THE SOCIAL COSTS OF THE GIG ECONOMY AND INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES:. FORMS OF INSTITUTIONAL BRICOLAGE IN ITALY, FRANCE, AND THE NETHERLANDS.

In this chapter, which is based on a field research work withon gig workers conducted in three countries, we argue that the role of the state, which has been a crucial one in the ‘classic’ system of industrial relations, should also be considered and analyzed also in relation to today's new organizations for SE workers. In particular, since we focus on mutualistic cooperatives (MCs, hereafter) in Italy, The Netherlands, and France we devote particular attention to the role that the state does and can and does perform in moulding the activities of MCs, as clearly illustrated by our comparative empirical analysis. The members of these MCs are mainly gig workers (in particular on and off-platform, see OECD 2019), a population that has come to face specific risks due to emerging new technologies, such as precarization and instability (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2017)1. Evidence from the fieldwork also shows that the responses to this challenge have the character of an ‘institutional bricolage’ (Streeck and Thelen 2005;, Mahoney and Thelen 2010;, Carstensen 2015,; 2017). Old and new institutional actors perform new functions to adapt configurations of rules and practices to respond to new conditions and increasing uncertainty. Actors innovate, reworking the existing institutional arrangements, within their limited cognitive and social resources, and as far as they perceive their actions as legitimate (Cleaver and deDe Konnig and Cleaver 2015), in a gradual institutional change trajectory, where bricolage strategies could represent the first step (Streeck and Thelen 2005). Also in this perspective, the role of the state can be of paramount importance.