National Industrial Relations Systems and Transnational ... · Anthony Ferner and Richard Hyman (eds), Changing Industrial Relations in Europe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 550 pp. International

Richard HymanUniversity of Warwick, UK

National Industrial Relations Systemsand Transnational Challenges:

An Essay in Review

ABSTRACT ▪ This essay in review examines a series of recent texts whichaddress the tension between economic internationalization and nationalindustrial relations systems. The notion of ‘globalization’ identifies real andsubstantial developments which challenge established forms of employmentregulation, but these developments are contradictory and create newpossibilities for strategic intervention.

Greg J. Bamber and Russell D. Lansbury (eds), International and ComparativeEmployment Relations. London: Sage, 1998. 442 pp.

Colin Crouch and Wolfgang Streeck (eds), The Political Economy of ModernCapitalism: Mapping Convergence and Diversity. London: Sage, 1997. 212 pp.

Jon Erik Dølvik, Redrawing Boundaries of Solidarity? ETUC, Social Dialogueand the Europeanisation of Trade Unions in the 1990s. Oslo: Arena and FAFO,1997. 571 pp.

Giuseppe Fajertag and Philippe Pochet (eds), Social Pacts in Europe. Brussels:European Trade Union Institute and Observatoire social européen, 1997. 195 pp.

Anthony Ferner and Richard Hyman (eds), Changing Industrial Relations inEurope. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 550 pp.

International Labour Organisation, World Labour Report 1997–98: IndustrialRelations, Democracy and Social Stability. Geneva: ILO, 1997. 283 pp.

Wolfgang E. Lecher and Hans-Wolfgang Platzer (eds), European Union – Euro-pean Industrial Relations? Global Challenges, National Developments andTransnational Dynamics. London: Routledge, 1998. 312 pp.

Henri Nadel and Robert Lindley (eds), Les relations sociales en europe: économieet institutions. Paris: l’Harmattan, 1998. 186 pp.

Magnus Sverke (ed.), The Future of Trade Unionism: International Perspectiveson Emerging Union Structures. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. 375 pp.

Lowell Turner (ed.), Negotiating the New Germany: Can Social PartnershipSurvive? Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997. 271 pp.

Lowell Turner, Fighting for Partnership: Labor and Politics in Unified Germany.Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1998. 195 pp.

European Journal of Industrial Relations

© 1999 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

ISSN 0959-6801 Volume 5 Number 1 pp 89–110

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Jelle Visser and Anton Hemerijck, A Dutch Miracle: Job Growth, Welfare Reformand Corporatism in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 1997. 206pp.

Peter Waterman, Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internation-alisms. London: Mansell, 1998. 302 pp.

Bruce Western, Between Class and Market: Postwar Unionization in the Capi-talist Democracies. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. 231 pp.

Introduction

Students of European industrial relations now have available two updatededitions of well-established multi-authored texts, both with a slightchange of title. That edited by Bamber and Lansbury is the third editionof a book which covers five European countries (Britain, France,Germany, Italy and Sweden) and five others (Korea is added to theprevious list of Australia, Canada, Japan and the USA). The compilationby Ferner and myself covers 17 countries of western Europe; apart fromthe various micro-states, the only omission is Iceland. The editors, whoin the first edition had to masquerade as Italians, have this time obtainedan authentically Italian team to cover that country.

Both works include reference to recent events (the changes of govern-ment in Britain and France, for example). There are apparent differencesin the degree of revision for the new editions, but the significance of thisis a judgement which must be left to the reader. What seems to emergefairly clearly is: that in some countries, but not all, there have been radicalchanges in industrial relations in the 1990s; that change has often involvedincreased heterogeneity within countries; and that cross-national diver-sity remains marked.

This is of some interest: for the theme of much recent literature, includ-ing several of the works under review, is that transnational economic inte-gration is undermining the viability of nationally specific systemsregulating work and employment, resulting in a common subordinationof industrial relations to untrammelled market forces. If the diversity ofnational industrial relations systems persists, is this because of a short-term ‘cultural lag’; because national responses to economic international-ization involve distinctive trajectories which are path-dependent; orbecause the challenge of globalization is itself much exaggerated? Thesequestions inform the discussion which follows.

Globalization: Reality or Myth?

Industrial relations in most countries emerged initially on a local or sec-toral basis (reflecting the contours of labour markets) but in the 20th

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century became consolidated within a national institutional framework.Each such industrial relations system acquired unique characteristics,reflecting the distinctiveness of economic structure, political traditions andsocial practice in each country. This is reflected in the diversity of indus-trial relations models in Europe. Viewed from the outside there are impor-tant common features to the conduct of industrial relations: in mostcountries it is accepted that the labour market must be socially regulated;that collective bargaining is a desirable mechanism for giving employees a‘voice’; and that collective representative bodies (trade unions and employ-ers’ associations) are legitimate institutions with a public status. Yet thereare substantial differences: in particular, in the degree to which employ-ment conditions and collective bargaining are legally regulated; the exist-ence or absence of workplace representative structures separate from tradeunions; and the relative weight of antagonistic relations or ‘social partner-ship’.

From the national embeddedness of existing systems of labour marketregulation stem many of the current uncertainties surrounding their effi-cacy and future. Industrial relations, as we understand the term today, wasan invention of the era of the pre-eminent nation-state. The relativeautonomy of the national polity and economy was the context of dis-tinctive national systems of employment regulation. Has this autonomybeen dissipated; and if so, can national industrial relations systemspersist?

The concept of globalization has become something of a cliché. Amongthe pioneers of the idea is Ohmae, who wrote (1990) of the emergence ofa ‘borderless world’ or ‘interlinked economy’ in which the globalizationof production chains, product markets, corporate structures and financialflows made national boundaries and the nation-state largely irrelevant.Reich (1991: 3) pointed likewise to an era with ‘no national products ortechnologies, no national corporations, no national industries. There willno longer be national economies, at least as we have come to understandthat concept.’1

Is globalization a reality or a myth? The answer is almost certainly:both. Recent decades have seen clear trends towards the liberalization ofcross-national trade through the reduction or removal of tariff barriers.And while international trade is nothing new – some indeed argue thatthe international economy today is no more globalized in this respectthan at the beginning of the century – the cross-national integration ofproduction within multinational companies (MNCs) certainly is. Again,while there may be debates concerning how far MNCs are genuinelymultinational – in most cases their activities are concentrated close tohome – the potential for large firms in particular to move operationsacross frontiers, partly to escape restrictive industrial relations regimes orto exploit cross-national differentiation,2 certainly poses new challenges.

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Such mobility is facilitated by the liberalization of cross-nationalinvestment (and would be radically enhanced by any Multilateral Agree-ment on Investment, a project which may have been at least temporarilyblocked) and by the more general liberalization of financial flows acrossborders. Given the advances in information technology and tele-communications, transactions in shares and currencies have become con-tinuous and instantaneous. ‘Finance capital has forged its owninstruments of expansion and a momentum of accumulation that areincreasingly independent of what is happening in the sphere of produc-tion’ (Burbach et al., 1997: 67). This destabilizes material economies andallows capital-holders to ‘punish’ economies and governments the poli-cies of which fail to match the criteria of rectitude embraced in financialmarkets.

Yet if globalization is an evident reality it is also a myth. This is the corethesis of Hirst and Thompson (1996: 6): the ideology of globalizationserves as an argument that global market forces are irresistible and invin-cible and hence ‘robs us of any hope’. For many governments in recentyears, the idea of globalization has provided a useful alibi: that the fate ofnational economies is not susceptible to influence by domestic policies,or at best that governments can do no more than impose the most effec-tive forms of adaptation to external forces. Yet in reality, globalization‘both is authored by states and is primarily about reorganising, ratherthan bypassing, states’ (Panitch, 1994: 63). The ideology of national impo-tence has provided a powerful rationale for advocates of deregulation –itself a misleading concept since, as Standing (1997) has insisted, the socialrelations embodied in market forces impose their own disciplines andpunishments and thus market liberalism is itself a mode of regulation.Conversely, for trade unionists and other potentially progressive actors,the myth of globalization can be disabling in its effects.

The task must be to disentangle reality and myth. Part of the problemis that the ‘G-word’ (Ruigkrok and van Tulder, 1995) has many meaningsand can serve both as analytical instrument and as rhetorical device (Scott,1997). All striking (and influential) interpretative arguments tend toinvolve oversimplification and incautious extrapolation of complex, con-fused and contradictory trends and relations. What are the industrialrelations implications of the cross-national restructuring of productionand the shift to a regime of ‘flexible accumulation’ (Harvey, 1989)? Howfar do MNCs possess and exploit a capacity to undermine national regu-latory systems? Has the regulatory capacity of the nation-state beendestroyed by the dynamics of international finance? And if – as numer-ous writers insist, and as Ohmae himself has indicated – internationaliza-tion has to date primarily taken the form of growing interconnectednessat regional rather than global level (the consolidation of the elements ofthe ‘Triad’ of Europe, Japan and North America), does this open up scope


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for new forms of regulation at regional level (and notably, of course, bythe EU)? Finally, are nationally based trade unions now largely impotent,condemned to functioning as ‘transmission belts of transnational compe-tition’ (Mahnkopf and Altvater, 1995), or do they still possess somecapacity to shape their own destiny? These are among the issuesaddressed in the works under review.

Challenges to Social Regulation

The volume edited by Crouch and Streeck addresses the viability of dis-tinctive national models of capitalist regulation. The work stems from aconference organized by the editors but displays much stronger thematicintegration than is common in such productions; and while most chap-ters focus on individual countries, the approach of the authors is stronglycomparative.

As the editors stress in their introduction, theories of institutional con-vergence developed in the early post-war years were disproved by experi-ence; and by the 1970s, academics and policy-makers alike came torecognize that markets (including labour markets) functioned best withinthe framework of institutional regulation which could take very differentforms according to national context. Yet after two decades in which thesuperior performance of such ‘institutional economies’ as Germany andJapan was widely recognized, the conventional wisdom of the 1990s hasbeen that dense social regulation involves rigidities requiring a shift tomarket liberalism. With the reconfiguration of product competition andthe organization of production, ‘more open economies of the Anglo-American kind that have long learned to operate without the succour ofan interventionalist state and in the absence of strong social cohesion’ (p.14) appear to experience a new advantage. Does this spell convergencetowards market liberalism?

Individual authors offer contrasting answers to this question. Dorestresses the resilience of the Japanese model of capitalism. The long-termperspectives inherent in the ‘membership’ of (core) employees in theirfirm, close trust relationships between purchasers and suppliers and stab-ility of share ownership are mutually supportive and sustain ‘behaviouraldispositions’ (a concept Dore prefers to ‘culture’) which make the modelstill effective. Rumours of impending breakdown, in his view, are muchexaggerated. Streeck, by contrast, takes a more pessimistic view of thefuture of the German model. The competitive success of the sozialeMarktwirtschaft rested on three foundations: a global market for qualityproduction; the capacity of firms to innovate ahead of the competition;and adequate demand for skilled labour. But from the 1980s the pace ofinnovation in rival economies has accelerated, the differentiation between


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cost and quality competitiveness has broken down, encouraging Germanfirms to shift production elsewhere and resulting in a surge in unem-ployment. While these challenges pre-dated unification, within theenlarged Germany they have probably become unmanageable. Andbecause ‘the institutions which embed its economy and shape its per-formance are politically negotiated and typically legally constitutional-ized’ (p. 36), these are more visible and more open to deregulation thanthe more informal and internalized arrangements of Japan.

Pontusson compares developments in Sweden and Germany. TheSwedish institutional settlement between the state, large-scale employersand centralized trade unions unravelled with changed employer prioritiesand government moves towards economic liberalism, now probably irre-versible given EU membership. Nevertheless, he suggests that Sweden inthe 1990s has assumed some of the features of ‘Rhineland capitalism’under challenge in Germany itself; a Swedish variant of the ‘social marketeconomy’ may well be emerging.

Boyer also refers to the ‘Rhine model’ (which he sees as characteristicof both Germany and Japan!). France, he argues, cannot adopt this formof organized capitalism because it lacks the dense institutional infrastruc-ture characteristic of those two countries; nevertheless, the powerfulstatist tradition which drove its post-war economic modernization facesa crisis given the transformations in the global economy. Paradoxically,he suggests, some of the well-known weaknesses of the French economycould constitute strengths: there are many possible routes to structuraltransformation, and the outcome will not reflect any simple determinis-tic logic.

The conclusions of the majority of contributors (and I have only noteda selection of these) seem to suggest that economic internationalizationgenerates strong pressures to undermine established structures of econ-omic (and employment) regulation; that (as d’Iribarne puts in a broadtheoretical overview) this may displace trust by opportunism, withadverse implications for economic efficiency as well as social cohesion;but that lines of development will be to some extent nation-specific,reflecting political choices and possibly new class compromises.

This leads to the central theme of the collection edited by Fajertag andPochet: the experience of ‘social pacts’ in the 1990s. As Regini (1997) hasnoted, after the much proclaimed ‘death of corporatism’ in the 1980s therevival of political exchange has been a notable phenomenon in manyEuropean countries. This volume comprises mainly single-countryaccounts, though with some more general discussion, examining failuresand precarious compromises as well as (relative) success stories.

The best known of the latter, notable also as a radical re-insti-tutionalization of industrial relations, is the government-brokered inter-confederal agreement in Italy in July 1993. Key elements in this and


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subsequent agreements were the formalization of incomes policy, thestreamlining of collective bargaining and the structures of employee rep-resentation at company level, and the reform of the welfare system. In hisaccount, Negrelli emphasizes the themes of ‘deregulation by consent’ and‘the beneficial trade-off between job security and flexibility at work’ (pp.52, 54). Less well known is the Irish case, where the tripartite agreement‘Partnership 2000’, signed at the end of 1996, followed three similar dealsin the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, as O’Donnell and O’Reardonnote, while the national pacts may have strengthened the competitivenessof the Irish economy they have not dented the high rate of unemploy-ment; and ‘social partnership’ at national level is not matched in the work-place, where many incoming MNCs in particular have provedvehemently anti-union.

This puts in perspective the idea of a ‘beneficial trade-off’. Arguably,many of the agreements discussed in this book represent ‘least-worst’options for the union signatories: desperate attempts to ward off econ-omic (and in the Italian case at least, political) collapse. As the editors notein their introduction, the first generation of social pacts had a clear gain-sharing rationale: the regulated distribution of economic growth in thecontext of (more or less) full employment and an expanding welfare state.The new social pacts of the 1990s, by contrast, have been responses totwin crises, both linked to globalization: the erosion of national compet-itiveness, and the effort to reduce public deficits in line with the EMUconvergence criteria. In return, union signatories seek job creation strat-egies (or much more modestly, limitations on job loss); but this is not atrade-off which their counterparts in government and on the employers’side can readily deliver. This is one reason why the Bündnis für Arbeitpursued by the German unions – discussed here by Bispinck – eventuallyfoundered. It also helps explain the failure of the ‘confidence pact’ at EUlevel proposed by Santer in 1996. Clearly this gives rise to significant stra-tegic dilemmas for trade unions.

Does experience in The Netherlands permit greater optimism? In hisdiscussion of the Dutch case, van den Toren examines what could becalled a ‘tacit social pact’; and this is examined in detail in the book byVisser and Hemerijck. Their account is at times dense, and integration ofthe text is not helped by dual authorship; but the overall message is clear.The Dutch variant of organized capitalism, linked to a system of coali-tion politics, allowed substantial veto power to the institutional actorsand inhibited structural adaptation to the new realities of the globaleconomy. Unions were able to defend the institutional elements of thepost-war compromise – in particular, the compensation-based welfarestate – but at a cost of escalating unemployment and a collapse in theirown membership. ‘Those who lose power must learn’ (p. 78); and in the1990s the unions learned to make compromises. Through explicit or tacit


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agreements they have accepted wage restraint, a reduction in welfare ben-efits, and some reduction in employment rights for permanent full-timeemployees. The trade-off has involved an active labour market policyassociated with improved rights for ‘atypical’ workers. The outcome hasbeen substantial job creation, but not at the poverty wages associated withUS job growth. And union membership has begun to recover.

A German Interlude

Perhaps the most agonized discussion of the impact of globalization onindustrial relations has occurred in Germany. More than 20 years ago thetheory of the ‘new international division of labour’ (Fröbel et al., 1977)predicted the large-scale export of jobs to low-wage countries. This left-wing analysis, based primarily on experience in the labour-intensive andcost-competitive textiles sector, proved much exaggerated; but in the1990s many of the same themes reappeared in the Standort debate, thistime as arguments of employers and the political right.

In his contribution to Negotiating the New Germany, Allen refers to‘the “siren song” of deregulation’. In dealing with the economic problemswhich followed unification, he argues (p. 140) that ‘German policy-makersappear to have lost their “institutional memory” of how an economy wassuccessfully rebuilt’ within the framework of post-war organized capital-ism, and to have turned ‘to Anglo-American policy options that haveproven much less appropriate for Germany than for the United States andBritain’. But surely this begs the question: is the model which shapedGerman economic success in the past still adequate in a changed world?Allen does not specifically refer to the Rexrodt report or the Standortdebate: a symptom perhaps of a book that has been too long awaited. Ifirst read Fichter’s fascinating chapter on unions in the new Länder backin 1995, when the contributions (in most cases by American Europeanists)were originally written. Most chapters seem to have received minimalupdating, and the overall assessment of Germany in mid-decade is perhapsmore optimistic than the same authors would present today. Auer’s themeis that ‘the resilience of inclusive institutions’ remains ‘at the heart ofGermany’s success’ (p. 30); Silvia insists (p. 173) that ‘the dense networkof economic institutions that regulate the German labor market’ has ‘thusfar weathered the strain of both German unification and Germany’ssharpest recession, showing a remarkable resilience that has once againproved skeptics wrong’; Wever suggests (p. 221) that unification and inter-nationalization have ‘both challenged certain particulars and reaffirmedthe basic strengths of the German model’.

In his conclusion, Turner reviews the varying accounts of the chal-lenges experienced after unification, but notes (p. 257) that ‘even the most


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pessimistic among us . . . believe that it is within the capacities of the socialpartners to solve such problems’. These capacities are the focus of hissingle-authored text, Fighting for Partnership; the paradoxical title sug-gests that social partnership remains possible but can be sustained onlythrough struggle. Much of his attention is to the emergence (or transfer)of an industrial relations system in the east, where he concludes that ‘keyelements of a potential base for long-term, stable relations of socialpartnership have developed’ (p. 83). By contrast, he refers to ‘a crisis ofsocial partnership in unified Germany in the face of increasing Europeanand global economic integration’ (p. 117). Nevertheless he insists thatsocial partnership does not mean the absence either of major problems orof conflicts, and he explicitly contests Streeck’s pessimistic reading of thefate of German regulated capitalism. Institutional collapse is not imposs-ible but nor is it inevitable. Turner emphasizes ‘the potential of majoractors, given supporting institutions, to make surprising, high-riskdecisions’ (p. 139).

How broad is the potential, and what determines the choices? Couldthe industrial relations actors under the Schröder government imitate the‘Dutch miracle’? Here, the strategic decisions (or non-decisions) of tradeunions emerge as a key factor.

Trade Unions: Victims or Strategists?

For the second year, globalization is a major theme in the ILO’s surveyof the state of labour and labour movements worldwide.3 Its discussionof globalization highlights three main factors: the internationalization offinancial markets; trade liberalization, and the shift in particular of low-skilled manufacturing industries from developed to developing countries;and the growing ability of companies to pursue ‘exit options’ whichthreaten national systems of employment regulation.

The specific implications for industrial relations, the ILO concludes,are impossible to determine with confidence. The impact of globalizationcannot be isolated from a range of other trends: the breakdown of the tra-ditional firm into a network of formally autonomous units; changes inoccupational structure; political shifts to the right.

By virtue of its mission and its governance, the ILO is committed tothe virtues of collective systems of employment regulation, and the reportinsists (p. 27) that trade unions fulfil three key functions: a ‘democraticfunction’, to provide employees with a voice; an ‘economic function’, toinfluence the organization of production and its distribution; a ‘socialfunction’, to integrate workers within society and to help shape socialwelfare. Drawing on data from almost 100 countries, the report notes thatwhile unions may remain as necessary as ever, the stagnation or decline


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in their membership is near-universal. However, the marked contrasts inunion disarray or resilience demonstrate that it is premature to speak ofthe end of organized industrial relations.

Drawing on a range of scholarly analysis, the ILO discusses a varietyof ways in which unions have attempted to respond to current challenges:offering new services; appealing to new constituencies, on the margins ofthe traditional core labour force; coordinating action transnationally;building alliances with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs).In most first-world countries, unions have traditionally defined their role(in practice if not always in rhetoric) in terms of collective bargaining;they must develop a new openness, the report concludes (p. 228), to ‘notonly the multiplicity but also the growing diversity of kinds of socialnegotiation’.

Unions on a world scale (or at least, those in the OECD countries) arealso the focus of Western’s study, which constitutes an important exercisein systematic comparative analysis. He utilizes a range of statistical tech-niques in addition to qualitative analysis to support an argument whichcould be viewed as part of the commonsense of industrial relationsscholarship but which has not previously been founded on comprehen-sive evidence. His thesis, as he presents it at the outset (p. 3) is that ‘labormovements grow where they are institutionally insulated from the marketforces that drive competition among workers’. Three main forms of suchinsulation are considered: support for unionization by governments ofthe left; centralized and coordinated collective bargaining systems; andunion management of public unemployment insurance. Separate chaptersattempt to test each of these factors and to assess their relative import-ance.

In a number of respects, Western’s approach is disarming. He recog-nizes the limitations of many of the data sources and the loss of explana-tory understanding which may be inevitable when reality is pressed intobroad statistical measures: ‘much of the causal action is found in the insti-tutional detail’ (p. 8). Hence he declares (p. 12) that ‘I reject determinismin social explanation and take uncertainty assessment to be an importantobjective for this work’. Unfortunately the lack of the courage of hisregressions is a strength but also a weakness, at times leading Western toattempt to save his presuppositions through dubious ad hoc argument.For example: statutory works councils encourage resilient unionmembership; France has comités d’entreprise but low and falling union-ization; but we know that comités are not real works councils. Maybe; butworkplace institutions in other countries might fail a rigorous test. Evenperhaps in Germany: is the stereotype of the ‘strong’ Betriebsrat anunwarranted generalization from a small number of large manufacturingestablishments? At the very least, we need clear criteria for assessingworks-councilness.


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Similar considerations apply to some of Western’s core variables.Measuring centralization is notoriously problematic, and when he dis-cusses the cases of Britain, Sweden and the USA he brings in factors ratherdistant from most definitions of the concept. An important inconsistencymay also be noted: Germany (with Austria, Norway and Sweden) is giventop marks for centralization (p. 40) though it is later noted (p. 159) that‘the DGB has only a weak role in collective bargaining’ and ‘there is nostrong system of solidaristic bargaining as in Sweden’.

Or again, in discussing the impact of politics he follows most otherwriters who have tried to build colour of government into statisticalmodels in assuming that it is the national level alone that is relevant; butin many federal systems it is surely state or provincial government whichis more important in shaping the industrial relations regime?

Despite these and other reservations,4 overall it is necessary to stressthe positive value of this book. There is an illuminating discussion of therelationship between unionization and labour market structure, forexample. Noting the cross-national contrasts in the degree of variation inunion density by sector or by gender, Western insists that ‘structuraltheories of unionization’ must be ‘placed in an institutional context’ (p.126). Hence he concludes (p. 135) that ‘occupational and industry effectsare small in countries with highly centralized labor markets. The positivecentralization effect for nonmanual workers is especially large.’ Howeverhe is puzzled that centralization does not appear to reduce significantlythe gender difference in union density. Perhaps if the centralization ratingof Germany were reduced the puzzlement would be moderated.

For the purposes of this review, the most significant element of thebook is the discussion of globalization, institutional change and uniondecline in the 1980s. In essence, his argument is that economic interna-tionalization encourages the decentralization of labour market insti-tutions, which in turn generates union decline; but that the impact ofanalogous economic pressures on industrial relations systems differs con-siderably from country to country. The key explanation is that strongunions are better placed to resist decentralization; thus the often notedfact that in the past two decades weak union movements have tended tobecome weaker, often dramatically so, whereas stronger movements haveproved more robust. Hence the conclusion that ‘recent developmentsrepresent not the triumph of markets over institutions, but the limitedcapacity of national institutions to regulate the effects of a global insti-tutional context’ (p. 195).

Yet if national trade union movements differ in their defensive capacity,how can they protect and perhaps even enhance this capacity and makeeffective use of that which they possess? A book entitled The Future ofTrade Unionism: International Perspectives on Emerging Union Struc-tures might be expected to provide some answers; but the volume edited


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by Sverke disappoints. It consists of 25 chapters with 41 authors fromeleven countries, but with no integrating focus. Ten of the chapters reportsurvey research, for the most part north American, on attitudes ofemployees and union members; there is no overall discussion of theirfindings and no evident relevance to the theme of ‘emerging union struc-tures’. Other chapters are of greater interest. Meidner’s analysis of the dis-array in Swedish industrial relations is as ever illuminating; Higgins’chapter (published a year previously as a journal article) examines the rad-icalization of the Swedish municipal workers’ union (Kommunal) in the1990s and its efforts to develop ‘women-friendly’ policies which couldalso ‘rework a sectional interest into a general one’ (p. 190). While thereare very few explicitly comparative essays, Curtin examines women’s rep-resentation in trade unions, particularly in Sweden and Australia; andYates and Ewer compare and contrast union responses to industrialrestructuring in Australia and Canada. Pollan argues that the consoli-dation of social partnership in Austria was closely linked to the strongnationalized sector; but that the path-dependent dynamics of institutionaldevelopment may help stabilize industrial relations even in the face of pri-vatization. Di Nicola presents an interesting analysis of Italian unionismin the 1980s and 1990s: membership among employees has fallen sub-stantially, but support remains strong. This in turn, he suggests, reflects ashift from ideological identification with unionism to a more selective andpragmatic orientation. Other interesting contributions (not least becauseof their rarity in such volumes) include Kagarlitsky on Russia and Macunon South Africa. But what this volume requires, and lacks, is a strongerfocus on the supposed theme of union structural change and an editorialintroduction which explores the comparative implications of the dis-parate contributions.

Lecher and Platzer offer a better integrated text. Their book firstappeared in German in 1994; this edition has dropped nine of the orig-inal chapters and includes five new contributions. Of the 15 included inboth editions, few have received much updating. The editors adopt ‘abroad conception of industrial relations’ (p. xii): prudently, for on anarrow definition in terms of collective bargaining there would hardlyexist material for a book. The contributions come from union officials,employer representatives and Eurocrats as well as from academics, andoffer very different assessments of the possibility and desirability ofemployment regulation at EU level. From the Commission, Buda con-trasts Euro-pessimism and Euro-optimism with what he terms a Euro-realist position (his own, naturally). Keller is one of the more pessimisticcontributors, while Reid (formerly of the British engineering employers)provides a diatribe against the social dialogue together with somethoughtful scepticism on the prospects for European works councils.Most other contributors recognize the limited progress to date but have


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some hopes of more concrete advances in Euro-regulation in the mediumto long term.

Structurally the volume is somewhat awkward, addressing the diver-sity of national industrial relations systems, European developments atinterprofessional, sectoral and company levels, and ending with some-what incongruous contributions on north America and Japan. Many ofthe contributions provide little more than programmatic or institutionaldescription, often repeating the same information (the history andcontent of the EWC directive, for example). The one attempt to presentan integrated theoretical framework, by Platzer, appears towards themiddle of the book; it would surely function better as an introduction.

The volume edited by Nadel and Lindley is the product of a series ofround tables on social dialogue, sponsored by the European Commission.In their introduction the editors emphasize the complex but destructiveimpact of European integration on the balance between market and insti-tutional regulation of employment. The manner of Europeanization has‘articulated the principles of liberalization and deregulation as unques-tionable economic imperatives, and each national authority is expected tomanage the domestic consequences of this choice’. Likewise, social dia-logue presumes that the ‘social partners’ at European level will cooperateto facilitate the process of negative integration; though in practice ‘thesituation created by structural economic transformation renders dialoguedifficult and asymmetrical’ (p. 8, my translation). The difficulties of dia-logue within an already biased integration process are exacerbated by thefact that neither ‘capital’ nor ‘labour’ at European level are unitary actors.

In his presentation of ‘some stylized facts’ regarding European indus-trial relations, du Tertre contrasts national responses to intensified inter-national competition: radical diminution of collective regulation inBritain, institutional resilience in Germany; very different forms of socialpact in Ireland and Belgium; relatively unconstrained managerial initia-tive in France in a context of weak collective bargaining. Though in hisintroduction he refers to important elements of convergence in industrialrelations systems, his account rather implies a robust diversity stemmingfrom ‘path-dependent’ responses to crisis.

Two sectoral studies provide more detailed evidence. In a brief over-view of developments in the motor industry, Durand identifies a conver-gence towards a ‘forced integration’ (implication contrainte) of workerswithin the enterprise. Under pressures of cost competition, traditionalEuropean models of financial compensation for the physically and psy-chologically disagreeable aspects of production work in the industry havebeen eroded; while the Swedish alternative to Fordism succumbed withthe closure of Uddevalla. The argument is interesting, though lacking thebreadth and depth of the studies contained in the cross-national car indus-try study (of which the author seems unaware) coordinated by Kochan


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et al. (1997). In an analysis of the air transport industry, McGowanemphasizes the dramatic effect of deregulation and cut-throat compe-tition on employment relations. Managerial efforts to impose systems oflean production have marked the past decade, though to different degreesaccording to the competitive strategies of each company.

Three concluding chapters examine more general issues. Petit and Wardconsider the impact on Europe of competition from South-East Asia,which they see as potentially adding a fourth pole to the Triad. Streeckoffers a game-theoretic analysis of European social dialogue, suggestingthat the interplay of class and national interests generates insuperableobstacles to systematic social regulation at supranational level. FinallyBoyer, in the longest contribution to the book, asserts that post-Fordistforms of production require cooperative systems of industrial relations.This raises the question whether, and how, countries with traditionallyadversarial industrial relations can transform their systems; and by impli-cation (though Boyer does not explicitly address this) whether a com-petitive deconstruction of more strongly institutionalized systems (asenvisaged by Crouch and Streeck) may threaten the performance of theEuropean economy as a whole.

One conclusion which emerges very clearly from both collections isthat the creation of a European industrial relations system in a strongrather than a minimalist sense will conflict with the current dominantmode of ‘negative integration’ in the EU and will confront both insti-tutional inertia and the active opposition of most employers and manygovernments. Even to reach the starting line, such a project will requireconcerted objectives, organizational capacity and strategic vision on thepart of European trade unions. Is there any prospect of this?

To answer this question requires a detailed analysis of the structure andpolitics of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC): the subjectof Dølvik’s book. This (his doctoral dissertation) is a very detailed andinsightful account of the evolution of the ETUC and its role in the for-mation of EU social policy. As a researcher at the Norwegian trade unionresearch institute and seconded for a period to the European Trade UnionInstitute he was able to undertake an impressive range of interviews andinformal discussions with key actors, and also to participate in importantmeetings.

Like many of the contributors to the Lecher and Platzer volume,Dølvik rejects a simple fatalistic view of the obstacles to a Europeanindustrial relations system. Intergovernmental machinations, furthercomplicated by the intermediation of the Commission, create a signifi-cant field of unpredictability. The EWC directive confounds extremeEuro-pessimistic analyses; whatever its limitations (the mechanismscreated are of course in no way works councils in the German meaningof the institution and their formal competence is tokenistic), it marks a


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breakthrough in the regulatory capacity of the EU in the social arena, anda powerful symbolic victory for European labour which may well yieldpractical benefits.

Dølvik applies political science theories of path dependence to illumi-nate some of the developments which he charts. While rejecting anynotion that supranational institutions, once established, will necessarilyconsolidate their own raison d’être, he does emphasize the way in whichactors may become locked into a set of relations which biases the even-tual outcomes. This is central to his analysis of the two post-MaastrichtETUC-UNICE-CEEP agreements, on parental leave and part-timework: compromises which he sees as modest but not insignificant.

However it is Dølvik’s account of the evolution of the ETUC itselfwhich is his principal contribution. The core of his material is containedin the two longest chapters in the book, which focus on the debates withinthe ETUC over the October 1991 social partners’ agreement and thedevelopment of a negotiating strategy and structure after Maastricht. Heargues that coordinated European trade union action is constrained bythe unions’ own version of intergovernmentalism. The ETUC secretariat– in ways which parallel the politics of the European Commission – typi-cally pursues policies which would enhance its own authority and func-tions; the national confederations, whose priorities are shaped by theirown domestic circumstances, are in many cases reluctant to diminish theirown autonomy. In part there are national differences in this respect:Dølvik shows how the north European unions, with their long traditionsof elaborate collective bargaining relations at national sectoral and cross-sectoral levels, have been jealous of ceding functions to the ETUC, andhave been suspicious of the possibility that agreements reached throughEuropean social dialogue might constitute such weak lowest commondenominators that their own higher standards would be threatened. Bycontrast, unions from southern countries have tended to show moreenthusiasm for a stronger ETUC role. But there have also been shifts overtime: the growth of popular scepticism towards the elite project of Euro-pean integration – evident after Maastricht and again in more recentdebates over EMU – has forced even Euro-enthusiast unions to qualifytheir position. In the terms of Dølvik’s analysis, the ‘logic of influence’which requires a stronger supranational trade union efficacy can contra-dict the ‘logic of membership’ which requires close attention to the moreparochial concerns of the union rank and file at home.

Cross-cutting the tensions between national and supranational pri-orities within the ETUC are conflicts between a sectoral and an inter-sectoral bargaining orientation: in turn implying very different prioritiesbetween the peak-level social dialogue between the ETUC, UNICE andCEEP on the one hand, sectoral and company-level European bargain-ing on the other. Here, the fault lines have been between those trade


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union movements – notably British and German – where national con-federations have traditionally had little or no role in collective bargain-ing, and those where the confederal level has been of far greaterimportance. For the latter – both southern European and Nordic unions– the ETUC has been the logical basis for cross-national action. Con-versely, more decentralized union movements have tended to placegreater emphasis on forms of European intervention which match theirown national practice, with largely autonomous industrial unions seeingthe European industry federations (EIFs) as their primary point of refer-ence. This distinction then influences the implicit tension within theETUC involved in its dual structure of representation: national confed-erations on the one hand, EIFs on the other. This tension has on occasionbecome bitter: for example, Dølvik describes the near-explosion whenEuro-Fiet (the white-collar and private services federation) attempted tonegotiate its own separate parental leave agreement in 1995, challengingthe ETUC’s authority.

The most detailed illustration of these tensions, based on Dølvik’s ownresearch secondment to Brussels, concerns the internal political processes– particularly in 1992 and 1993 – involved in establishing a ‘bargainingorder’ for the ETUC. The reader is struck, above all, by the blow-by-blow account of the controversy illustrated by lengthy documentary quo-tations and (presumably on-the-record) interview reports in whichremarkably frank opinions are expressed. In particular, it is clear that theGerman unions (no doubt preoccupied by their own post-unificationproblems) largely neglected ETUC politics in a phase when the secre-tariat, responding to rapid developments within the Community itself,attempted to enlarge the organization’s competence substantially. We areoffered a dramatic account of the belated reaction of the DGB – itselfdriven by the newly awakened concerns of IG Metall – which succeededin curbing substantially the ‘federalist’ tendencies within European tradeunionism. In such passages, the reader is able to obtain a direct under-standing of the dynamics of cross-national trade union politics.

This is an often vivid but far from user-friendly work. It is far too long,and in places consists of a mass of undigested documentation and field-notes (not always translated into English). And there is considerableimbalance between the extended treatment of the phase when Dølvik washimself in Brussels and the much more cursory attention to some otherperiods (only a couple of pages, for example, on the ETUC’s role inrelation to the 1995–96 IGC and the Amsterdam summit). We needresearch of similar quality and sensitivity to bring the story up to date;then it might be possible to assess whether, despite all the obstacles, Euro-pean unionism is indeed unifying.

Waterman brings us back to a more global perspective. His book,consisting of essays mainly previously published in obscure locations,


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combines hard political analysis with engaging whimsicality. For muchof his life, Waterman has been engaged in the attempt to foster effectiveworker responses to economic internationalization. The lessons hedraws from his own involvement over several decades, and from longerhistorical experience, constitute a critical response to traditional tradeunion internationalism. First, the latter ‘has always combined elementsof national protectionism with those of international solidarity’ (p. 26).If internationalism is to be more than the lowest common denominatorof national trade unionisms (the cynical view of the ETUC, for example)it must be inspired by a utopian vision of a different world order. Second,the organizational model of internationalism from above, negotiatedbetween national leaderships, is inherently flawed: it does not providethe basis for effective collective action. Real internationalism mustinvolve initiative and engagement from below. Third, it is necessary tore-learn ‘the extent to which even nineteenth-century labour interna-tionalism was marked by cross-class and democratic elements’ (p. 246).Just as workers’ lives extend beyond the workplace, so effective interna-tionalism must have more than a trade union dimension. Today it ismovements concerned with peace, with the environment, with sexualpolitics which in most countries display more dynamism – and moreappeal to a new generation of potential activists – than the unions them-selves; but many in the leadership of the labour movement are deeplysuspicious of collaboration with NGOs or the development of commonprogrammes.

Waterman’s proposals for a new internationalism are summarized (pp.72–3) in 13 propositions which I give verbatim:

1. moving from the international relations of union or other officialstowards face-to-face relations of concerned labouring people at theshop-floor, community or grass-roots level;

2. surpassing dependence on the centralized, bureaucratic and rigidmodel of the pyramidal international organization by stimulating theself-empowering, decentralized, horizontal, flexible and democraticmodel of the international information network;

3. moving from an ‘aid model’ (one-way flows of money and materialfrom the ‘rich, powerful, free’ unions, workers or others), to a ‘soli-darity model’ (two-way or multidirectional flows of politicalsupport, information and ideas);

4. moving from verbal declarations, appeals and conferences to politicalactivity, creative work, visits, or direct financial contributions (whichwill continue to be necessary) by the working people concerned;

5. surpassing an ‘export solidarity’ model by practising ‘internationalsolidarity at home’, combating the local causes/effects of inter-national exploitation and oppression;


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6. generalizing the solidarity ethic by combating national, racial, politi-cal, religious, ideological and gender discrimination amongst workingpeople locally;

7. basing international solidarity on the expressed daily needs, valuesand capacities of ordinary working people, not simply on those oftheir representatives;

8. recognizing that whilst labour is not the privileged bearer of interna-tionalism, it is essential to it, and therefore links up with other demo-cratic internationalisms so as to reinforce wage-labour struggles andsurpass a workerist internationalism;

9. overcoming ideological, political and financial dependency in inter-national solidarity work by financing internationalist activities fromworker or publicly collected funds, and carrying out independentresearch activities and policy formulation;

10. replacing the political/financial coercion, the private collusion andpublic silences of the traditional internationalisms with a frank,friendly, constructive and public discourse of equals, made availableto interested workers;

11. requiring of involved intellectuals, professionals and officials thatthey are open about their own interests, motives and roles, that theyspeak with workers and take on a service and training role, ratherthan that of political leaders or official ideologists;

12. recognizing that there is no single site or level of internationalstruggle and that, whilst the shop floor, grass roots and communitymay be the base, the traditional formal terrains can be used and canalso be influenced;

13. recognizing that the development of a new internationalism requirescontributions from and discussion with labour movements in West,East and South, as well as within and between other socio-geographicregions.

The Future of Industrial Relations: Is There Life AfterGlobalization?

How do these varied publications advance our ability to answer the ques-tions raised at the outset? One response, not altogether flippant, mightbe: globalization has changed the world in different ways; it is still neces-sary to interpret it. Leaving aside the question whether ‘globalization’ isthe best label for the international restructuring of production and ofproduct and financial markets, we still do not adequately understand theanatomy of the juggernaut of global capitalism. Is it an irresistible forcewhich will crush civilized labour standards beneath its wheels; or anunwieldy vehicle likely to run into the sands of its own contradictions?


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Part of the problem with the notion of ‘global market forces’ is not onlythe ambiguity of ‘globalization’ but also the elasticity of the notion ofmarket forces. As Boyer has insisted (1996: 96–103), the idea of a markethas many different meanings (he discusses six of these), and a marketeconomy (an ensemble of institutions, commodities and forms of com-petition) can assume many different configurations. A market economy– whether national or international – is a field of cross-cutting forces andinternal tensions which rarely generates unambiguous messages to actors.Market forces, in Berger’s words (1996: 20) ‘may signal problems andprovide general pressure for change without providing unequivocal cluesabout which policies or institutions need to be altered and how’.

Such indeterminacy certainly exists in the specific context of theorganization of labour markets and the management of work. Whateverthe product market regime, employers face conflicting requirements inrelations to labour. They may perceive increasing need for economy, flexi-bility and disposability, but at the same time must sustain the competence,loyalty and commitment necessary for ‘quality’ performance. In manyrespects the classic contradictions involved in the ambiguous commoditystatus of labour become accentuated in the ‘neo-liberal firm’ (Coutrot,1998): a schizophrenic effort to intensify the elements both of ‘status’ andof ‘contract’ (Streeck, 1987) in the employment relationship. The possi-bility of defending old and establishing new forms of regulation is rootedin this confusion.

A general problem with much contemporary analysis is an excessiveeconomic determinism. Whatever the economic concerns and constraintsaffecting government policies, these also reflect a political logic. Even ifresponsive to external market pressures, most governments are no less sen-sitive to the imperatives of the domestic electoral cycle. In other words,there is a delicate task of reconciling external and internal popularity.

Here, the mythic aspect of globalization can become a self-fulfillingprophecy. Governments can mobilize assent to policies of job loss,welfare cuts and labour market deregulation on the grounds that ‘there isno alternative’. Yet impotence is itself a political choice, either ideologi-cally driven or reflecting a shrewd calculation that majorities can be builtupon those who see advantages (price stability, lower taxes) in such poli-cies. (One may add that relative impotence may be institutionalized byprior political decisions: for example, the policy autonomy of a centralbank, now being consolidated at EU level.) We may also note Streeck’scomment (1996: 313) that ‘the European state appears obsolete and aliveat the same time: obsolete as the wielder of sovereignty over “its”economy, and powerfully alive as the most effective opponent to therecreation of effective sovereignty at the international level’.

This makes it an important political task to encourage a critical responseto globalization arguments. If the alternative appears to be social and


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political meltdown, financial markets seem able to show some indulgenceto heterodox economic policies on the part of nation-states. Surrender toexternal economic pressures is the line of least resistance for governmentsfacing little effective opposition to neo-liberal policy choices. The ques-tion is thus why (with a few notable exceptions) most governments havebeen able to foreclose or sideline opposition to such policies. To an impor-tant extent the answer is the failure of opponents to mobilize around per-suasive alternatives – at both national and supranational levels – and toconstruct a coherent constituency around the losers from such policies. Orrather, the politics of rejection are typically associated with nationalismsof the worst kind, regressive and reactionary, rather than oriented to analternative future. There is an absence of utopian vision.

What is the potential role of labour as the bearer of such a project? Insome respects, union strategies at EU level have been side-tracked by mis-placed analogies with national industrial relations: in particular, thepursuit of European-level collective bargaining and ‘political exchange’.Attempts to establish transnational collective bargaining confront prob-lems of the articulation of a common agenda; employer resistance (nor-mally reflecting a preference for ‘divide and rule’ tactics); and thedifficulties of organizing transnational collective action in support ofunion demands. Attempts to establish transnational ‘political exchange’confront problems of the weakness of the European quasi-state; the limi-tations of the consensual model of ‘social partnership’ which givesemployers a virtual veto power; and the tendency for Euro-politics togenerate ‘lowest common denominator’ outcomes.

Yet are there strategic alternatives? Is there any possibility of defend-ing and extending social regulation in Europe? At the heart of theproblem of transnational European trade unionism is the weakness of astrategy entailing a bureaucratic mode of action, almost wholly detachedfrom members; compounded in turn by the fact that European inte-gration is an elite project, detached from ‘public opinion’. There is anurgent need to reconfigure intra- and inter-union politics so as to re-establish links between involvement at European level and the under-standing, support, and willingness to act of union members and membersof civil society more generally.

Perhaps above all else, unions need to do more to activate the mostelusive basis of social regulation, the influence of social norms and values.Effective union action requires material resources and strategic intelli-gence, but success has typically depended also on the capacity to mobi-lize identification and support by inspiring hearts and minds. In otherwords, unions have needed to colonize, and to reshape, civil society.

Effective collective action is to an important extent a battle of ideas.Many of the old organizing rhetorics of trade unionism are exhausted,and to withstand the supranational threats to their regulatory capacity


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European unions must make ‘social Europe’ a genuinely popular ideal.The vacuum at the centre of the EU is only partly one of institutionalcompetence; it is also (as perhaps the notion of a democratic deficit sug-gests) the absence of a supranational civil society. Its creation could be afitting task for European trade unions. Its achievement requires above allelse the mobilization of opinion (and outrage, as was seen in the case ofVilvoorde), and the development of strategic alliances with social move-ments at European level, in the manner suggested in Waterman’s volume.

NOTES1 Interestingly – and significantly for the theme of this article – these authors

differ radically in the political conclusions drawn from similar analyses.Ohmae (1990: x) depicts a benign vision of consumer sovereignty in a freeglobal market where ‘multinational companies are truly the servants ofdemanding consumers’ and where government regulation has virtually nolegitimate function. Reich, by contrast (1991: 186), dismisses the idea of afree market as ‘pure fantasy’ since (echoing Durkheim and Polanyi) anymarket operates according to rules which reflect socio-political choices.

2 As Elger and Smith indicate (1994: 45), MNCs can ‘choose relocation sites,and disaggregate the production chain so that investment flows to differentsocieties to capitalize on different factor advantages, whether these be skilleddesign engineers or cheap female labour’. In this respect, ‘globalization’ mayactually reinforce cross-national differentiation of labour market regimes.For a systematic discussion of the relocation issue, with specific reference torecent debates in France and Germany, see Ferner (1998).

3 For a summary of the arguments in the 1996/97 report see Lee (1996).4 To mention a few: in discussing industrial relations institutions it is surely

necessary to consider such arrangements as the closed shop (wheremembership ceases to be a matter of choice) and the check-off (wherenumbers may be sustained by inertia); in examining the role of the state,active labour market policy requires discussion. An oddity: there are twotables on union density (pp. 24, 145) which are virtually the same except thattheir baselines are 1973 and 1970 respectively; not surprisingly, the statisticsare almost identical except for an error in the case of Switzerland and agenuine and remarkable jump in the case of Finland, which merits explicitdiscussion.

REFERENCESBerger, S. (1996) ‘Introduction’, in S. Berger and R. Dore (eds) National

Diversity and Global Capitalism, pp. 1–25. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Boyer, R. (1996) ‘State and Market: A New Engagement for the Twenty-First

Century?’, in R. Boyer and D. Drache (eds) States Against Markets: TheLimits of Globalization, pp. 84–114. London: Routledge.

Boyer, R. and Drache, D. (1996) ‘Introduction’, in R. Boyer and D. Drache


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(eds) States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalization, pp. 1–27. London:Routledge.

Burbach, R., Núñez, O. and Kagarlitsky, B. (1997) Globalization and itsDiscontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms. London: Pluto.

Coutrot, T. (1998) L’entreprise néo-libérale, nouvel utopie capitaliste?. Paris: laDécouverte.

Elger, T. and Smith, C. (1994) ‘Global Japanization? Convergence andCompetition in the Organization of the Labour Process’, in T. Elger and C.Smith (eds) Global Japanization? The Transnational Transformation of theLabour Process, pp. 31–59. London: Routledge.

Ferner, A. (1998) ‘Multinationals, “Relocation” and Employment in Europe’, inJ. Gual (ed.) Job Creation: The Role of Labour Market Institutions, pp.165–96. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Fröbel, F., Heinrichs, J. and Kreye, O. (1977) Die neue internationaleArbeitsteilung. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1996) Globalization in Question: The International

Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press.Kochan, T.A., Lansbury, R.D. and MacDuffie, J.P., eds (1997) After Lean

Production: Evolving Employment Practices in the World Auto Industry.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Lee, E. (1996) ‘Globalization and Employment: Is Anxiety Justified?’,International Labour Review 135(5): 485–97.

Mahnkopf, B. and Altvater, E. (1995) ‘Transmission Belts of TransnationalCompetition? Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining in the Context ofEuropean Integration’, European Journal of Industrial Relations 1(1): 101–17.

Ohmae, K. (1990) The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the InterlinkedEconomy. New York: Harper.

Panitch, L. (1994) ‘Globalisation and the State’, Socialist Register: 60–93.Regini, M. (1997) ‘Still Engaging in Corporatism? Recent Italian Experience in

Comparative Perspective’, European Journal of Industrial Relations 3(3):259–78.

Reich, R.B. (1991) The Work of Nations. New York: Vintage.Ruigkrok, W. and van Tulder, R. (1995) The Logic of International

Restructuring. London: Routledge.Scott, A., ed. (1997) ‘Introduction – Globalization: Social Process or Political

Rhetoric?’, in A. Scott (ed.) The Limits of Globalization: Cases andArguments, pp. 1–22. London: Routledge.

Standing, G. (1997) ‘Globalization, Labour Flexibility and Insecurity: The Eraof Market Regulation’, European Journal of Industrial Relations 3(1): 7–37.

Streeck, W. (1987) ‘The Uncertainties of Management in the Management ofUncertainty’, Work, Employment and Society 1(3): 281–308.

Streeck, W. (1996) ‘Public Power Beyond the Nation-State’, in R. Boyer and D.Drache (eds) States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalization, pp.299–315. London: Routledge.

RICHARD HYMAN is editor of the European Journal of Industrial Relations.


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Documents

National Industrial Relations Systems and Transnational ... · Anthony Ferner and Richard Hyman (eds), Changing Industrial Relations in Europe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 550 pp. International