Flexibilising the Labour Market: Who Wants to Loosen Employment Protection Legislation in Italy?

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2016.htmlDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2016.23 - ISSN : 1955-611XThis paper presents an explanatory analysis of the political economy of recent labour market reforms recently implemented in Italy. Analysing preferences for a general reduction in employment protection through 2011-13 ITANES survey data, results are partially in line with the insider-outsider theory: self-employed, retired people, managers, craft business and shop owners are in favour of such institutional change as are retired that are not concerned by this kind of reform. Support from “outsiders”, unemployed and atypical workers did not strongly emerge. Ideologically, positive opinions are widespread among right-wing voters whilst people feeling chose to trade unions oppose it. Geographically, consensus is greather in the industrialised North-East of the country. Comparing our results with findings on voting behaviour in 2013, we advance the hypothesis that the current incumbents' political strategy is not as paradoxical as it seems. At odds with the idea of socialist parties defending “insiders” unionised workers and in line with a generalised detachment between the working class and socialist parties, both the main leftist and centrist parties in the ruling coalition are in fact gaining consensus among the social groups that are the most favourable to labour market flexibilisation, making these policy consistent with an attempt to please these constituencies