Centralized collective bargaining and the problem of "compliance" lessons from the Italian experience

According to the neo-corporatist approach to the "problem of compliance," w orker control over union policy is incompatible with centralized wage regul ation, because only associations in which national leaders are insulated fr om their members are capable of delivering rank-and-file acceptance of wage moderation. This analysis of centralized collective bargaining agreements in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s provides a critical re-examination of the t raditional neo-corporatist approach. The author, drawing on archival resear ch and interviews, argues that centralization can be entirely compatible wi th decisionmaking procedures in which rank-and-file workers have ultimate d ecision-making power. In fact, the Italian labor movement's adoption of mor e "democratic" decision-making procedures, he claims, was instrumental in g enerating and sustaining centralized collective bargaining arrangements in Italy in the early 1990s.