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This article analyzes conflicts in the 1980s over the decentralization of bargaining between labor and capital in Sweden and Germany. The analysis highlights the role of institutional arrangements, some of them previously “dormant” politically, that mediated common pressures to enhance plant-level flexibility. Whereas the drive for plant flexibility in Sweden contributed to the demise of traditional bargaining arrangements, similar pressures in Germany were more successfully accommodated within its “dual” system. In both cases, institutional links among different levels and arenas of bargaining shaped the strategic interactions of labor and capital in ways that either complicated (Sweden) or facilitated (Germany) the search for compromise within traditional bargaining institutions. While confirming the central role of institutions in explaining cross-national variation in outcomes, the analysis also adds a dynamic element to institutional analysis, highlighting how changing substantive interests of political actors interact with preexisting institutions to produce distinctive patterns of stability and change.
Kathleen Thelen (Fri,) studied this question.