A renewed centrality of power resources and why this matters

This contribution discusses the papers presented at the annual seminar of Stato e Mercato on the making and re-making of labour power in a changing world of work. I will comment on them raising three main points: first, I will discuss the renewed centrality of power and power-based approaches in the analysis of contemporary capitalism and point to the merits of these approaches for discussing labour politics. Second, I will underline what are the main challenges that the three papers pose to traditional Power Resource Theory (PRT) and the Power Resource Approach (PRA), and why these critiques should be taken seriously. And lastly, I will suggest what might be the contribution of this approach to other streams of literature outside of Industrial Relations (IR), particularly Comparative Political Economy (CPE).