Employer identity and the politics of the labour market in Spain

The Confederation of Spanish Business Organisations (CEOE) has rarely been systematically analysed in terms of its role in the political and economic development of Spain. It is argued that the CEOE has indeed been influential in economic policy-making and the formation of pro-free market policies in Spain, albeit in a way not usually understood within many of the highly formalistic and institutionalist understandings of the relations between state and socio-economic actors. The CEOE has played a part in forging an identity within the employer class through its interventions which is one of the pivots of Spain's limited engagements with concerted state and socially-oriented responses to crisis and economic development since the mid-1970s. -Author