “real socialism”.
Towards the end of the 1980s, the transformation of European societies of “real
socialism”was triggered. The capitalistic societies that European “real socialism”was
supposed to change were societies of democratic capitalism. C. Crouch (2005) encapsulated
the least common denominator of these societies in the MPH formula –the combination of
three key institutional arrangements –market (M), procedural state (P) and hierarchy (H).
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