Powering, puzzling, and ‘pacting’: the informational logic of negotiated reforms

Across Europe, contemporary negotiated reforms of economic and social policy are increasingly characterized by a logic of information rather than a logic of exchange. Unlike in neo-corporatist bargaining over incomes policies, states negotiate with the social partners not primarily to secure their acquiescence, but instead to enlist their active assistance in designing and mobilizing support for substantial reforms of public policy. State policy-makers lack the combination of technical, relational, and local information necessary to design successful blueprints for reform, and so they are dependent on the social partners to acquire this information. In systems in which unions and employers’ associations can exercise dialogic capacity, policy innovation is more likely to come from the propositions of the social partners than from political parties or bureaucrats. Using this logic, the article undertakes a pairwise comparison of episodes of negotiated reform: pensions in France and Italy, and vocational training in France and Germany.