2016, Vol., No.17

Journal of the Scandinavian Society of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.21

pISSN : 1229-8646
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jssk

The studies on the Swedish model and the Swedish social democracy has developed much both quantitatively and qualitatively in South Korea since 1990s. In 2000s, there also arose the studies regarding the Swedish model or something similar to that as the ideal socioeconomic model which should be imitated in Korea. The latter studies proposed the reform agenda of Korean society based on the experiences of the Swedish model. The representative studies of this kind include ‘the arguments for the Korean Chaebol system’ by Ha-Joon Chang, Chan-Keun Lee and Seung-Il Jeong, ‘the Korean social market economy model’ by Jeongwan Shin and ‘the dynamic welfare state’ by the Welfare State Society. And ‘the social services investment state’ by Sang-Hoon Ahn is the representative study exclusively focusing on the welfare state. Among many features of the Swedish model, the universal welfare state has been especially highlighted. For developing the welfare state in Korea as something similar to the Swedish one, there must be the political agents pursuing that and the strategies for increasing taxes are needed. Concerning the formation of the political agents, the dominant idea has been ‘the hybrid pro-welfare coalition’ unifying diverse social groups based on the common progressive values. As a strategy for increasing taxes, the idea of ‘welfare spending increase first, tax increase afterwards’ was much proposed and discussed. And as an important reform proposal of Korean political system which would support the development of the welfare state, we can mention the idea of developing consensus democracy by strengthening the proportional representation system. But till now, few of the discussions and proposals has been realized as institutions and policies. The ideas of the alternative system model for Korean society relying on the experiences of the Swedish model has functioned just as ‘social movement discourses’. For the discussions to exert more influences on Korean Society, more studies on the early stage of the Swedish social democracy are needed. And setting up social agenda even the conservatives can sympathize with can be helpful for realizing progressive social reform. And the researchers in this field should pay more attention not only to income redistribution by the welfare state but also to the improvement of primary income distribution.

Although the EU had tried to establish three directives for non-regular workers at the same time, it took another 100 years or so to establish the Directive on temporary agency work after the other two directives. Given that the fierce confrontation of interests between labor and capital as well as strong opposition from some member governments retarded the establishment of the Directive, its implementation in member countries was not expected to be so smooth. This study analyzes how the Directive was implemented in member countries across various market economy models, and then delves into how distinct characteristics of labor market affected the regulation of temporary agency activities and the protection of temporary agency workers with special reference to Scandinavian Sweden of flexicurity model and Mediterranean Spain of in-flexicurity. The findings of this study can be boiled down to four points. First, the EU evaluates the effect of the Directive positively, while the effect was bigger in such countries as Anglo-American countries and East European ones which were not equipped with effective regulation system for temporary agency work. Second, the EU relied on national laws and regulations in evaluating member countries’ implementation of the Directive, so that it tended to underestimate the level of regulation on temporary agency work in those countries where labor market used to be regulated by collective contracts rather than the laws and regulations. Third, those countries such as Mediterranean Spain which rejected any derogation from the principle of equal treatment verified their will to protect temporary agency workers, while the acceptance of derogation did not necessarily mean abandoning the protection of temporary agency workers. It is because such derogation as the temporary agency’s wage guarantee of temporary workers during the waiting period could mean more benefit than the equal treatment principle which regulates the wage of temporary workers only in assignments. Fourth, those countries such as Scandinavian Sweden which takes advantage of collective contract derogation has maintained the self-regulation system of labor market on the basis of collective contracts. Since any change in a part such as the regulation of temporary agency work might jeopardize the equilibrium of the whole self-regulation system, the selection of collective contract derogation could be called strategic choice to maintain the equilibrium.

This article investigates the continuity and change on tripartite cooperation system in Sweden at reporting through the central bargaining system, collective bargaining structures and tripartite relations from the 1950s to the 2000s as diachronic. It reveals the gradual changes of the Swedish tripartite cooperation typed by applying the concept of evolutionary institutional changes of historical institutional analysis and the dynamic properties of the institutional changes through change in profit association between the actors. Adapting to changes from the centralized bargaining system to frame agreement, changing aspects of voluntary labor-management cooperation in the production side is defined ‘layering.’ As the cooperation of the policy making processes cooperation, however, has been significantly reduced, it could be typed ‘displacement,’ a mode of institutional change. There is political cooperation has reduced the impact Crazy solidarity wage has had a change due to ‘drift.’ As a result, the Swedish tripartite cooperation has gradually changed, but there was not a sudden conversion and has remains a path-dependent continuity in the big picture. The continuity and change of Swedish tripartite system give us an important implication that despite the growing phenomenon of dualization of labor markets in the post-industrial society, through reorganizing the labor market by building the tripartite institution and policy efforts, we could mitigate adverse social practices and form a sustainable cooperative system.