Protest and Social Concertation After the Third Wave.

This paper investigates the relationship between protest and social concertation in new democracies. Specifically, I ask whether inclusive institutions such as tripartite concertation engender social peace. Social pacts have featured prominently in processes of democratic transition and consolidation. Many new democracies, however, appear to lack the historical, institutional and organizational preconditions deemed necessary for these kinds of policies to succeed. The paper demonstrates that social concertation provides organized labor an institutionalized voice, thereby mitigating levels of overall and particularly violent protest. The success of concertative frameworks in restraining protest activity, however, also rests on whether the benefits workers derive – both political and economic – outweigh the costs of restraint under these institutions. Either because they directly reduce labor's collective standing or indirectly endanger workers' economic livelihood, flexible labor market policies work opposite to the logic of social concertation, thereby increasing protest activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]