Spreading massively in recent decades, precarious work has become a lasting feature of contemporary labor markets. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers tackles the important question of the social protection of precarious workers (or outsiders), who are often excluded from the rights associated with standard forms of employment. The book focuses on labor market policies and tracks policy changes in three small European countries with important similarities (corporatist legacies, strong union movement, and Social Democratic parties): Austria, Denmark, and Sweden. Addressing major debates in the welfare state and comparative political economy literatures, the book examines the remaining influence of trade unions on policy trajectories from the mid-1980s onward. Situating the growth of precarious work in the context of the expansion of market mechanisms and the deregulation of job security, Philip Rathgeb contends that some European welfare states have been better able to enhance the protection of outsiders than others.

In the first chapter, Rathgeb advances an original argument to explain the determinants of trade union influence in the era of liberalization. The motivation is that the two major theoretical approaches to studying cross-national variation in risk protection—producer group theory and partisanship theory—fail to explain the observed differences across the countries. In the author's view, these approaches generally underestimate the shift in the balance of power between labor and capital that has weakened trade unions and made governments generally more responsive to the demands of employers. Instead of focusing either on the role of parties or producer groups, the study conceives the interaction and distribution of power between unions and governments as crucial for policy outcomes. It is only when trade unions face a weak government that they are able to extract concessions for outsiders. Government weakness is defined as "a low level of capacity for autonomous reform, which makes governments unable to formulate or pass a unilateral reform strategy that excludes unions" (p. 16). This weakness often results from divisions between parties in a coalition government or the absence of support in parliament for minority governments.

The second chapter presents an overview of the cross-national variation in changes in labor market policy. Rathgeb examines three dimensions: employment protection, unemployment protection, and active labor market policy. Using various indicators, he identifies a common trend toward a liberalization of labor market policy since the 1980s. However, his main message is to emphasize the distinct varieties of liberalization, in line with Kathleen Thelen (Varieties of Liberalization: The New Politics of Social Solidarity, 2014). Important and puzzling results emerge from this chapter. Austria did not follow the path of pronounced dualization typical of other Conservative–Continental welfare states, but rather improved the social protection of outsiders. The contrast with Sweden is striking, where the use of temporary forms of employment was made easier for employers, the inclusiveness and generosity of the unemployment insurance decreased, and the like. Sweden followed a strong dualization path, despite its Social Democratic welfare regime. Rathgeb also demonstrates the dismantlement of egalitarian institutions in Denmark—a feature that remains too often overlooked in his view.

The three next chapters analyze the policy reforms undertaken by different coalition governments since the 1980s in the three countries. The case studies rely on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources and more than 40 interviews with policy-making elites. The chapter on Austria underlines the role of social partners in the reforms under the grand coalition governments (1987–1999, 2006–2017). The two governing parties, which lacked unity (the case of a “weak government”), had a great deal of interest in relying on extraparliamentary consensus. The coalition between ÖVP and FPÖ did not dramatically change the situation, at least in the area of labor market policy, given the disagreements between the partners. The analysis of Sweden shows well the new ideological distance between the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union Confederation in the 1990s and its consequences for policies. When there were center-left cabinets (1994–2006), the Social Democratic minority government was prone to promote more labor market flexibility and made fiscal consolidation a priority, thanks to parliamentary support from the bourgeois Center Party. The dualization trend was then reinforced under the new center-right governments (2006–2014) that excluded unions from policy making. The Danish case shows that center-right governments do not always prefer to exclude unions from the policy process. The center-right minority coalition (1982–1993), a weak government in the late 1980s, chose to establish a deal with the Trade Union Confederation to secure a parliamentary majority for its labor market policy reform.

There are two important lessons from this well-written and well-executed study for political science. First, the book is an important investigation of the role of trade unions in the representation of new groups of (atypical) workers. As convincingly argued and demonstrated, unions deploy important efforts to improve the social protection of outsiders. The book marks therefore a departure from the dominant view in comparative political economy that has treated labor as an increasingly heterogeneous political actor and conceived trade unions primarily as representatives of insiders’ interests (e.g., David Rueda, Social Democracy inside Out: Government Partisanship, Insiders, and Outsiders in Industrialized Democracies, 2007). The merit of the analysis is also to show the mechanisms behind the trade union representation of outsiders' interests. In Denmark and Sweden, the presence of encompassing trade unions and the links established with unemployed workers through the Ghent system facilitate the incorporation of outsiders' interests. In Austria, the strong concentration and centralization of unionism impede the domination of the manufacturing sector and stimulate the ÖGB's ambition to represent all workers.

Second, the innovative theoretical framework is an important step toward better treatment of the new political context in which governments operate. The variable of government strength makes it possible to integrate the growing fragmentation of party systems into the analysis of public policy. As shown by Rathgeb, divergences between governing parties— which are likely to increase with the formation of unusual coalition governments—matter for policy outcomes. Above all, these divergences can give nonstate actors in some instances more influence in the policy-making process. The conclusions on the limited but significant potential for trade unions in the conditions of weak government could well be valid in other policy domains and lead to new opportunities for some (usually weaker) actors; for example, environmental associations.

Although the variable of government strength is innovative and deserves scholarly attention, one might question it as well. Rathgeb emphasizes the types of coalition governments and the number of partners needed for parliamentary support in the case of minority governments. However, it would be more accurate to describe the variable as a combination of two elements: the type of government and the ideological willingness to engage in reforms pushing for more liberalization. This second element is sometimes slightly hidden behind the first. Moreover, the empirical analysis reveals an important variation among the types of governments described as “weak.” The explicit consideration of both elements could therefore make the analysis even more convincing.

Notwithstanding this desire for further precision, Rathgeb's excellent study engages with important and timely issues for both research and society and should be read widely by scholars and experts in the fields of welfare state politics, political economy, and employment relations.