In this article the authors analyse social partner engagement in European sectoral social dialogue, testing two prominent theories to disentangle sector and country dynamics: institutional and resources and capabilities theories. While institutional theory accounted for certain social partner preferences, resources and capability theory proved stronger in predicting participation and provided insight into regulatory preferences. The authors conclude that resources and capability theory better explains their case, associating it with weaknesses of transnational governance. Specifically, limited incentives for participation mean that social partners with fewer resources forego participation, entailing pre-eminence of social partners with greater resources and hindering outcomes reflecting national institutional influences.

在这篇文章中，作者分析了欧洲部门社会对话中的社会伙伴参与，测试了两个突出的理论来解开部门和国家动态：制度和资源和能力理论。虽然制度理论解释了某些社会伙伴偏好，但资源和能力理论在预测参与和提供对监管偏好的洞察方面被证明更强大。作者得出结论，资源和能力理论更好地解释了他们的情况，将其与跨国治理的弱点联系起来。具体而言，有限的参与激励意味着资源较少的社会伙伴放弃参与，从而导致拥有更多资源的社会伙伴处于领先地位，并阻碍反映国家制度影响的结果。