THE POLITICS OF PLATFORM WORK REGULATION:COALITION DYNAMICS, POWER RESOURCES AND POLICY OUTCOMES IN ITALY AND SPAIN

This work addresses a crucial theoretical and empirical puzzle: why Italy and Spain – two countries that have experienced more than three decades of labour market deregulation and a gradual shift away from standard employment – decided, in the same period, to re-regulate their labour markets starting from platform work, a sec- tor characterised by a relatively small workforce and limited mobilising capacity. Moreover, why do two countries with similar exposure to platformisation, comparable welfare regimes and similar industrial relations systems adopt regulatory interventions that differ so clearly in their ability to de-dualise platform work? The work compares the policymaking processes behind the regulation of platform work in Italy and Spain, focusing on the preferences of the main actors involved and on the interactions between political and social actors. In doing so, it reconstructs the politics of platform work regulation, showing that both the decision to regulate and the design of regulatory interventions ultimately depend on the strategic interaction between interest groups and political parties, and on their capacity to form coalitions endowed with sufficient power resources to sustain - or, conversely, to block - reforms. Drawing on a most-similar-cases design and an in-depth qualitative analysis of policymaking processes based on interviews and documentary sources, the study argues that institutional factors alone cannot account for policy outcomes. Instead, explicitly political dynamics - such as coalition formation and political exchange between parties and social actors - play a decisive role. The analysis shows that in Spain a combination of a unified left government and a strong, cross-class demand from trade unions and employers made it possible to introduce a strong and de-dualising reform. In Italy, by contrast, the absence of these conditions led to a more fragmented and dualising regulatory outcome.