Austrian social partnership : Stability versus innovation

After 1945 Austria developed a characteristic system of intense cooperation between the traditional 'camps' which had been responsible for the destabilisation of the Austrian republic before 1934. The institutionalised network of co-operation between employers and employees – social partnership – is the most important example of (neo-J corporatist structures within a Western industrialised society. But it has specific features which do not permit a simple export of the Austrian 'model'. Social partnership has undoubtedly been successful, but it has a political price in a lack of democratic quality which is the main reason for the problems social partnership has had to face since the later 1970s. There is evidence that social partnership has already started to decline.