{"title":"In the shadow of hierarchy: minimum wage commissions in the UK and Germany","authors":"D. Mabbett","doi":"10.1093/ser/mwad027","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n The adoption of statutory minimum wages (MWs) has been accompanied by institutional innovations in the relationship between governments, employers and unions. In the UK and Germany, MW commissions were created to recommend or determine the MW. Their memberships are dominated by trade unionists and employers. Structures that engage the social partners ‘in the shadow of hierarchy’ can be efficient as well as politically expedient. They will be stable if, first, the social partners can establish a consensual basis for decisions and, second, this consensus position is near enough to the government’s position not to trigger intervention. The first condition has been met but not the second: both in the UK and Germany, governments have overridden employers and unions in order to introduce higher MWs. The article explores why this has happened and draws out the implications for MW fixing and the stability of shadow-of-hierarchy arrangements.","PeriodicalId":47947,"journal":{"name":"Socio-Economic Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Socio-Economic Review","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad027","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The adoption of statutory minimum wages (MWs) has been accompanied by institutional innovations in the relationship between governments, employers and unions. In the UK and Germany, MW commissions were created to recommend or determine the MW. Their memberships are dominated by trade unionists and employers. Structures that engage the social partners ‘in the shadow of hierarchy’ can be efficient as well as politically expedient. They will be stable if, first, the social partners can establish a consensual basis for decisions and, second, this consensus position is near enough to the government’s position not to trigger intervention. The first condition has been met but not the second: both in the UK and Germany, governments have overridden employers and unions in order to introduce higher MWs. The article explores why this has happened and draws out the implications for MW fixing and the stability of shadow-of-hierarchy arrangements.
期刊介绍:
Originating in the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Socio-Economic Review (SER) is part of a broader movement in the social sciences for the rediscovery of the socio-political foundations of the economy. Devoted to the advancement of socio-economics, it deals with the analytical, political and moral questions arising at the intersection between economy and society. Articles in SER explore how the economy is or should be governed by social relations, institutional rules, political decisions, and cultural values. They also consider how the economy in turn affects the society of which it is part, for example by breaking up old institutional forms and giving rise to new ones. The domain of the journal is deliberately broadly conceived, so new variations to its general theme may be discovered and editors can learn from the papers that readers submit. To enhance international dialogue, Socio-Economic Review accepts the submission of translated articles that are simultaneously published in a language other than English. In pursuit of its program, SER is eager to promote interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, economics, political science and moral philosophy, through both empirical and theoretical work. Empirical papers may be qualitative as well as quantitative, and theoretical papers will not be confined to deductive model-building. Papers suggestive of more generalizable insights into the economy as a domain of social action will be preferred over narrowly specialized work. While firmly committed to the highest standards of scholarly excellence, Socio-Economic Review encourages discussion of the practical and ethical dimensions of economic action, with the intention to contribute to both the advancement of social science and the building of a good economy in a good society.