Book Reviews 373

Capitalism is not corrupted but is corrupting. This sets Streeck apart from Standing, who wants
to save capitalism – understood as ‘free markets’ – from capitalists by democratic means. Instead,
Streeck is clear that democratic capitalism has run its course and will end. As such the title is a little
imprecise and should have the adjective ‘democratic’ placed before capitalism. Streeck predicts a
lingering twilight zone in which capitalist logic will exist in a democratic vacuum, in which
increasingly important pre-modern social ties have to patch up the demise of social security. This
post-post-democratic limbo is summed up in Gramsci’s famous words ‘the old is dying but the new
cannot yet be born’, leading to ‘an interregnum in which pathological phenomena of the most
diverse sort come into existence’.
One does not need to share Streeck’s analysis, or indeed his pessimism, to be convinced that
capitalism did not become crony overnight nor by accident and that reforming it will take more than
voting another party into office. Streeck’s account is thus analytically deeper and theoretically richer
than Standing’s book. Standing, however, makes the abstract and sometimes sweeping statements of
Streeck concrete. He discusses examples of tax avoidance instead of assuming (that we all know) this
to be the case. As such the two books are complementary. In terms of a course of late capitalism – or
whatever analytical concept one wants to use to depict the current political-economic constellation –
the two books could be read in turn, starting with Standing’s concrete examples and ending with
Streeck’s historical account; or starting with the relatively positive notion that capitalism is crony but
can be democratically redeemed and ending with the proposition that democratic capitalism cannot
be saved. Jointly the books then embody the academic imperative to always be concrete, but never to
mistake the trees for the forest. And they can be further reconciled by that other famous dictum of
Gramsci, to be a pessimist because of intelligence and an optimist because of will.

Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna (eds)

Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe. Emerging from the Crisis, Routledge: New York
and London, 2016; 328 pp.: 9781138851467, €117.99

Reviewed by: Werner Schmidt and Andrea Müller, Research Institute for Work, Technology and Culture,
Tübingen

Public Sector Management and Employment Relations in Europe, edited by Stephen Bach, Pro-
fessor of Employment Relations at King’s College London, and Lorenzo Bordogna, Professor of
Economic Sociology at the University of Milan, reflects the work of an established network of
experts. They provide national studies of public sector employment relations in 12 EU Member
States, aiming at producing ‘integrated accounts of public sector workforce reform’ (p. 1). Placed
in the context of public management reforms since 1980, each chapter offers an in-depth analysis
of the impact of the 2008 economic, financial and sovereign debt crisis on the respective country’s
public sector and its industrial relations and how they emerged from the crisis.
In their introductory chapter, the editors give an overview of post-war developments of public
sector employment relations against the backdrop of two prevailing models: the ‘sovereign
employer’ model, characterised by special rules and institutions, which clearly differ from those
of the private sector, and the ‘model employer’ approach for countries without a legal distinction
between the public and private sectors, but with a public sector that is nevertheless distinct in terms
of being a ‘model’ for good employment relations. After a description of two decades of reforms
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inspired by the so-called ‘new public management’ (NPM) approach, the editors discuss the impact
of the 2008 financial and economic crisis on the public sector. They argue that the degree of
financial vulnerability is a crucial variable in explanations of how governments reacted to the
crisis: ‘Greece, Italy, Spain and France, followed partly by the UK, feature among the most heavily
hit countries, while Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and
Germany are generally at the opposite end of the spectrum with the exception of 2009, when some
of these countries’ positions deteriorated. Ireland and Portugal are also present amongst the most
vulnerable group in both 2009 and 2012, while the remaining Central and Eastern European (CEE)
countries generally indicate a stronger position, with the exception of Slovenia in 2013’ (p. 10).
However, as the editors explain, other factors are also important. The subsequent country studies
show such variations in greater detail.
Greece, the country most affected by the crisis, being dependent on financial support and con-
fronted with the requirements of the Troika, is described by Christos A Ioannou not primarily as a
victim of the global economic and financial crisis but as a country suffering from state clientelism
and civil servants’ privileges. Despite a long history of (failed) public sector reforms, he sees ‘a rather
long transition to overhaul the inefficient public sector’ of Greece (p. 54).
Oscar Molina points out that in Spain – besides the international economic and financial
slump – there are also country-specific causes of the crisis, such as productivity weaknesses and
the housing bubble. As the author argues, the extensive Spanish austerity measures are situated in a
short-term horizon and disrupt the more fundamental reforms of public sector employment
relations as intended by the 2007 General Public Employment Statute (EBEP).
According to Lorenzo Bordogna, the changes in Italian public sector industrial relations are not
a consequence of the crisis and its aftermath, but – similar to some other countries – occur as
repeating waves, more or less supporting or restricting employee interests, collective bargaining
and trade unions. Nevertheless, the response to the crisis is affecting the public sector and its
employment relations in terms of a shift from the idea of sustainable public sector reform to pay
freezes and unilateralism.
Catherine Vincent reports from France a steady, albeit cautious process of public sector reforms
in the years before the crisis, including for example a redesign of the wage system in 1989. These
changes were only partly based on NPM ideas and trade unions were mostly involved as an
accepted partner in this process. More recently, however – again similar to other countries –
short-term imperatives have interfered with longer-term reforms.
In Britain, the 2008 financial crisis precipitated a deep recession. The Conservative-led coalition
government chose deficit reduction as the allegedly appropriate cure, largely to be achieved through
unprecedented expenditure cuts. As Stephen Bach argues convincingly, the government, in line
with its political ideology, used the crisis to reduce the public sector’s size and scope, to curtail social
rights and to forestall ‘concerted opposition by returning to a more Thatcherite agenda’ (p. 160) and
curbing trade unions’ capacity to operate effectively. Another objective is to change the role of the
state, from a ‘model employer’ to a coordinator of a network of private and voluntary sector providers.
According to Peter Leisink, in the Netherlands, NPM-inspired public sector reforms were
‘oriented at the “normalization” of public sector employment relations by bringing them more
in line with private sector employment relations’ (p. 164). Until 2000 the public workforce was
reduced, followed by a slight increase, which was disrupted by the economic and fiscal crisis and
harsh austerity measures. Nevertheless, Dutch public sector reform was neither stopped nor
redirected but has followed a similar path since the 1980s.
While the financial and sovereign debt crisis had a severe impact on the public sectors of many
EU Member States, Berndt Keller considers Germany to be an exceptional case. After the crisis,
Book Reviews 375

the German economy recovered quickly and tax revenues were growing. However, the German
public sector, too, had been exposed to retrenchment, but this occurred before and not because of
the crisis, dating back to German unification, years of a sluggish economy and the requirements of
the European Stability and Growth Pact. There were major changes in public sector employment
relations related to the constitutional reform of federalism, the introduction of fundamentally
different types of collective agreements in the public sector, a trend towards ‘limited decentraliza-
tion’ of collective bargaining (p. 208), and the deterioration of working conditions, although, as in
the case of retrenchment, these are not results of the crisis.
Mikkel Mailand and Nana Wesley Hansen present the cases of Denmark and Sweden, countries
that have ‘some of the largest public sectors in Europe’ (p. 218). Unlike most other chapters, they
provide not only a single case study but a comparison of two countries. Over the years, both
countries have introduced NPM measures ‘in a moderate form’ (and also far-reaching decentra-
lisation in wage determination), but also in these cases the ‘most important changes took place in
the 1990s, not in the post-crisis period’ (p. 237).
Imre Szabó describes Hungary as being dominated by unilateral determination of public sector
employment conditions and since 2006 also as marked by austerity measures. Neither NPM nor the
crisis were the main cause of austerity in Hungary, although both helped to legitimise austerity
measures as unavoidable. In recent years, the right-wing Orbán government has accelerated
unilateral and statutory regulation of the public sector, although accompanied by a kind of
quasi-bargaining within tripartite organisations with compulsory membership. That means, as the
author suggests, a change towards an authoritarian variant of a ‘directing state’ or, in other words:
authoritarian corporatism.
With the Czech Republic and Slovakia Marta Kahancová and Monika Martišková present two
very interesting cases. The comparison shows that public sector reforms as well as changes in labour
relations were to a high degree politically influenced by the respective government and the EU and
depend only partly on the institutional legacy. For example, despite their common history, in the
Czech Republic collective bargaining played a marginal role and major employment conditions were
decided by government order, whereas in Slovakia collective bargaining has been well established.
As the title promises, the book provides a nuanced insight into the development of public
service management and employment relations in Europe. Obviously, there are differences
between the long-term developments as well as the countries’ and their actors’ response to the
crisis. However, in most countries similarities can be detected, too, such as trends to introduce
private sector management practices in the public sector, privatisation and the implementation of
austerity measures. In several countries, the latter were strongly pushed within the framework of
attempts to respond to the crisis. The editors conclude that in the aftermath of the crisis ‘a markedly
altered context has emerged in which the public sector is no longer sheltered from internationa-
lization, enabling shifts in bargaining power and reforms that favor employers’ and that these
‘trends are likely to remain an enduring legacy of the crisis’. On the other hand, ‘there are wide
variations across the European Union linked to country-specific institutional and legal traditions
and related to the financial vulnerability of each country’ (p. 25). Divergent as well as convergent
developments seem to coexist.
The book has some minor weaknesses. Table 11.1, for instance, shows considerable variations
between Eurostat data and national data (CSO resp. SSO) without giving a sufficient explanation
(p. 278). Nevertheless, we highly recommend this volume to everyone interested in the public
sector and its employment relations, in particular to all scholars, practitioners and politicians who
like to think beyond ‘national boxes’ and are interested in evidence-based substantiation of their
decisions on the public sector.