A biased pendulum: Italy's oscillations between concertation and disintermediation

In this chapter, we revisit developments in social concertation in Italy since the onset of the crisis. Contrary to established interpretations, we show that the rupture in social partners’ involvement in policymaking is not as definitive as most accounts imply. Rather than a wholesale drift into unilateralism, we argue that government-social partner relationships in the Italian crisis are best characterized as a case of ongoing oscillation between confrontation and partial involvement (cf. Regalia and Regini 2018, 64). Throughout the Great Recession, the abandonment of formal concertation has occasionally given way to the reactivation of consultation and ad hoc political exchange between government and social partners, primarily under conditions of governmental weakness. However, the concessions that the social partners have been able to extract have been restricted to primarily “defensive” gains.