Flexibility and security: an asymmetrical relationship?
Hemerijk and Schludi 71 take this point further and argue that the successful reforms in a number of
policy areas in Denmark and the Netherlands during the 1990s benefited from a “shared awareness”
of policy problems, triggered by the memory of deep crisis and deep failures. Similarly, Katzenstein
points out that “exogenous shocks activate deeply seated institutional memories and practices in
small states with an indigenous tradition of corporatist politics” (Katzenstein, 2003:24).
An overview of the successful performance of the European countries studied by Katzenstein
and other scholars (Auer, Cox, Hemerijk, Mansbridge, Visser et al.) suggests that their success is
linked to 4 crucial factors: (a) the high level of trust in political institutions, (b) the learning capacity
of political leaders, (c) the capacity of national institutions to respond to socio-economic challenges
by adjusting to change, rather than avoiding it or going against the tide, and (d) the capacity of do-
mestic actors to listen and understand the language and preference of the others.
It is the combination of these factors that made consensus building possible and produced effi-
cient and equitable policy outcomes in Denmark and the Netherlands, but not in Spain and Greece.
In Spain and Greece these conditions, especially regarding consensus building, did not apply for
a number of reasons:
i) unlike Denmark and the Netherlands that had entered world markets early, Spain and Greece
are late industrializing countries and part of the periphery of Europe;
ii) Denmark and the Netherlands emerged from the devastating experience of the 2nd World
War with an ideology of social partnership and an elaborate set of fully institutionalized
concertation policies (Katzenstein, 2003). By contrast, Spain and Greece emerged from the
2nd World War deeply traumatized and divided by a bitter and prolonged civil war; this event
and the subsequent period of authoritarian regimes in both countries (albeit with a milder
form in Greece), undermined the prospects of developing an ideology of social partnership,
until parliamentary democracy was fully restored in the mid-1970s. Since then, the process of
European integration provided a fertile ground for the development of a consensus culture,
but-at least in Greece- not to the extent and the degree of robustness encountered in the
other pair of countries;
71 Hemerijk A. & M. Schludi , 2000, “Sequence of policy failures and effective policy responses”, in Scharpf F.W. & V.
Smith (eds), Welfare and work in the open economy: vol.1: from vulnerability to competitiveness, Oxford University Press, pp.125-
8, mentioned in Katzenstein, 2003
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