Book Review: Luigi Burroni, Emmanuele Pavolini and Marino Regini (eds) Mediterranean Capitalism Revisited

Abstract

partnership across Europe. Crisis management is dominated either by the respective government (for example, in Poland), or social partnership, social pacts or social concertation are used by governments to increase legitimacy (for example, Spain). Likewise, they also prove a renaissance of corporatism (neo-corporatism) in times of crisis (for example, Germany) despite neoliberal developments. In addition, they show the limitations of social partnership with regard to crisis management at the European level. Although the European Commission officially promotes the idea of a Social Europe and structures that resemble national social partnership, the authors show that in times of crisis it is the European Commission that is unilaterally in charge of crisis management. Taking into consideration the different levels of European social dialogue, one could argue that the sectoral perspective at the European level would have enriched the overall picture. During the Great Recession some sectors were affected more by the economic repercussions (such as the metal sector) than others (such as the textile sector). Therefore, different sectors needed different crisis management approaches. It would have been interesting to examine the crisis management carried out by the trade union and employer umbrella organisations representing specific sectors, especially the banking sector, in direct reaction to the banking crisis. Altogether, in terms of the theoretical perspective of crisis corporatism, this anthology offers a lot of potential for further research, such as crisis management during the COVID-19 pandemic at the different levels of social dialogue (companies, Member States and EU social dialogue).