The politics of platform work reform: How institutions, power and enforcement shape regulatory divergence in Spain and Chile

Extensive scholarship examines the regulation of platform work, yet less is known about how and why reforms emerge and what they ultimately achieve. This article addresses that gap through a comparative analysis of Spain and Chile, two regulatory innovators that moved in opposite directions. It develops a sequential perspective on institutional change, recognising layers of incremental shifts, critical junctures and a contested enforcement arena, and shows how labour and capital deploy power resources across successive phases of reform. The analysis demonstrates that regulatory divergence is shaped not only by legal design but also by actors’ capacity to activate power resources over time and to project that power into enforcement. While both cases reveal the limits of legal reform, Chile’s approach institutionalised self‑employment and shows early signs of regulatory drift, whereas Spain shifted the sector towards employment contracts through sustained regulatory pressure, despite ongoing business contestation and emerging avoidance strategies.