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Guy Mundlak, Fading Corporatism: Israel's Labor Law and Industrial Relations in Transition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2007)
FADING CORPORATISM offers an impressive in-depth analysis of the complex and dynamic relationship between labour law and the industrial relations system in Israel. Mundlak examines in detail the shift from a corporatist to a pluralist regime of industrial relations that took place in Israel over the last two decades, focusing on the changing role of labour law and its institutions in the regulation of employment relations. Based on rich empirical evidence and a persuasive theoretical framework, the book provides a nuanced analysis of the significant changes that occurred in the legal principles, institutions, and mechanisms for labour market regulation, which constitute an important, but relatively understudied, dimension of the transformation of the Israeli political economy at large. While focusing on the changing character of labour law, its functions, and its modes of formulation and enforcement, the analysis highlights the changing power relations among the actors in the field, and the changing rules that delineate and govern the relations among them.
Equally important, Mundlak uses the study of the Israeli case as a useful prism for exploring fundamental analytical questions concerning the relationship among law, society, and politics within the context of processes of institutional change. Labour law is examined as a relatively autonomous institutional field that interacts in complex and varying manners with the industrial relations system. The focus on the dynamic interplay between labour law and industrial relations allows for the presentation of important insights concerning state-society relations, particularly the roles of state agencies in the regulation of economic relations and processes. In contrast to commonsense claims about the current weakening of the state or its withdrawal from the economic arena, Mundlak posits that the changing role of the state in liberal regimes is best analyzed in terms of basic transformations in its mode of intervention in the economy. He convincingly demonstrates that the shift from corporatist to pluralist systems of interest representation connotes in fact a significant strengthening of certain state agencies: those that are...