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Purpose – European social protection arrangements have undergone significant transformations since the mid-1970s. However, while the existing literature has focused on reforms in public welfare arrangements, an analysis of both public and private social protection is needed to understand the social protection status of European workers. Recent reforms have led to varying degrees of social protection dualism between insiders and outsiders. After showing the existence of dualization processes in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the chapter explores the structural and political sources of these processes.

Methodology/approach – We conduct a comparative historical analysis and process tracing of policy change and its drivers in three major European political economies. A combination of qualitative evidence and quantitative measurements are used.

Findings – We find that de-industrialization has contributed to unsettling the skill composition that sustained both public and private postwar social protection arrangements. This development has affected the preferences of employers, for whom cost containment has become a critical issue. Furthermore, we show that the capacity of employers to realize their preferences depends on the governance structures of social policy arrangements and on domestic political institutions.

Originality/value – The chapter suggests new perspectives on employers' preferences in Coordinated and Liberal political economies which differ from those which have informed the Varieties of Capitalism approach.

In 1993, the author labeled “Privatization: The Theme of the 1990s.”¹ This may or may not be true in the developing world but it was certainly accurate for the CEE and the CIS. Privatization was central to the structural reform that has taken place in the region and it is central to the creation of a market economy.

The distribution of state property to the private sector has always been and will continue to be intensely political. Relinquishing hiring, production, investment, and other enterprise decisions constitute a significant loss of potential rents to those who exercise control rights in state-owned enterprises. Additionally, the large transfer of wealth that privatization on a large-scale entails, combined with the potential for unemployment, loss of access to enterprise-based social services (which were substantial in state-socialist economies) threatens to undermine public support for privatization and reform in general.

The term “fashion” triggers images of frivolous symbolic production with a particular impact on women, quite a world apart at first sight from high technology and mobile telephony that traditionally tend to be associated with science, rationality and masculinity. Surprisingly, we show in this paper that the field of mobile telephony has, for a number of years now, been impacted and significantly transformed by the transposition of fashion logics. We deconstruct the process of logic transposition, considering key moments and key actors, key modes and mechanisms. The comparison of multiple case studies within the mobile telephony industry also points to the limits of transposition and to varying degrees of hybridization and logic co-habitation. This process of logic transposition is, we argue, profoundly transforming the mobile telephony industry, bringing it closer, on many counts, to “cultural industries”. In the end, we draw a number of theoretical conclusions on logic transposition as an important mechanism of institutional change.

The article discusses aspects of the process of privatization/deregulation/restructuring as part of a global phenomenon in the telecommunications industry, considering the case of Brazil. The objective is to analyze the local implications of that global process focusing on its effects on the unions. The article examines the unions’ new strategies and agendas facing the dramatic changes in the industry. Some evidences indicate that the unions were negatively affected by the changes but despite the losses, the new situation forced a reaction and new strategies are being carried out although it seems difficult to re-gain the previous influence. The argument asserts that the global-local relations cannot be examined from a unilateral dimension, instead must be seen as a dialectical movement.

The expansion of connectivity on a national scale in Brazil, whether through mobile Internet or fixed broadband, is described as one of the factors that can lead to social and economic benefits for large parts of the population who do not have a network connection. It can also help to reduce poverty by improving the infrastructure of services and increasing Internet use for education purposes. It also provides people with the ability to communicate with online administrative services – local, regional, and national. In Brazil, the main difficulty facing an effective universalization of telecommunications has been limitations in accessing services. This chapter demonstrates the relevance of small Internet providers for the expansion of fixed broadband in less commercially attractive regions (in terms of subscribers, income, and distance) who have been growing over recent years and are now present in 70% of Brazilian municipalities and whose role is paramount to reducing the digital divide.