Tripartism in the Czech and Slovak Republics

Abstract

A COMMON FEATURE OF SEVERAL POLITICAL SYSTEMS in post-communist East-Central Europe is the development of a tripartite structure which seeks to integrate social bargaining between business, labour and government into the policy process.1 Such institutions have emerged in Hungary, where they predate the collapse of communist rule, Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Poland. They received substantial initial encouragement from international agencies, particularly the ILO, and were often consciously modelled on examples from Western Europe. There is now a considerable body of academic literature on these institutions, but no consensus as to their short or long-term significance and hence on their place within the development and consolidation of democratic structures in general. On the one hand, there is a widespread view that the preconditions for effective corporatist policy making are not present, and that tripartism is therefore an ephemeral creation of the early period of transition which is now on the decline: its position is 'unstable and fragile' with 'no role in global strategy formulation, outside the specific sphere of industrial relations'.2 Tripartite structures in Hungary and Bulgaria have been described as 'facades rather than actual mechanisms of governance'.3 Others have seen a positive balance sheet, with references to the tripartite structure in the Czech Republic as instrumental in securing a 'low-wage/low-unemployment growth strategy'.4 There are even claims that East-Central Europe is developing a 'transformative corporatism' which can be expected 'to institutionalise its constructive elements into a new democratic political and economic structure'.5 The argument in this article is that both of these 'extreme' views are misleading.6 Tripartite structures are not the central feature in emerging political structures, but neither are they irrelevant to that process. Their role and significance change over time and reflect the outcome of a conflict between distinct conceptions. Thus the banner of 'tripartism' is often flown over a number of quite different institutional conceptions, which we can identify as follows: As transition pact: In this conception tripartism plays the role of a forum for resolving major real or potential conflict. It aims to produce a social consensus on the aims and direction of the transitional process in order to give the government authority to implement difficult short-term measures and prevent social unrest from disrupting key reforms. Fears of social conflict derailing economic and political transformation were widespread in East-Central Europe in the period after 1989. Social pacts, usually negotiated in periods of crisis or elite uncertainty, can give a