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Abstract
How have labor markets adapted to the twin-pressure of globalization and de-industrialization, and what are the politics of this adaptation? In this dissertation I argue that firms are at the center of the politics of labor market adaptation. Individual firms have similar interests across countries, with large service sector firms pushing towards a maximum of deregulation, large manufacturing firms focusing on stability and generally favoring segmentalist reforms. Small firms try to circumvent burdensome regulation either legally (through non-standard employment) or illegally (through informal employment).
But while firms' interests are similar, countries' path of adaptation diverge depending on the dominant coalition of business interests. In Liberal Market Economies like the US, where business is unified on labor issues, labor markets are broadly deregulated, a process I refer to as liberalization . In Coordinated Market Economies like Germany, where business coalitions form along sectoral lines, the result is adaptation through a labor market that is segmented between standard and non-standard employment, a process I call segmentation. Finally, in Hierarchical Market Economies like Argentina, where the main dividing line between businesses is their size, labor markets adopt through informalization, the increasing use of informal employment. In this dissertation I present cross-national evidence for the existence of of the three stipulated paths of adaptation and their co-occurence with varieties of capitalism. In case studies of the United States, Germany, and Argentina using historical resources, interviews, as well as data from a World Bank survey of firms, I demonstrate the importance of different business coalitions for different paths of adaption. I also show the persistence of firm-level preferences across different cases.
