The Europeanization of the social partnership: The future of neo-corporatism in Austria and Germany.

摘要

The impact of European integration and the emergence of a multi-level system of governance within the European Union have begun to challenge the pre-existing systems of governance in many European states. There has been a prevalent belief that the new modes of governance have been supplanting domestic political structures especially in the areas of political economy. Much literature argued that neo-corporatism was being subsumed by the enormity of the European Union and its new mechanisms of governance. However, this research illustrates that the results of the Europeanization of neo-corporatist social partnerships are far from uniform and monolithic. There exists a tremendous diversity and differentiation amongst the methods, results, and preferences of European integration allowing considerable necessity for specific cases studies in policy areas. Further, in using previously developed models of Europeanization it has been discovered that such models fail to accurately and fully explain the pattern of diversity and differentiation that exists in the Europeanization process. The cases of German and Austrian social partnership illustrate such differentiation and continuing challenges and are the focal points of this research.