Abstract
European industrial relations face a dual challenge: long-term erosion of collective representation (fragmentation, declining membership, decentralised bargaining) and the rise of populist actors promoting disintermediating, anti-pluralist narratives. This article theorises populism as a disintermediating force in industrial relations and examines how it pressures the institutions of economic and industrial democracy. It advances two claims: (1) populist disintermediation targets unions and social partners through delegitimation, institutional marginalisation and political bypass; (2) its effects vary with the institutional embeddedness of collective governance and unions’ strategic capacity. Empirically, the study conducts a structured, focused comparison of Austria, France, Italy, Poland and Spain, combining secondary sources with 25 semi-structured interviews with union representatives and national experts. Findings show that outcomes range from resilience to reconfiguration and erosion risk, and that unions’ role as democratic stabilisers is contingent on institutional resources, legitimacy across fragmented constituencies and strategic positioning.
Introduction
Over the last decade, European industrial relations have been confronted with a dual challenge. On the one hand, long-term trends such as labour market fragmentation, declining union membership and the decentralisation of collective bargaining have eroded the institutional foundations of collective representation (Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2013; Marginson, 2015). On the other hand, political developments – particularly the rise of populist actors and the spread of disintermediating narratives – have increasingly targeted the legitimacy of intermediary institutions and pluralist governance (Mudde, 2017; Urbinati, 2019). These intertwined dynamics raise a pressing question for scholars of economic and industrial democracy: what happens to systems of collective representation when political forces actively seek to bypass, delegitimise or reconfigure the institutions that mediate between citizens, organised interests and the state (Crouch, 2000; Merkel, 2014)? Economic democracy and industrial democracy are historically tied to the existence of robust intermediary institutions. Mechanisms such as collective bargaining, social dialogue and institutionalised participation do not merely distribute economic resources, they also shape democratic practices within workplaces and beyond (Eurofound, 2015; Pateman, 1970). In this perspective, trade unions are not only labour market actors but also pillars of democratic mediation, contributing to pluralist governance by organising conflict, translating interests into negotiated outcomes, and sustaining collective forms of voice (Baccaro et al., 2018; Offe and Wiesenthal, 1980). The normative and institutional significance of intermediary institutions is deeply connected to a pluralist view of democracy, where organised actors mediate between individual preferences and collective decision-making (Dahl, 1989; Eisfeld, 1972). Yet in many European contexts, intermediary institutions have become politically contested (Galston, 2018; Mounk, 2018).
Populism is frequently conceptualised as an anti-pluralist political force structured around a moralised opposition between ‘the people’ and ‘corrupt elites’ (Müller, 2017a). Such a conceptualisation implies a tension with intermediary institutions: populist actors often portray associations, representative bodies and social partners as illegitimate gatekeepers that distort the authentic voice of ‘the people’. While this tension has been discussed extensively with respect to liberal-democratic institutions (Mounk, 2018), its implications for the institutions of economic democracy and industrial relations remain comparatively underexplored. This is particularly striking given that trade unions and industrial relations institutions embody a central dimension of democratic representation in modern capitalist societies because they institutionalise collective participation, structure the expression of interests and contribute to forms of democratic ‘spillover’ from workplace participation to broader civic engagement (Greenberg et al., 1996; Pateman, 1970).
At the same time, a growing literature describes contemporary political dynamics as increasingly characterised by ‘disintermediation’ meaning the weakening of mediating structures and the political aspiration to establish more direct relationships between leaders and constituencies (Chadwick, 2007). Disintermediation is often associated with communication technologies and new forms of political mobilisation, yet it also reflects an ideological stance: scepticism towards organised intermediaries and the redefinition of representation as an obstacle rather than a democratic resource (Chadwick, 2007). When combined with populism’s anti-pluralist logic, disintermediation can become a powerful mechanism through which intermediary institutions are delegitimised, bypassed or reshaped. In industrial relations, this may occur through explicit political attacks on unions, reforms that marginalise social dialogue, and policy strategies that seek to bypass organised representation through direct distributive interventions or personalised political linkage.
Existing research offers important insights into how populist parties challenge liberal-democratic norms and political institutions (Mounk, 2018; Müller, 2017a), while industrial relations scholarship has documented institutional change under pressures such as globalisation, European integration and austerity. Yet these two research agendas often develop in parallel. Studies of populism tend to prioritise constitutional change, electoral dynamics and media strategies, treating unions and industrial relations institutions as peripheral. Conversely, much industrial relations research has focused on economic drivers, employer strategies and institutional adaptation, paying less attention to the political logics of disintermediation and anti-pluralism. As a result, the specific mechanisms through which populist disintermediation interacts with the institutions of economic democracy – especially those that underpin collective representation – are not yet systematically theorised and compared across cases.
This article addresses this gap by linking scholarship on populist disintermediation to theories of economic and industrial democracy, focusing on trade unions as key intermediary institutions. It advances two core claims. First, populism can be conceptualised as a disintermediating force in industrial relations insofar as it seeks to weaken, bypass or reframe collective actors that mediate interests, negotiate compromise and sustain pluralist governance (Chadwick, 2007; Müller, 2017a). Such pressures may operate through: (a) delegitimation narratives targeting unions and social partners; (b) institutional marginalisation of collective bargaining and social dialogue; and (c) political bypass through direct policy measures and personalised communication that renders mediation politically costly. Second, the impact of populist disintermediation is not uniform. It varies depending on the institutional embeddedness of economic democracy within national industrial relations regimes and on unions’ strategic capacity to respond.
To substantiate these claims, the article offers a thematic comparison of five European cases – Austria, France, Italy, Poland and Spain – selected to capture variation across industrial relations regimes and populist trajectories. These cases differ in the extent to which systems of collective representation are institutionally consolidated, in the historical role of social partnership and concertation, and in the political strength and governing strategies of populist actors. Rather than presenting country chapters, the analysis adopts a structured, focused comparison organised around shared dimensions: (1) the institutional architecture of economic democracy (collective bargaining, social dialogue and participation); (2) populist strategies towards intermediary institutions; (3) the observable effects on industrial relations institutions; and (4) unions’ responses and their democratic implications.
The findings suggest three broader patterns. First, populist politics do not necessarily entail the wholesale dismantling of industrial relations institutions, but they frequently contribute to the weakening of intermediary governance by reframing representation as illegitimate mediation (Mounk, 2018; Müller, 2017b). Delegitimation narratives – often built around oppositions between ‘ordinary workers’ and ‘privileged insiders’ or around unions as representatives of elite – can erode unions’ representational authority and justify institutional changes that reduce the role of social partners. Second, disintermediation operates not only through formal institutional reform but also through political bypass: populist actors may seek to establish a direct relationship with constituencies by announcing immediate distributive measures and communicating through channels that downplay mediation (Chadwick, 2007). Third, unions’ capacity to function as democratic stabilisers depends on institutional resources and strategic positioning. Where unions remain embedded in social partnership and bargaining institutions, they may preserve spaces of negotiation and mitigate erosion, although often at the cost of heightened political contestation. Where institutional embeddedness is weaker, unions face a more constrained environment and may struggle to counter the political appeal of disintermediation, especially when populist narratives resonate with fragmented labour market constituencies.
By foregrounding populist disintermediation as a mechanism of institutional pressure on economic democracy, this article contributes to debates on the political foundations of industrial relations. It suggests that the resilience of economic democracy cannot be explained solely through economic coordination or employer strategies; it also depends on the political legitimacy of intermediary institutions and on the ability of collective actors to defend pluralist representation against narratives that promise ‘unmediated’ linkage. At the same time, the analysis cautions against treating populism as a monolithic threat: its interaction with industrial relations regimes is mediated by institutional configurations and strategic dynamics, producing varied outcomes across countries.
The article proceeds as follows. The next section develops the conceptual framework, integrating theories of economic democracy and democratic spillovers with an account of populist disintermediation and its implications for intermediary institutions. The third section outlines the research design, case selection and comparative strategy. The fourth section presents the findings through a thematic comparison across the five cases, focusing on mechanisms of delegitimation, bypass, institutional reconfiguration and unions’ responses. The final section then discusses the broader implications for economic and industrial democracy, and concludes by highlighting limitations and avenues for future research.
Economic democracy, unions and disintermediation: Conceptual framework
Economic and industrial democracy as institutionalised collective governance
Although ‘industrial democracy’ and ‘economic democracy’ are frequently used as interchangeable labels, they have followed partially different intellectual trajectories and have been institutionalised in distinct ways across national employment regimes. Conceptual clarity is therefore a precondition for comparative analysis, particularly because the language of participation and ‘democratisation’ has developed unevenly across countries and reflects divergent settlements over how labour–management conflict is regulated and how worker voice is organised (Frege, 2005; Müller-Jentsch, 2008). In the British tradition, the idea of industrial democracy is closely tied to trade unionism and collective bargaining, as part of a wider attempt to transform the employment contract from an individualised exchange into a collectively regulated relationship (Clegg, 1960; Commons, 1919; Flanders, 1970). The employment relationship is not conceived as a purely private exchange but as a social relationship structured by asymmetric power; collective bargaining and union government therefore operate as mechanisms through which workplace conflict is transformed into negotiated rule-making rather than unilateral managerial authority (Ackers, 2010; Budd, 2004; Commons, 1919).
A broader and more explicitly macro-institutional trajectory emerges, in the German context, during the Weimar debate, where ‘economic democracy’ was articulated as a project of democratising socio-economic decision-making beyond the workplace. Here, workplace participation was embedded in a wider architecture of economic governance, including representative chambers and constitutional thinking about the ‘economic constitution’, aimed at constraining private power through organised labour’s institutionalised voice (Mezzadra, 2000; Sinzheimer, 1919; Zimmermann, 2009). Building on these trajectories, this article adopts an operational distinction. Economic democracy refers to the broader set of institutional arrangements that enable workers – especially via collective organisations – to influence decisions affecting the distribution of resources, rights and power across the political economy. Industrial democracy denotes the subset enacted within employment relations and workplace governance, including collective bargaining, codetermination where present, and structured forms of representation and participation.
This distinction allows us to analyse how contemporary pressures – employment fragmentation, competitive cost strategies and political attacks on intermediary institutions – simultaneously reshape the rules of labour–management relations and the wider capacity of collective actors to participate in socio-economic governance (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Doellgast et al., 2018; Marginson, 2015; Meardi, 2018). Disintermediation dynamics may thus erode both the industrial infrastructure of voice and the economic ambition of democratising capitalism (Campati, 2022; Streeck, 2013).
Finally, the article is helpful in preventing an anachronistic reading of ‘industrial’ democracy. Even in service economies, the core democratic question remains how voice is institutionalised where work is organised and where power is exercised. For this reason, industrial democracy is treated here as a portable concept that can be applied to the tertiary sector, so long as we focus on collective governance mechanisms (sectoral bargaining, representation, participation rules) rather than on a narrow image of the industrial firm (Bordogna, 2021; Eurofound, 2016; Leonardi and Pedersini, 2023).
Trade unions as intermediary institutions: Pluralism, citizenship and democratic spillovers
Trade unions are conceptualised here as intermediary institutions connecting workplace-level collective governance to broader democratic dynamics. From a pluralist perspective, intermediary organisations are not distortions of representation but constitutive elements of democratic life, because they organise interests, mediate conflict and enable collective agency (Eisfeld, 1972; Hirst, 1994). In political and socio-economic terms, these intermediary functions underpin the legitimacy of pluralist governance by structuring conflict and making collective preferences governable (Lehmbruch, 1977; Schmitter, 1993). In industrial relations, this implies analysing unions and collective bargaining not only as distributive mechanisms but also as democratic infrastructures. They provide institutionalised channels through which workers can exercise voice, contest managerial authority and participate in rule-making (Baccaro, 2006; Budd, 2004). When bargaining coverage erodes and representation fragments, these channels weaken, and conflicts tend to be individualised rather than collectively governed (Culpepper and Regan, 2014; Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyman, 2013; Meardi, 2018). Historically, unions have contributed to democratisation by supporting the political inclusion of labour, enabling the expansion of social citizenship and institutionalising workplace representation, and collective bargaining has functioned as a bridge between civil rights, social rights and the lived experience of citizenship in the economy (Marshall 1950). A key mechanism linking workplace governance to democratic life is the ‘spillover’ effect: participation in collective decision-making at work can foster political participation by habituating individuals to the use of voice and strengthening political efficacy (Greenberg et al., 1996; Pateman, 1970). Empirical research has explored these links through workplace experience and union membership, connecting voice at work to civic engagement and turnout (Adman, 2008; Bryson et al., 2014; Budd et al., 2017; Turner et al., 2020). In this sense, unions are not only representatives of interests but also organisational settings in which democratic competences are learned. The weakening of unions and collective institutions therefore seems to have broader democratic implications. Declining bargaining coverage and the erosion of social dialogue reduce opportunities for structured voice and may deepen inequalities in political participation (Frangi et al., 2017; Verba et al., 1995). Moreover, contemporary strategies of political disintermediation actively challenge the legitimacy of intermediary bodies, reframing negotiated governance as elite collusion and promoting direct forms of representation that bypass institutional mediation (Biancalana, 2018; Chadwick, 2007; Galston, 2018; Mudde, 2017; Urbinati, 2013).
Two further implications follow from the article’s discussion of pluralism: trajectories of institutional change and contemporary disintermediation. First, the democratic role of unions must be situated within a wider debate on the forms of collective governance that organise capitalist economies. Pluralist accounts stress that intermediary institutions make conflict governable and translate dispersed preferences into collectively articulated claims (Schmitter, 1993). Yet other strands have highlighted potential ambivalences of organised intermediation, including risks of closure, insider bias or depoliticised bargaining (Crouch, 2000; Streeck, 1992). This tension matters because populist and anti-pluralist actors can mobilise it by portraying collective representation as a cartel of insiders rather than democratic mediation (Galston, 2018; Mounk, 2018). Second, the article frames recent developments as a double shift: in the socio-economic environment of industrial relations and in the political narratives that underpin legitimacy. Long-term processes associated with neoliberal restructuring – marketisation, outsourcing, segmentation and the reorganisation of production – tend to weaken the material and organisational bases of collective representation, especially in fragmented service sectors (Borghi et al., 2017; Doellgast et al., 2018; Harvey, 2005). In parallel, disintermediation is not only a structural outcome but also a political strategy: it reframes unions and social partners as self-interested gatekeepers and promotes ‘direct’ representation that bypasses negotiation and institutional checks (Campati, 2022; Greblo, 2021; Urbinati, 2019). These dynamics are consequential for both industrial and economic democracy. Where bargaining and representation are weakened, workplace-level voice becomes thinner and more unequal; where unions are delegitimised, the capacity of workers’ organisations to shape wider socio-economic governance narrows (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Merkel, 2014; Streeck, 2013). The result is not merely a redistributional change but a reconfiguration of democratic capitalism’s representative infrastructure. For this reason, the empirical sections of the article treat union decline, fragmentation and political contestation as jointly relevant to democratic resilience. At the same time, trade unions should not be treated as homogeneous actors. Their capacity to act as intermediary institutions depends on organisational resources, representational strategies and the composition of their constituencies. In segmented labour markets, unions may differ significantly in their ability to represent insiders and outsiders, and in how they construct representation claims. These differences are relevant for understanding both their vulnerability to delegitimation and their capacity to respond to disintermediation pressures.
Populism, anti-pluralism and disintermediation as a mechanism
Populism is frequently conceptualised as an anti-pluralist political phenomenon structured around a moralised opposition between ‘the people’ and ‘corrupt elites’ (Mounk, 2018; Müller, 2017b). Such a conceptualisation implies a tension with intermediary institutions. Populist actors tend to portray representative bodies, associations and social partners as illegitimate gatekeepers that obstruct the authentic voice of ‘the people’, thereby advancing an exclusive claim to representation (Müller, 2017a). The mechanism that connects populism to industrial relations institutions in this article is disintermediation. Disintermediation refers to dynamics that weaken mediating structures and seek to establish direct linkages between political actors and constituencies. In contemporary governance contexts, disintermediation has been associated with new media environments and changes in political communication, but it also reflects broader shifts in how representation is framed and contested (Chadwick, 2007). When combined with populism’s anti-pluralist logic, disintermediation becomes a political strategy that questions the democratic value of organised intermediaries and redefines representation as an obstacle rather than a democratic resource. In industrial relations, this linkage is consequential because unions and social partnership institutions embody intermediation by design. If populist disintermediation delegitimises or bypasses collective actors, it can weaken the institutional channels through which economic democracy is enacted. Importantly, these effects do not necessarily require direct legal abolition of unions or bargaining institutions. Disintermediation may operate through subtler processes of political and institutional change: the marginalisation of social dialogue, the discursive construction of unions as part of ‘the elite’, the replacement of negotiated governance with unilateral decision-making, or the strategic bypassing of organised representation through direct policy interventions framed as immediate responsiveness to ‘the people’. Conceptually, disintermediation is useful because it bridges political and industrial relations literatures. It helps theorise populism not simply as an electoral phenomenon but as a mode of representation and governance that challenges pluralist arrangements – particularly those rooted in collective labour institutions. It also avoids overly deterministic assumptions: rather than presuming that populism automatically dismantles economic democracy, the framework invites us to examine how disintermediation pressures interact with institutional contexts and actor strategies, producing different outcomes. While populism is conceptualised here primarily through its anti-pluralist and disintermediating logic, it is important to acknowledge that different forms of populism may relate differently to intermediary institutions. In particular, left-wing populism has at times combined anti-elite discourse with more ambivalent or even supportive attitudes towards trade unions and collective representation, whereas right-wing populism more consistently frames intermediary institutions as obstacles to the direct expression of the ‘people’. These differences suggest that the interaction between populism and industrial relations may vary not only across institutional contexts but also depending on the ideological orientation of populist actors.
Institutional embeddedness and variation across industrial relations regimes
A central premise of this article is that populist disintermediation does not operate on a uniform institutional landscape. The institutional embeddedness of economic democracy varies widely across European industrial relations regimes. Some countries have long-standing systems of concertation and social partnership; others display more fragmented or intermittent forms of social dialogue; and post-socialist contexts have experienced contested trajectories in the institutionalisation of collective representation (Poole, 1992, 1998). This variation matters because it shapes both opportunities for disintermediation and the repertoire of responses available to unions. Where collective bargaining coverage is high and social dialogue is institutionalised, unions may possess resources to resist marginalisation and defend negotiated governance – even under political pressure. Where representation is structurally constrained (for example, due to firm size distributions, precarious employment or weak workplace representation), disintermediation may find greater political room. In such contexts, populist narratives that portray unions as distant or ineffective may resonate more strongly, and unilateral governance may become politically viable. Institutional embeddedness also shapes the strategies available to populist actors. Where industrial relations institutions are deeply entrenched, populist actors may pursue selective co-optation, symbolic accommodation or partial reconfiguration rather than frontal attacks. Where institutions are weaker, delegitimation and bypass may more readily translate into tangible institutional erosion, further weakening the pluralist infrastructures sustaining economic democracy.
Theoretical expectations (propositions)
Building on the framework above, the article derives a set of propositions that guide the thematic comparison. These are not statistical hypotheses but comparative expectations about the mechanisms linking populist disintermediation to economic democracy and union roles.
P1 — Disintermediation pressures target the legitimacy of collective representation
Populist anti-pluralism frames unions and social partners as illegitimate intermediaries and promotes direct political linkage, weakening the normative foundations of pluralist economic democracy.
P2 — The effects of disintermediation depend on institutional embeddedness
Where economic democracy is strongly institutionalised (high bargaining coverage, established social partnership, structured workplace representation), populist disintermediation is more likely to result in contested reconfiguration or stability than in outright dismantling. Where embeddedness is weaker, disintermediation more readily contributes to erosion and marginalisation of collective governance.
P3 — Disintermediation operates through both institutional reform and political bypass
Populist governance can reshape industrial relations not only through formal reforms but also through bypass strategies: direct policy measures and political communication styles that reduce incentives for social dialogue and make mediation politically costly .
P4 — Union responses mediate democratic outcomes
Unions can function as democratic stabilisers insofar as they preserve collective voice and participation, sustaining democratic spillovers and economic citizenship. This capacity depends on institutional resources, organisational legitimacy and strategic positioning.
Together, these propositions provide the analytical scaffolding for the empirical comparison. They direct attention to mechanisms (delegitimation, bypass, reconfiguration) and mediating conditions (institutional embeddedness, union strategies) that shape the relationship between populist disintermediation and economic democracy.
Research design and case selection
This article adopts a comparative qualitative research design to examine how populist disintermediation affects the institutions of economic and industrial democracy and the role of trade unions as intermediary actors. The empirical strategy relies on a structured, focused comparison of five European countries: Austria, France, Italy, Poland and Spain, selected to capture variation in both (i) industrial relations regimes and (ii) populist trajectories. The design is grounded in the premise that the interaction between disintermediating political dynamics and industrial relations institutions is mediated by institutional embeddedness and actor strategies, rather than being mechanically determined by populism alone (Poole, 1992, 1998).
Comparative logic: Regime variation and political dynamics
The comparative logic of the study combines two selection criteria. First, the cases vary significantly in the institutional architecture of industrial relations and in the degree to which economic democracy is institutionalised through collective bargaining, social dialogue and workplace representation. Second, they display different forms of populist mobilisation and, in some cases, populist participation in government, offering an opportunity to observe diverse mechanisms of disintermediation and their institutional consequences. This strategy aims to generate comparative leverage for identifying mechanisms and explaining variation in outcomes. Where collective governance is institutionally entrenched, disintermediation pressures may lead to contested reconfiguration rather than straightforward dismantling. Where collective governance is weaker, disintermediation may more readily translate into institutional erosion.
Case selection: Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Spain
The five countries are selected to cover meaningful variation across European industrial relations regimes and political trajectories. The cases represent distinct institutional configurations of social partnership, bargaining coordination and union representation, as well as different patterns of populist mobilisation and governance styles:
Austria is typically associated with relatively institutionalised social partnership and coordinated forms of collective governance, making it a critical case for examining whether and how disintermediation pressures can penetrate consolidated intermediary institutions. In political terms, populism – especially on the radical right – has become firmly established and has entered government through coalition participation (notably the FPÖ with the ÖVP in the 2000s and again from 2017). This matters for the research design because it tests whether strong intermediary institutions remain resilient when populist actors gain executive power.
France provides a contrast combining institutionalised but conflictual industrial relations with repeated episodes of state-driven reform and political contestation, allowing observation of disintermediation both as discourse and as institutional change. Here, populism has strongly consolidated electorally and in public debate, but it has not (in the period typically covered by this framing) translated into national executive government. This makes France useful for observing how disintermediation can operate through oppositional mobilisation and reform conflict even without populists holding office.
Italy offers a particularly relevant setting for disintermediation dynamics due to the coexistence of a structured representation architecture with structural constraints and fragmented governance, which can weaken the practical scope of institutionalised social dialogue. Politically, populism has not only advanced but has repeatedly reached government. The 2018–2019 experience marked a key moment with a coalition between two populist forces (M5S and Lega), followed by subsequent cycles in which populist or post-populist actors remained central, culminating in the rise of a radical-right party to government leadership after 2022.
Poland represents a post-socialist institutional trajectory where democratic consolidation and pluralism have been contested, making it a useful case for studying the interaction between populist governance styles and the institutional position of labour. In this case, populism has entered and sustained itself in government, with the PiS as the dominant populist force for much of the period in question. This trajectory is relevant because it combines executive power with contested liberal-democratic checks and a distinctive relationship between governing elites and parts of organised labour (notably Solidarność), shaping the conditions under which labour intermediation is recognised or sidelined.
Spain provides a setting in which labour market segmentation and institutional dynamics may create vulnerabilities for intermediary institutions, while populist mobilisation can reshape the political legitimacy of social partners. Populism shows a dual trajectory: left populism (Podemos) has entered national government, while radical-right populism (Vox) has grown strongly but has not led a national executive. Podemos moved from an initially confrontational posture towards unions and established intermediaries to coalition government participation with the PSOE from 2020, which encouraged a more institutionalised approach. Vox, meanwhile, expanded electorally and influenced governance through agreements and participation at subnational levels (cities and regions), affecting political discourse and the competitive environment around social partnership even without national executive control.
The selection does not aim at statistical representativeness. Instead, it is designed to compare mechanisms across cases and to identify how similar political logics interact with different institutional environments.
Analytical dimensions: A structured, focused comparison
To ensure comparability, the analysis is organised around a set of shared dimensions derived from the conceptual framework. This structured, focused strategy is particularly suitable for small-N comparisons when the goal is to explain variation in mechanisms and outcomes rather than to produce exhaustive country narratives.
The comparison is structured along four analytical dimensions:
Institutional embeddedness of economic/industrial democracy. This dimension assesses the strength and institutionalisation of collective governance arrangements: collective bargaining, social dialogue and concertation, and workplace representation.
Populist strategies towards intermediary institutions. Drawing on conceptualisations of populism as anti-pluralism and on the mechanism of disintermediation, the analysis examines whether populist actors employ delegitimation, bypass, selective co-optation or institutional marginalisation targeting unions and social partners.
Institutional outcomes in industrial relations. This dimension focuses on observable changes affecting industrial relations institutions: erosion or weakening of social dialogue; reconfiguration of bargaining structures; changes in participation or representation; and forms of institutional resilience.
Union responses and democratic implications. The final dimension examines how unions respond and what this implies for economic democracy. In line with participatory democratic theory and the spillover logic, unions are analysed as potential democratic stabilisers insofar as they sustain collective voice and contribute to civic participation.
Data and sources
The empirical material used for the comparative assessment is based on a synthesis of secondary sources and institutional evidence commonly employed in comparative industrial relations research, including scholarly studies on national industrial relations systems, policy and institutional documentation, and comparative reports. In addition, the study draws on 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants, including trade union representatives at confederal and sectoral levels, as well as national experts on industrial relations and political economy. Interviewees were selected to capture variation across institutional contexts and organisational perspectives.
The interview guide was structured around three core analytical dimensions derived from the conceptual framework: (1) perceptions of populist actors and discourses in relation to intermediary institutions; (2) observed changes in industrial relations practices, including social dialogue, collective bargaining and participation; and (3) union strategies and responses to political and institutional pressures. These dimensions reflect the operationalisation of key concepts such as disintermediation (e.g. bypass of social dialogue, direct political linkage), delegitimation (e.g. narratives portraying unions as elites or insiders) and institutional reconfiguration. Interviews were analysed through a thematic coding approach combining deductive categories derived from the theoretical framework with inductive insights emerging from the material.
For the purposes of the empirical analysis, mobilisation is used in a broad but operational sense. It refers not only to protest events or strikes, but also to organised union responses through public campaigns, participation in consultation procedures, coalition-building with other social actors, and attempts to reassert the legitimacy of collective representation in public debate. This clarification is important because the mechanisms examined below often operate through shifts in the terms of public contestation and access to decision-making arenas, rather than only through visible protest cycles.
Documentary sources, including policy documents, institutional reports, trade union publications and secondary literature, were analysed to trace institutional developments and triangulate interview evidence. The analysis focused on identifying instances of delegitimation, bypass and institutional change, as well as union responses. This triangulated approach strengthens the empirical grounding of the analysis by linking interpretive insights with observable institutional developments across the selected cases. As a study investigating evolving phenomena, the research adopts an interpretive perspective, attentive to the historical embeddedness of the processes under examination and to the importance of subjective representations in shaping social and institutional dynamics. This approach is grounded in institutional economic sociology, which emphasises the role of collective actors, norms and structural arrangements in configuring the relationship between economy and politics (Polanyi, 1944; Streeck, 2013). The analysis therefore seeks to provide a nuanced and evidence-based account of the crisis of economic democracy and its political implications, within a comparative and dynamic framework.
Findings: A thematic comparison across five cases
Comparative overview
This section compares Austria, France, Italy, Poland and Spain through four shared analytical lenses: (i) the embeddedness of concertation and collective representation; (ii) populist strategies of disintermediation; (iii) institutional outcomes for industrial relations; and (iv) union responses and democratic implications (Table 1). Rather than presenting country narratives, the analysis proceeds thematically, keeping cases in dialogue to identify recurrent mechanisms and scope conditions.
Comparative map: Industrial relations embeddedness, populist strategies, institutional outcomes and union responses.
Source. Authors’ elaboration.
Populist disintermediation and the politics of concertation
Across the cases, concertation and social dialogue constitute a privileged target for disintermediation because they embody mediated governance: decisions are produced through negotiation among organised intermediaries, not through direct linkage between rulers and ‘the people’. A recurring discursive frame contrasts ‘closed rooms’ and ‘insider pacts’ with immediacy, responsiveness and majoritarian legitimacy. Yet the comparative evidence suggests that similar rhetorical moves yield different institutional trajectories depending on how deeply concertation is embedded in governance routines and on the state’s capacity to reallocate authority through reform (Table 2). Austria illustrates this scope condition particularly clearly. Interviewees described social partnership less as a symbolic arena than as a practical governance infrastructure: even when political actors rhetorically downgraded chambers or unions, the coordination value of collective bargaining and established consultation routines made sustained bypass costly. In this sense, disintermediation in Austria tends to appear as selective distancing or episodic unilateralism rather than institutional displacement. France shows a different pathway. Here, interviewees referred to labour-law and pension-reform conflicts as episodes in which consultation formally persisted, but unions perceived that key decisions had already been politically framed before mediation could meaningfully shape the outcome. Disintermediation therefore operated less through the abolition of social dialogue than through its procedural narrowing: unions remained present, but their capacity to influence agenda-setting and sequencing was reduced.
Concertation and social dialogue under populist disintermediation.
Source. Authors’ elaboration.
Italy and Spain occupy an intermediate position in which social dialogue exists but is uneven, while fragmentation and labour-market segmentation amplify incentives for bypass. In Italy, interviewees referred to labour-market and welfare measures announced as immediate responses to social demands, sometimes without prior structured consultation with social partners. What mattered in these accounts was not only the content of individual measures, but the political style through which responsiveness was claimed: direct appeal to workers, citizens or families could make mediation appear slow, technical or politically unnecessary. Spain shares part of this dynamic, although with a more ambivalent pattern because social dialogue has also been used to stabilise reform in periods of coalition government. Interviewees nevertheless pointed to the difficulty of making collective representation credible for younger, precarious and outsider constituencies, precisely the groups most exposed to anti-intermediary claims. Poland represents the most acute configuration. Here, disintermediation can converge with politicisation and broader contestation of pluralist constraints, producing selective recognition of aligned actors and reducing the standing of more autonomous forms of labour intermediation. The cross-case pattern therefore suggests that embeddedness is a key scope condition: the same anti-intermediation rhetoric can produce resilience in Austria, procedural reconfiguration in France, episodic bypass in Italy and Spain, or heightened erosion risk in Poland.
Mechanisms targeting unions: Delegitimation, bypass, marginalisation
A second comparative finding concerns the mechanisms through which disintermediation promoted by populists affects unions and collective representation (Table 3). Three mechanisms recur across cases: delegitimation, bypass and institutional marginalisation. Delegitimation attacks unions’ representational claim by portraying them as ‘special interests’, ‘insiders’ or part of a closed political-administrative establishment. Bypass shifts responsiveness away from negotiated representation towards direct political linkage, often supported by personalised communication and rapid policy announcements. Institutional marginalisation reduces unions’ effective role through procedural redesign, sequencing or exclusion from decision arenas. In empirical terms, these mechanisms were identified not only in broad narratives about populism, but in interviewees’ accounts of concrete reform episodes, consultation processes and public conflicts over who legitimately represents workers and social interests.
Mechanisms of disintermediation affecting unions (comparative intensity).
Source. Authors’ elaboration.
The comparative pattern is that delegitimation is widespread but not equally consequential. In Austria, rhetorical pressure is typically buffered by the operational value of intermediation: even if unions are contested in discourse, their institutionalised role constrains sustained marginalisation. In France, delegitimation more readily couples with procedural marginalisation because the state can translate political narratives into reform sequences that shrink the arenas in which union voice counts. Interviewees linked this dynamic to reform conflicts where unions were consulted but were unable to alter the direction or timing of government action, making mobilisation a way of defending voice after mediation had become less effective. Italy shows how bypass can become politically productive where governance is fragmented and mediation is perceived as intermittent or ineffective. In these accounts, announcements of labour-market or welfare measures served not only distributive goals but also representational ones: they allowed political actors to claim direct responsiveness to ordinary people while treating social partners as optional interlocutors.
Spain and Poland further clarify the scope conditions of these mechanisms. In Spain, interviewees stressed that segmentation and precarious employment create representational gaps that can make anti-intermediary narratives resonate among constituencies only weakly covered by standard bargaining arrangements. At the same time, periods of renewed social dialogue show that bypass is not irreversible when unions and governments can link reform to inclusion. Poland marks the most adverse combination: delegitimation and politicisation can reinforce each other, raising the risk that unions are not only bypassed but also divided between recognised and less recognised actors. Several interviewees emphasised that politicisation has, in some instances, constrained the autonomy of unions not aligned with governing actors, reinforcing concerns about the narrowing of pluralist representation. Overall, bypass thrives where mediation is uneven, while marginalisation is strongest where reforms can procedurally downgrade intermediation; in highly embedded systems, disintermediation tends to remain selective and contested rather than transformative.
Institutional outcomes: Resilience, reconfiguration, erosion
A third pattern concerns institutional outcomes for industrial relations. To keep cases in dialogue, outcomes are assessed through ideal types describing whether intermediation retains substantive capacity under political pressure (Table 4). Resilience refers to contexts where institutions persist and continue to structure governance despite contestation. Reconfiguration captures trajectories where institutions survive but are reshaped so that mediation becomes narrower, more procedural, or less decisive. Erosion refers to situations where intermediation loses substantive capacity: dialogue becomes marginal, governance is routinised around bypass, or pluralist representation is structurally constrained. Across the five cases, reconfiguration emerges as the most frequent outcome, although it takes distinct forms across institutional settings.
Institutional outcomes under populist disintermediation (ideal-type mapping).
Source. Authors’ elaboration.
In Austria, the institutional core remains resilient and disintermediation pressure is channelled into limited bypass and symbolic downgrading, while the governance value of mediated coordination sustains the architecture. Interviewees consistently described social partnership as a necessary infrastructure for policy coordination, which makes its complete marginalisation politically and economically costly. France presents a reconfiguration driven by reform politics. Institutions persist, but the balance between negotiated and state-driven governance shifts, and intermediation becomes more contested and procedurally constrained. Empirically, this is visible in reform sequences where consultation takes place but does not translate into substantive influence, reinforcing perceptions of formal inclusion combined with practical marginalisation. These two cases show that resilience and reconfiguration are not binaries: both can coexist, with resilience at the level of formal architecture and reconfiguration at the level of practical influence.
Italy and Spain reveal another form of reconfiguration: episodic and selective intermediation. Formal structures endure, but the rhythm and salience of dialogue fluctuate, and the credibility of mediation is repeatedly tested by bypass strategies. Interviewees in both countries highlighted how social dialogue tends to intensify in moments of crisis, coalition bargaining or implementation need, but can be sidelined in phases of unilateral decision-making. In Italy, this produces unevenness across sectors and policy arenas: unions remain important organisational actors, yet they may enter the policy process after the political framing of a measure has already been defined. In Spain, the challenge is partly different: social dialogue can regain centrality when linked to inclusive reform, but segmentation makes it harder for collective institutions to claim that they represent precarious and outsider workers with the same credibility as standard employees.
Poland stands out as the case with the highest erosion risk. Here, disintermediation can intersect with politicisation and broader contestation of pluralist constraints, pushing the system closer to a scenario in which the autonomy and standing of intermediaries are structurally weakened. Interview evidence suggests that this erosion operates less through formal dismantling and more through cumulative processes: reduced access to decision arenas, selective recognition of aligned actors and public narratives that question the legitimacy of autonomous intermediary organisations. Importantly, erosion does not require formal abolition. It can manifest through sustained delegitimation, procedural exclusion, and the narrowing of independent organisational space. The comparison therefore underscores that institutional embeddedness shapes not only the intensity of disintermediation but also the likelihood that it translates into durable institutional change.
Taken together, the outcomes suggest a contingent relationship: disintermediation contributes most often to reconfiguration, but the direction of change depends on whether intermediation is a governance necessity (supporting resilience), a politically malleable arena (supporting procedural reconfiguration), or a contested institution in a politicised environment (supporting erosion risk).
Union responses and democratic implications
The final theme concerns union responses and the implications for economic and industrial democracy (Table 5). Union strategies matter because they mediate whether disintermediation pressure is converted into erosion or contained within contested but functioning intermediation. Across cases, four repertoires recur: institutional defence, contentious mobilisation, strategic adaptation and legitimacy work, and coalition-building. Institutional defence refers to the use of established arenas of consultation, bargaining and social partnership to preserve negotiated governance. Contentious mobilisation includes strikes, demonstrations, public campaigns and public contestation of unilateral reform. Strategic adaptation and legitimacy work involve attempts to reconnect with fragmented or outsider constituencies, while coalition-building seeks to broaden the social base of mediated governance beyond unions alone.
Union response repertoires and democratic implications.
Source. Authors’ elaboration.
Interview evidence indicates that these repertoires are often combined rather than mutually exclusive, with unions shifting strategies depending on political opportunity structures and institutional constraints. In France, mobilisation was described as necessary when procedural consultation did not provide meaningful influence; however, interviewees also noted that repeated confrontation can feed narratives portraying unions as obstructive actors. In Austria, by contrast, the key repertoire is institutional defence: continued access to social-partnership arenas allows unions to stabilise governance processes even when political discourse becomes more adversarial. In Italy and Spain, unions combine institutional engagement with legitimacy work directed at constituencies affected by fragmentation and segmentation, because defending existing institutions is insufficient if those institutions are perceived as representing only insiders. Poland illustrates the most constrained setting, where maintaining organisational autonomy can take precedence over broader representational strategies when politicisation narrows pluralist space.
These differences clarify the democratic implications of union responses. Mobilisation can preserve voice, but it does not automatically restore mediation if decision-making has already shifted towards unilateral or direct-linkage styles. Institutional defence can stabilise economic democracy where intermediary arenas remain operational, but it can reproduce vulnerability where representational gaps persist. Across cases, unions are most likely to function as democratic stabilisers when three conditions are jointly present: (1) institutional embeddedness provides access to structured governance arenas; (2) unions retain legitimacy across diverse constituencies, including outsiders; and (3) strategies can translate contestation into mediated compromise. When these conditions weaken, disintermediation can erode the practical functioning of economic democracy without eliminating formal institutions – an outcome particularly visible where bypass, fragmentation and politicisation jointly undermine the perceived necessity of intermediation.
Discussion and concluding remarks
Disintermediation as a conditional and institutional process
Building on the comparative findings, this article advances a first core argument: populist disintermediation should be understood as a conditional and institutionally mediated process rather than as a uniform or deterministic dynamic. Across the five cases, populist actors mobilise anti-intermediation narratives that challenge negotiated governance and organised representation, consistent with ideational and communication approaches to populism (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Mudde, 2017; Taggart, 2004) and with accounts emphasising populism’s anti-pluralist thrust (Galston, 2018; Urbinati, 2019). At the same time, the political economy literature shows that disintermediation pressures tend to intensify where economic insecurity and distributional conflict are salient (Guiso et al., 2024; Guriev and Papaioannou, 2022; Rodrik, 2018), while cultural backlash and long-term value change can shape the receptiveness of constituencies to anti-establishment frames (Goodhart, 2017; Inglehart and Norris, 2016). The cases suggest that these demand-side conditions interact with institutional opportunity structures: the same anti-intermediation rhetoric yields different outcomes depending on how concertation and collective representation are embedded in governance routines and on the state’s capacity to reallocate authority through reform. Where concertation and collective representation are deeply embedded and functionally valuable for governing capacity, disintermediation pressures tend to be filtered into selective bypass, symbolic contestation or episodic unilateralism rather than wholesale displacement (Lehmbruch, 1977; Schmitter, 1979). Conversely, where governance is more fragmented or where reform capacity allows governments to govern ‘around’ social partners, disintermediation more readily translates into procedural marginalisation and narrowing of mediated influence (Culpepper and Regan, 2014; Jahn, 2016; Marginson, 2015). This conditional view refines approaches that treat populism as inherently destructive of intermediary institutions. While anti-pluralism remains central, disintermediation operates less as an exogenous shock than as a mode of governance shaped by institutional constraints and media environments (Chadwick, 2007; De Vreese et al., 2018). The analysis thus identifies scope conditions under which populist challenges coexist with institutional resilience, reconfiguration or heightened erosion risk.
Implications for industrial relations and economic democracy
The findings carry important implications for industrial relations theory and for debates on economic and industrial democracy. First, they reaffirm the relevance of institutional embeddedness and long-term trajectories of change in European industrial relations (Baccaro and Howell, 2017; Dunlop, 1958; Streeck, 1992). Coordinated systems and routinised concertation display greater capacity to absorb political contestation without losing their core mediating functions. Yet resilience should not be equated with stasis: even where institutions persist, their effective influence can be reshaped through gradual, ‘incremental’ change (Marginson, 2015; Streeck, 2005). Second, the analysis draws attention to fragmentation and segmentation as critical vulnerabilities. Where representation is uneven or perceived as partial, disintermediation strategies gain traction by exploiting gaps in inclusion and responsiveness, especially among outsiders and ‘globalisation losers’ (Burgoon et al., 2019; Natili and Negri, 2023). This challenges approaches that focus primarily on formal institutional design and underscores the importance of representational legitimacy as a constitutive element of economic democracy.
Most importantly, the prevalence of reconfiguration as an outcome highlights an under-theorised trajectory of institutional change. Rather than abrupt breakdown, economic democracy is often reshaped through procedural and temporal shifts: who participates, at what stage, and with what effective influence. Over time, these cumulative changes may weaken mediation even when formal institutions persist, raising concerns about the substantive quality of democratic governance in the economic sphere (Baccaro et al., 2018; Crouch, 2000). Recent comparative measurement efforts further underscore how participation and inequality co-evolve, reinforcing the need to assess the ‘quality’ of industrial democracy beyond formal rules (De Spiegelaereand Vitols, 2024; Sanz et al., 2020). In this respect, the article also speaks to contemporary work that reconnects economic democracy to broader transformations of capitalism and to renewed debates about collective agency and public participation (Cumbers, 2020; Durand et al., 2024), despite showing that the institutional dimension of unions still counts in legitimating workers as a political actor. The comparative findings suggest that disintermediation pressures can hollow out mediated governance even without visible institutional rupture, thereby making reconfiguration a critical object of analysis for industrial relations scholarship.
Trade unions, democracy and scope conditions
A third contribution concerns the role of trade unions as potential democratic stabilisers. The comparative evidence supports classic arguments that workplace participation and collective organisation can foster democratic competencies and spillovers beyond the workplace (Pateman, 1970; Verba et al., 1995). More recent research also points to robust empirical links between unions and political participation, turnout and democratic attachment (Bryson et al., 2014; Budd et al., 2017; Turner et al., 2020). However, the stabilising role of unions is contingent rather than automatic. Unions are most likely to sustain democratic infrastructures when three conditions are jointly present: access to institutional arenas of governance, organisational legitimacy across diverse constituencies (including outsiders), and the capacity to translate mobilisation into negotiated outcomes. Where these conditions weaken, union strategies may oscillate between defensive survival and contentious mobilisation, with ambiguous democratic effects.
Two trade-offs are especially salient. First, mobilisation can preserve voice and contestation, but it can also intensify polarisation and feed anti-intermediation narratives that portray unions as self-interested obstacles to ‘the people’s will’ (De Vreese et al., 2018; Müller, 2017b). Second, institutional defence may preserve existing arrangements without addressing representational gaps that make bypass strategies politically effective – particularly under fragmentation, segmentation and declining membership (Frangi et al., 2017; Häusermann, 2010). These dynamics help explain why unions do not uniformly counter populist challenges and why their democratic role varies systematically across institutional settings.
Concluding remarks and avenues for future research
Taken together, the analysis contributes to debates in industrial relations, economic democracy and populism studies by identifying reconfiguration as a central outcome of populist disintermediation. Contemporary challenges to economic democracy are less likely to manifest through abrupt institutional rupture than through incremental shifts in governance styles, legitimacy and the perceived necessity of mediation. The findings also carry normative implications. Defending economic and industrial democracy in the face of disintermediation requires more than preserving existing institutional architectures. It entails addressing fragmentation and exclusion, strengthening the representational reach of intermediary institutions, and renewing the substantive capacity of mediation so that it remains both legitimate and practically indispensable. Future research could extend this framework by adopting longitudinal designs to trace how episodic bypass accumulates into durable institutional change, by examining how digital communication reshapes intermediation and political mobilisation, or by expanding the comparative scope beyond Europe. A further avenue is to connect analyses of disintermediation to the measurement of industrial democracy and participation outcomes over time, linking institutional change to inequality and democratic satisfaction.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.