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The Politics of Change. Coalitional politics and labour market reforms during the sovereign debt crisis in Portugal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2020

RUI BRANCO Open the ORCID record for RUI BRANCO [Opens in a new window]  and
DANIEL CARDOSO Open the ORCID record for DANIEL CARDOSO [Opens in a new window]
RUI BRANCO
Affiliation:
NOVA University Lisbon and IPRI-NOVA email: rui.branco@fcsh.unl.pt
DANIEL CARDOSO
Affiliation:
Autonomous University of Lisbon and Observare – Observatory of Foreign Relations email: dcardoso@autonoma.pt
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Abstract

This article describes and explains labour market reforms in Portugal during the sovereign debt crisis from 2011 to 2014. Policy outputs were not homogenous, but differentiated between a first phase where recalibration co-existed alongside hard liberalising measures and a second phase, from late 2012, where recalibration was dropped and liberalisation further deregulated employment protection and security and eroded collective bargaining. This variation is explained by the changing coalitional politics and blame allocation underpinning policymaking under conditionality. Initial reforms resulted from a broad informal political coalition spanning the governing centre-right parties, the main opposition party, a trade union and employer confederations; its breakdown in late 2012 led to the executive’s increasing centralisation, the shut down of social concertation, and more radical policy outputs. The article shows that cooperation between government and opposition and government and social partners is possible even under external conditionality, how coalition politics affects the nature and direction of reforms, and highlights how political dynamics of blame allocation drive the process of coalition building and breakdown.

Keywords

Labour market reformsEurozone crisisPortugalconditionalitycoalition politicsblame allocation
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 39 - 57
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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