The obscure object of desire: The role of political reflections, strategic calculations and informal networks in the development of national social dialogue across time in Spain over five decades

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of social dialogue in Spain and highlights that to understand the relations between organised labour and the state a greater degree of historical sensibility in the way risks and calculations are developed in terms of exchanges and expectations is required. It goes beyond traditional institutionalist analysis to further understand how social dialogue at the state level occurs across different and complex trade-offs within political networks, even in weaker state contexts such as that of Spain. The article uses interviews with union leaders from the main Spanish unions involved in different historical moments to understand a range of uneven or opaque activities, the features of which can only be understood by expanding what we mean by the notion of political exchange, as well as the deliberate or conscious calculations and longer-term risks of such exchanges during different points in time.