Apples and Oranges Revisited: Contextualized Comparisons and the Study of Comparative Labor Politics

Politics & Society

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 1995, Pages 337-367

  Locke, Richard M ^a   Thelen, Kathleen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84972746971     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329295023003004     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. For more on union membership trends across various countries, see Jelle Visser, “Trends in Trade Union Membership,” OECD Employment Outlook (1991): 97-134.
2. For more on the divergent outcomes manifest across different national industrial relations systems, see Richard Locke, Thomas Kochan, and Michael Piore, eds., Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
3. Andrew Martin, “Wage Bargaining and Swedish Politics: The Political Implications of the End of Central Negotiations” (Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies Working Paper No. 36, Harvard University, 1991).
4. Richard M. Locke, “Eppure Si Tocca: The Abolition of the Scala Mobile,” in Italian Politics: Ending the First Republic, edited by Carol Mershon and Gianfranco Pasquino (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), 185-96.
5. The institutional approach to the study of labor fits into a broader literature in political science that emphasizes the role of historically evolved institutional arrangements in shaping political outcomes. Examples of this type of work include Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
6. Peter Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
7. Peter Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978);
8. David Soskice, “Reinterpreting Corporatism and Explaining Unemployment: Coordinated and Non-coordinated Market Economies,” in Labour Relations and Economic Performance, edited by Renato Brunetta and Carlo Dell'Aringa (London: Macmillan, 1990), 170-211;
9. Wolfgang Streeck, Social Institutions and Economic Performance: Studies of Industrial Relations in Advanced Capitalist Economies (London: Sage, 1992);
10. John Zysman, Governments, Markets and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).
11. Political constructionism is the name we give to a body of scholarship which emphasizes the identities of economic actors and the “embeddedness” of institutional arrangements. Within this second approach, the labor literature also draws on a broader intellectual tradition, represented in the works of, among others, Horst Kern, Michael Piore, Charles Sabel, Joan Scott, William Sewell, Roberto Unger, and Jonathan Zeitlin. See, for example, Horst Kern and Charles Sabel, “Trade Unions and Decentralized Production: A Sketch of Strategic Problems in the West German Labor Movement,” Politics & Society 19 (1991): 373-402;
12. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide (New York: Basic Books, 1984);
13. Joan Wallach Scott, “On Gender, Language, and Working-Class History,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988);
14. William H. Sewell, “Toward A Post-Materialist Rhetoric for Labor History,” in Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and Class Analysis, edited by Leonard R. Berlanstein (Champagne-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 15-38;
15. Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization,” Past and Present 108 (August 1985): 133-74.
16. On bargaining decentralization, see, for example, Peter Lange, Michael Wallerstein, and Miriam Golden, “The End of Corporatism? Wage Setting in the Nordic and Germanic Countries,” in Workers of Nations: Industrial Relations in a Global Economy, edited by Sanford Jacoby (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995);
17. Torben Iversen, “Power, Flexibility, and the Breakdown of Centralized Wage Bargaining: The Cases of Denmark and Sweden in Comparative Perspective” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 1992);
18. Kathleen Thelen, “West European Labor in Transition: Sweden and Germany Compared,” World Politics 46 (October 1993): 23-49.
19. On work reorganization, see Harry C. Katz and Charles F. Sabel, “Industrial Relations and Industrial Adjustment in the Car Industry,” Industrial Relations 24 (Fall 1985): 295-315;
20. Lowell Turner, Democracy at Work: Changing World Markets and the Future of Labor Unions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
21. Kathleen Thelen, Union of Parts: Labor Politics in Postwar Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), chap. 9.
22. Robert Boyer, The Search for Labor Market Flexibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). For more on how employers pursue different mixes of these practices in different national contexts, see Locke et al., eds., Employment Relations.
23. Charles F. Sabel, Work and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
24. Victoria Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993);
25. Gary B. Herrigel, Industrial Constructions: The Sources of German Industrial Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming);
26. Richard M. Locke, Remaking the Italian Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
27. A more sustained discussion of the differences between these two approaches—and the strengths and weaknesses of each—appears in Richard Locke and Kathleen Thelen, “The Shifting Boundaries of Labor Politics: New Directions for Comparative Research and Theory” (Center for European Studies Working Paper Series No. 44, Harvard University, 1994).
28. Michael J. Piore, “Fragments of a ‘Sociological’ Theory of Wages,” American Economic Review Proceedings 63 (May 1973): 377-84.
29. For more on the Swedish model, see Andrew Martin, “Trade Unions in Sweden: Strategic Responses to Change and Crisis,” in Unions and Economic Crisis, edited by Peter Gourevitch et al. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984): 191-359
30. Peter Swenson, Fair Shares: Unions, Pay, and Politics in Sweden and West Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
31. The best analysis of these events appears in Jonas Pontusson and Peter Swenson, “Labor Markets, Production Strategies, and Wage Bargaining Institutions: The Swedish Employer Offensive in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Political Studies (forthcoming), on which we draw here.
32. For a chronology of events, see Martin, “Wage Bargaining and Swedish Politics,” and Lange et al., “The End of Corporatism?”
33. “Collective Bargaining in Transition,” European Industrial Relations Review 234 (July 1993): 15-16.
34. See Andrew Martin, “The Reconfiguration of the Swedish Model,” in Locke et al, eds., Employment Relations, 265-96.
35. See Jonas Pontusson, “The Politics of New Technology and Job Redesign: A Comparison of Volvo and British Leyland,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 11 (1990): 311-36.
36. This point appears to be reinforced by the apparent lack of conflict over the closing of Volvo's innovative (in terms of work organization) Kalmar and Uddevalla plants. For more on these innovations, see Christian Berggren, Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Automobile Industry (Ithaca, NY: Industrial and Labor Relations Press, 1992). For more on the closing of these plants, see Bob Hancke, “The Volvo Plant in Uddevalla” (Unpublished manuscript, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1993).
37. Iversen, “Power, Flexibility, and the Breakdown of Centralized Wage Bargaining.”
38. Peter Swenson, “Labor and the Limits of the Welfare State,” Comparative Politics 23 (1991): 379-99.
39. See Pontusson and Swenson, “Labor Markets, Production Strategies” 32-33;
40. Scott Lash “The End of Neo-Corporatism” British Journal of Industrial Relations 23 (1985): 222;
41. Martin, “Wage Bargaining and Swedish Politics,” 36;
42. Rianne Mahon, ‘Lonetagare’ and ‘Medarbetare’? The Swedish Unions Confront the ‘Double Shift’ (Paper presented at the workshop on “The Changing Place of Labor in European Society: The End of Labor's Century?,” (Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 23-24 November 1991), 10-11, 21-22.
43. Swenson, Fair Shares, 14, 68-69.
44. Pontusson and Swenson, “Labor Markets, Production Strategies”
45. However, the union also stresses that all workers should have opportunities to “develop” in their work, that is, to move to more challenging and thus better paid jobs. See Landsorganisationen, Det Utvecklande Artetet (A Report to the 1991 LO Congress) (Stockholm: LO, 1991), esp. chap. 7, or A Translation of Extracts from “Work and Fulfillment”: A Report to the 1991 LO Congress (Stockholm: LO, July 1991), 65.
46. Interview with Ingemar Gõransson, one of the authors of the “good work” policy. See also the published interview with Goransson in Andreas Drinkuth and Bernd Kassebaum, eds., “Ohne die Beschäftigten geht es nicht”: Arbeitsstrukturen und Mitarbeiterbeteiligung im Internationalen Vergleich (Cologne: Bund Verlag, 1994), 165-83.
47. Landsorganisationen, Wage Policy for the Future: Summary of a Report to the 1991 LO Congress (Stockholm: LO, 1991), 14, 18.
48. See Peter J. Katzenstein, Industry and Politics in West Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989);
49. Thelen, Union of Parts’, Turner, Democracy at Work; and Lowell Turner, “Social Partnership in the Global Economy: Crisis and Reform in Unified Germany” (Unpublished book manuscript, ILR School, Cornell University, 1994).
50. For a full analysis of the conflict over working time reduction, see Thelen, Union of Parts, chap. 7.
51. Lowell Turner, “Transformation in the East: Crisis, Modernization, and the Resilience of Social Partnership” (Paper presented at the conference, “The Political Economy of the New Germany,” Cornell University, 14-15 October 1994).
52. For an alternative perspective, see Richard Locke, “Becoming One? Institutional Transfer and Social Identity in East German Industrial Relations” (Paper presented at the workshop on “European Political Economy and Institutional Analysis,” Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 18-19 November 1994).
53. See Katz and Sabel, “Industrial Relations and Industrial Adjustment”; Wolfgang Streeck, “Successful Adjustment to Turbulent Markets: The Automobile Industry,” in Katzenstein, ed., Industry and Politics in West Germany: 295-315; Turner, Democracy at Work; and Thelen, Union of Parts, chap. 9.
54. See, for example, David Finegold and David Soskice, “The Failure of Training in Britain: Analysis and Prescription,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 4 (Autumn 1988).
55. For a dissenting view, see Gary Herrigel, “A Surprise Crisis in German Decentralized Production: Unexpected Rigidity and the Challenge of an Alternative Form of Flexible Organization in the 1990s” (Paper prepared for the conference on “The Political Economy of the New Germany,” Cornell University, 14-15 October 1994).
56. Wolfgang Streeck, “Co-determination: After Four Decades,” Chapter 5 in Streeck, Social Institutions and Economic Performance: 137-68.
57. Thelen, Union of Parts, 82.
58. Wolfgang Streeck, “Gewerkschaftsorganisation und Industrielle Beziehungen: Einige Stabilitätsprobleme Industriegewerkschaftlslicher Interessenvertretung und ihre Lõsung im System der Industriellen Beziehungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (IIM Discussion Paper 79-30, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, 1979). Beyond this, there is the (institutional) problem posed by the failure of many Eastern employers to join the national employers’ association. This phenomenon has a destabilizing effect on centralized bargaining, which is sustained in part by the encompassingness of the bargaining partners and their ability to enforce national settlements within their own ranks.
59. See Fritz W. Scharpf, “Beschäftigungsorientierte Strukturpolitik” (IIM-LMP Discussion Paper 80-42, International Institute of Management, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, 1980)
60. Paul Windolf and Hans-Willy Hohn, Arbeitsmarktchancen in der Krise: Betriebliche Rekrutierung und Soziale Schließung (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1984)
61. Gõsta Esping-Anderson's work on social stratification in Germany points to a similar pattern, contrasting Sweden's universalistic programs with Germany's welfare system, which links benefits to employment. He argues that while “Germany's slim postindustrial economy has produced deproletarianization and pervasive upgrading & it is in the growing divide between the insiders and outsiders that a second, new axis may evolve. In the context of employmentless growth, the high wages and strong job tenure rights that are enjoyed by the insiders actively help reinforce the barriers to job entry; and with a strong helping hand from welfare state transfer programs, the outsider population of early retirees and long-term unemployed has been added to the large proportion of housewives and other groups discouraged from the labor market” (Gõsta Esping-Anderson, “Postindustrial Cleavage Structures: A Comparison of Evolving Patterns of Social Stratification in Germany, Sweden, and the United States,” in Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies, edited by Frances Fox Piven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 164.
62. See especially Hans-Willy Hohn, Von der Einheitsgewerkschaft zum Betriebssyndikalismus: Soziale Schließung im Dualen System der Interessenvertretung (Berlin: Sigma Rainer Bohn Verlag, 1988).
63. Stephen Silvia's analysis of contemporary German labor politics also emphasizes growing segmentalism in the labor market. See Silvia, “Between Pattern and Participation: German Industrial Relations Since 1980,” Draft chapter for Andrew Martin, George Ross et al., The Changing Place of Labor in European Society, n.d. For an analysis of Germany's below-average rate of female participation in the labor market (and low levels of union membership among women) before unification, see Jonas Pontusson, “Trade Unions and the Representation of Worker Interests in Corporatist Political Economies” (Paper presented to the Ninth International Conference of Europeanists, Palmer House, Chicago, March/April 1994). For an analysis of the impact of unification itself on female employment in the former German Democratic Republic, see also Michael Fichter, “Institutional Transfer and Institutionalization in Unified Germany: The Case of the Unions” (Paper prepared for presentation at the conference, “The Political Economy of the New Germany,” Cornell University, 14-15 October 1994), 32.
64. For more on the scala mobile and Italian union strategy during these years, see Peter Lange and Maurizio Vannicelli, “Strategy under Stress: The Italian Union Movement and the Italian Crisis in Developmental Perspective,” in Unions, Change and Crisis, edited by Peter Lange, George Ross, and Maurizio Vannicelli (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 95-206.
65. For more on the importance of egalitarianism in the Italian union movement, see Aris Accornero, La Parabola del Sindacato (Bologna, Italy: II Mulino, 1992).
66. Robert J. Flanagan, David W. Soskice, and Llyod Ulman, Unionism, Economic Stabilization and Incomes Policies: European Experience (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), 543.
67. Lorenzo Bordogna, “The COB AS fragmentation of trade-union representation and conflict,” in Italian Politics: A Review, Vol. 3, edited by Robert Leonardi and Piergiorgio Corbetta (London: Pinter, 1989), 50-65.
68. For more on this, see Peter Lange, “The End of an Era: The Wage Indexation Referendum of 1985,” in Robert Leonardi and Raffaela Y. Nanetti, eds., Italian Politics: A Review, Vol 1 (London: Pinter, 1986): 29-46.
69. See Richard M. Locke, “Eppure Si Tocca.”
70. Ida Regalia and Marino Regini, “Between Voluntarism and Institutionalism: Industrial Relations and Human Resource Practices in Italy,” in Locke et al, eds., Employment Relations.
71. For more on the situation at Fiat, see Richard M. Locke and Serafino Negrelli, “II caso Fiat Auto,” in Strategie di Riaggiustamento Industriale, edited by Marino Regini and Charles F. Sabel (Bologna, Italy: II Mulino, 1989), 61-94.
72. See various essays in Regini and Sabel, eds., Strategie di Riaggiustamento Industrial, for more on this.
73. Bruno Ravasio, “Ristrutturazione Industriale e Contrattazione degli Orari nel Settore Tessile e Abbigliamento” (Paper presented at the Conference on “Flessibilita ‘Degli Orari,” Milan, 10 April 1987).
74. Emilio Reyneri, “The Italian Labor Market: Between State Control and Social Regulation,” in State, Market, and Social Regulation: New Perspectives on Italy, edited by Peter Lange and Marino Regini (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 129-46.
75. Aris Accornero, “Sindacato e Rivoluzione Sociale: Il Caso Degli Anni ’70,” Laboratorio Politico 4 (1981): 5-34.
76. Accornero, La Parabola del Sindacato; and Alberto Baidissera, “Alle Origini della Politica della Disuguaglianza nell'Italia degli Anni ‘80: La Marcia dei Quarantamila,” Quaderni di Sociologia 31 (1984): 1-78.
77. This system is described in Peter B. Doeringer and Michael J. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1971); and Michael Piore, “Fragments of a ‘Sociological’ Theory of Wages.”
78. See Michael Goldfield, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987);
79. Joel Rogers, “Divide and Conquer: Further ‘Reflections on the Distinctive Character of American Labor Laws’,” Wisconsin Law Review 1(1990): 1-147.
80. This section relies heavily on Michael J. Piore, “American Labor and the Industrial Crisis,” Challenge 25 (March/April 1982): 5-11.
81. For more on this link, see Piore and Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide; and Harry Katz, Shifting Gears: Changing Labor Relations in the U.S. Automobile Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).
82. Howell John Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).
83. Katz, Shifting Gears.
84. See Thomas Kochan, Harry Katz, and Robert McKersie, The Transformation of American Industrial Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1986);
85. Turner, Democracy at Work.
86. See Harry Katz, “Policy Debates over Work Reorganization in North American Unions,” in New Technology and Industrial Relations, edited by Richard Hyman and Wolfgang Streeck (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 220-32.
87. For more on these compensation packages in the automobile industry, see Katz, Shifting Gears; in the steel industry, see John P. Hoerr, And the Wolf Finally Came (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988). Competition between the United Automobile Workers union and the United Steelworkers union is described by Hoerr in chapter 8 of his book.
88. Piore, “Fragments of a ‘Sociological’ Theory,” 376.
89. See the vast literature on democratic corporatism, for example, Philippe C. Schmitter, “Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America,” in Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe: 287-330;
90. Harold Wilensky, The “New Corporatism’: Centralization and the Welfare State, Contemporary Political Sociology Series 06-020 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976), among many others. Recent work by Jonas Pontusson, by contrast, explores differences between the Swedish and German models.
91. See Pontusson, “Between Neoliberalism and the German Model: Swedish Capitalism in Transition” (Paper presented to the workshop on “European Political Economy and Institutional Analysis,” Berlin, 19-20 June, 1995).