Trajectories of Labour Market Liberalisation in Spain: An Empirical Approach to the Historical Evolution of Institutional Change

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse institutional change in the Spanish labour market in from a historical perspective, particularly regarding two main areas: labour regulation and collective bargaining. The main thesis is that it is possible to identify four main stages. Firstly, there was an institutional structure unfavourable to workers, which was overcome by the agency of the labour movement in the period of the so-called desarrollismo (1960-1975). Secondly, the years of transition from dictatorship to democracy (1976-1983) were a period of labour market regulation. Thirdly, there was a period of labour market dualism (1984-1996) based on the application of flexibility at the margin in the face of veto power. This was followed by deregulation (1997-2019), which was a consequence of the weakening of power resources resulting from the previous labour market segmentation.