Tripartite Responses to the Global Financial Crisis: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

This paper performs a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the response to the global financial crisis in 44 countries between 2008 and 2010, both developed and developing. It seeks to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for a tripartite response, namely for the systematic involvement of trade unions and employer association (the “social partners”) in the governments’ policy responses. The main findings are two: 1) respect of the legal freedom of association is a necessary condition for a tripartite response; 2) the combination of a crisis that hits hard and unions that are organizationally weak, or a crisis whose impact is not particularly deep and unions that are relatively strong, is generally sufficient to produce a unilateral government response.