Political Parties, Organized Interests and Collective Skill Formation: Lessons from Liberal Market Economies

Recently, dual apprenticeship has gained renewed attention among the public and among policy-makers. This paper discusses to what extent reforms promoting dual training are successful in countries, which lack well-established traditions of social partnership in industrial relations, namely Ireland and the United Kingdom. On the basis of two condensed comparative case studies, I show that government partisanship is an important factor for shaping apprenticeship reform outcomes in terms of VET governance: Left and centrist Irish governments promoted cooperative approaches that brought together unions and employers in apprenticeship reforms, whereas the neoliberal, Conservative Thatcher government curtailed union influence in training and pursued a course of marketization.