INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS THEORY

AND THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT
MICHAEL
SHALEV*

THEORY
A N D COMPARISON
I N INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS
Interest in what is usually known as ‘the problems theory’ in industrial relations has
been mounting in recent years,’ particularly in Britain.* Actually, there are really three
problems which have been taken up. The first concerns the state of industrial relations
theorising-do we need a systematic core of theory, and if we do, are the available
contributions satisfactory? Secondly, as Cox has succinctly put it, the dominant strands
of industrial relations theory are ‘problem solving in intent, positivist in epistemology,
and functionalist in m e t h ~ d ’ Crudely,
.~ the question raised is whether industrial rela-
tions theory should be ‘reformist’ and built on assumptionsof consensus and stability, or
‘critical’ and rest o n assumptions of conflict and change. A third problem, often only
latent but no less pressing, is one of disciplinary boundaries. Does the study of industrial
relations constitute a legitimate intellectual pigeon-hole? More specifically, d o the
theoretical underpinnings of the field justify its separate existence?
All three of the above issues are important and bear further discussion.“ But an
equally important problem, which has received surprisingly little attention, concerns the
means by which knowledge and understanding of industrial relations can be advanced.
A fundamental premise of Dunlop’s Industrial Relations Systems was that the field
should drop its preoccupation with institutional characteristics in favour of a concern for
the manner in which outcomes (the rules formulated by the parties) reflect needs
imposed by objective (economic, technical, political) constraints in the environment of
labour-management relation^.^ Consequently, Dunlop favoured an analytical approach
based on comparisons (over time and across nations), rather than a problem-solving
approach built on description.
I think that Dunlop erred in regarding rules as the most important ‘output’ of the system,
and also in insisting that conflict and change are aberrations from rather than central
characteristics of the relations between workers and employers. I also think that Dunlop
was mistaken in implying that the contexts of industrial relations are given (not t o be
exogenously explained) and that they play a more or less determinate role in the
production of system outcomes. T h e social, economic, and political environment can b e
more fruitfully seen as interacting with, and therefore as analytically inseparable from
labour relationsperse. But these and other serious reservations aside, it seems t o me
that Dunlop made an important and correct strategic choice-namely, that to acquire
theoretical wisdom in industrial relations would necessitate the adoption of a compara-
tive approach.
It is perhaps surprising that, despite attempts initiated by the International Institute of
Labour Studies to reorient the field along these lines, the comparative study of industrial
relations continues to play a relatively insignificant role in the discipline. Furthermore,
such comparative work as has been produced is rarely if ever self-consciously theoretical
in either purpose or method. ‘Theorising’ is here construed to mean either that scholars
would use comparative analysis as a means of verifyingapriori hypotheses, or that they
would seek to produce abstract generalisations derived from research findings in a
variety of national contexts. Whether deductive or inductive, such theorising would
address itself to identifying the causes of similarities and differences in the development,

Lecturer, Department of Labour Studies, Tel-Aviv University.

26
 I N D U S T R I A L R E L A T I O N S THEORY 27
structure and dynamics of salient characteristics of industrial relations systems. I have in
mind here characteristics such as the following: Why has a mass workingclass party
failed to emerge in the United States? Similarly, how is one to account for the
traditionally greater ideological radicalism of Norwegian socialism compared with the
social-democratic movements of Sweden and Denmark?’ What is the relationship
between labour market conditions and the emergence of collective bargaining as a
mechanism of job regulation?8 Under what political conditions do governments receive
the co-operation of union movements in programmesof wage restraint? By comparison
between more and less ‘advanced’ national cases, what predictions can be generated as
to future patterns of industrial relations?’O Finally, how can we explain the differential
rates and forms of strike activity characteristic of different countries?
The last of these questions is the one which I propose to concentrate upon here, by
surveying some of the major current forms of explanation of cross-national variations
in strike incidence.’’ But the focus will then be broadened to encompass the field of
comparative industrial relations generally. Recent evaluations of industrial relations
theory have been primarily concerned either with the battle over ‘meta-theory’ or
with the methodological weaknesses of currently popular theories. In both cases there
has been a regrettable tendency to define as theory only those contributions (most
notably those of Dunlop and his imitators) which are self-consciously theoretical in
purpose. This has meant that the comparative industrial field has gone virtually
unnoticed, and potentially fruitful theoretical contributions have been ignored because
of their implicit and unsystematic formulation. The latter part of this paper provides
some indications of the theoretical richness of comparative studies.

WHY STRIKE RATESDIFFER-THREEEXPLANATIONS

Of the three types of explanation to be considered-institutional, infrastructural, and
political-only the first has emanated from scholars whose primary academic identifica-
tion is with industrial relations. The name most evidently associated with the institu-
tional school is that of the late Arthur Ross. In Changing Patterns oflndustn‘al Conflict’*
Ross was primarily concerned with the past and future course of strike activity in the
longue durke, viewed from an international perspective.
While many of his conclusions-especially the famous ‘withering away’
hypothesis-have been justifiably criticised, it is worth noting that in explicitly employ-
ing the comparative method, Ross made a rare departure from the more conventional
(but theoretically arid) ‘comparative’ format pioneered by Marquand,13which consists
of unconnected surveys of industrial relations phenomena in a variety of countries. (For
a recent example of this side-by-side format, see Dunlop and Galenson.)“
Ross and Hartman’s conclusions can be seen essentially as a series of ‘tendency
statements,’ to use the term adopted by Eldridgets in his valuable summary. More
salient for present purposes is the less evident theoretical perspective which underlies
their generalisations. This perspective harks back to the great debate over union wage
policy of thirty years ago, in which Ross took the position that union demands are
grounded essentially in social and psychological forces endogenous to industrial rela-
tions. In a subsequent article on industrial conflict, Ross and Irwin argued in this vein
that the strike had ‘maintained a vigorous existence’ in the U.S. because union officials
felt ‘impelled to utilise it to solve their own political problems and facilitate the survival
and growth of the organisations they lead’.I6 In the low-strike nations of Britain and
Sweden, on the other hand, unions and their leaders were relatively free of the pressures
of employer resistance, internal disunity (jurisdictional and factional), and decentral-
ised competitive bargaining.
When in 1960 the trend of the intervening years towards increasing labour-
management accommodation in the U.S. wasconsidered by Ross and Hartman together
28 BRITISH J O U R N A L O F I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

with an apparent long-term decline of strike activity in Northern Europe, Ross claimed
to discern a nearly universal historical tendency towards the disappearance of overt
industrial conflict.
At the level of cross-national differences, Ross remained faithful to his original
conception of the strike as a critical resource of union leaders in ‘political’ (with a small
‘p’) struggles. Briefly, countries with stable and unified union movements accepted by
employers and locked into centralised and well-developed collective bargaining
machinery were those which enjoyed the greatest peace in industry. But there was a
second, albeit less developed facet of Ross’s analysis, in which he broke out of the
confines of institutionalism and ventured into the realm of politics with a capital ‘P’.
Here Ross and Hartman appear to have taken their cue from Knowles, who noted in his
seminal study of British strikes that ‘statesman-like’ trade union leaders, recognising the
superiority of government fiscal policy over collective bargaining, felt a need ‘to put the
strike weapon into cold storage’.17This tendency was particularly evident during periods
of Labour Party rule.
Ross and Hartman argued similarly, but from a comparative standpoint, that ‘the
existence of a labour party with close trade union affiliations is perhaps the greatest
deterrent to the use of the strike’.18Their reasoning was that in the post-Keynsian era,
unions were recognising that ‘the state can influence the workers’ economic welfare
more powerfully through tax policy, public spending, economic planning, and social
welfare legislation than the unions can affect it through collective bargaining’. Political
action was also more effective than the strike because unions find it less costly, both
financially and organisationally.

Contemporary Institutional Analyses

While Ross and Hartmans’s contribution has subsequently been discredited by the
evident bankruptcy of the ‘withering away’ thesis, key elements of their cross-national
analysis continue to be echoed in more recent works. The significance of the political
arena has been emphasised in a number of contemporary theories which will be
discussed later. But it is interesting that as early as 1959 (when Ross first outlined the
content of Changing Patterns) he was taken to task by Kassalow for paying insufficient
attention to the role of ‘the political-legislative arena’.lg Kassalow argued that ‘the lack
of a clearly defined labour political party necessarily will continue to throw heavy
burdens on the collective bargaining process in the U.S.’, and that accordingly Ross was
mistaken in expecting institutional maturation to transpose European levels of indus-
trial conflict to the American scene. He also extended his critique to the wider issue of
types of explanation in comparative industrial relations, arguing that ‘it is misleading to
attribute . . . independent institutional status’ to industrial relations systems. ‘Actually a
study of the social, economic and political substructure is far more critical for an
understanding of unionism and labour relations.’20
Yet in a recent comparative analysis of his own,**Kassalow-without citing Ross and
Hartman-remains remarkably faithful to their precepts. Among the factors to which
Kassalow attributes the greater intensity of industrial conflict in the U S . , compared
with continental Europe, are differences in the rate of unionisation, employer militancy,
the coverage and scope of collective bargaining, and the relative importance of private
bargaining versus state intervention in job regulation. While such factors as labour
politics and ideology or the impact of foreign competition are also noted, Kassalow’s
paper actually concludes by emphasising the significance of ‘purely industrial-relations
elements’ as opposed to ‘broad social and economic forces’.
Clegg’s recent book, Trade Unionism under Collective Bargaining, even more closely
harkens back to the ‘pure’ institutional strand of Ross’s analysis. Clegg’s starting point is
that, in view of the dominance of joint employer-union regulation over other methods of
fixing the terms of employment, ‘Differences in union behaviour can today be explained
 I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS THEORY 29
by differences in collective bargaining.’22And ‘dealings between unions and govern-
ments’, except where the latter are acting in the role of employer, are specifically
excluded from the definition of collective bargaining. Clegg then defines a number of
‘dimensions’ referring to the organisation and scope of national collective bargaining
systems, which are adduced as the causes of behavioural variations such as differences in
the level and character of strike activity.
In the event, many of Clegg’s theoretical propositions are little more than defini-
tional. For example, the predominantly small-scale, ‘official’ and ‘constitutional’
character of American strikes is linked to the fact that collective bargaining is mainly
carried out at the plant level. And the relative infrequency of work stoppages in Sweden
is explained by the fact that the ‘system of collective bargaining is carefully designed to
minimise the likelihood of strikes’.23 Clegg admits to some of the contradictions which
inevitably emerge from this type of reasoning. For example, wildcat strikes are more
prevalent in the U.S.than in Sweden or Germany, even though in all three countries
unions are committed to ‘no-strike’ clauses in collective agreements. But he explains this
as an indirect consequence of America’s decentralised bargaining structure, which is
said to promote factionalism within the unions and hence recourse to unofficial strikes
for internal political reasons.
Clegg’s predisposition to equate institutional characteristics with behavioural out-
comes renders his ‘theory’ of strikes little more than a mechanical restatement of some
of Ross and Hartman’s ‘tendency statements’. He makes no attempt to trace the origins
of national variations in bargaining structures and characteristics, except for throw-
away lines such as ‘the structure and attitudes of employers’ associations and manage-
ment are the main direct influences’.*‘ I would argue that collective bargaining
arrangements are reflections of the distribution of power and the outcomes of conflicts
between labour movements (unions and parties), employers and the state at the time
these arrangements came into being. In so far as they subsequently acquire a degree of
‘functional autonomy’, the institutions of industrial relations should still occupy no more
than the position of intervening variables in comparative theories, the task of causal
explanation being reserved (as both Dunlop and Kassalow have argued) for factors in
the social, political and economic environment.

THEARGUMENT
FROM INFRASTRUCTURE

It is very much this kind of argument which underpins the theory recently outlined by
Ingham in his comparative study of strikes in Britain and Scandinavia. Ingham seeks to
make the case that, in order to explain variations in both institutional structures and
levels of conflict institutionalisation, it is desirable to adopt a Marxist rather than
functionalist perspective. Such a perspective suggests focusing on ‘features of a society’s
economic and technological system which shape the organisation of, and the social
relationships between, those groups engaged in the process of production’, in preference
to mainstream convergence theory, which can deal with institutional variations only by
resorting to kultwal and historied factors which are not intrinsic to capitalism as such
but are features of the pre-industrial social order’.%
For Ingham, both the distribution of power and the superstructure of regulatory
mechanisms which condition the behaviour of the contending parties in industrial
relations (workers, employers and the State) should be located in a society’s ‘infra-
structure’ (the means of production in conventional Marxist terminology). Ingham
selects industrial concentration, technical and organisational complexity, and product
differentiation and specialisation as the infrastructural characteristics most salient to the
development of industrial relations systems. To further simplify the argument, he
focuses primarily on the manner in which infrastructural variables influence the struc-
ture and strategies of employer organisations, paying only secondary attention to the
3
30 BRITISH J O U R N A L OF I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

corresponding features of union movements, and (by his own admission) virtually
ignoring the role of labour political parties and the State. Thus the question posed is,
under what conditions ‘centralised institutions for the regulation of conflict’ will
d e v e l o p i t being accepted that these are the proximate cause of low strike levels-and
essentially, the answer is that such institutions will be found in societies where each
sector of the economy is dominated by a small number of large-scale employers.
Given the ‘low level of competition within and between the sectors’ in such an
economy, employers will be encouraged to join together in ‘a dominant, solidary and
powerful’ association.26 By rendering the power relationships and potential points of
conflict between labour and capital more ‘visible’, and also by making it possible for
employers ‘to impose normative regulation’ o n industrial relations, the existence of a
strong employers’ association favours the institutional supression of overt conflict. In
addition, the same conditions which bring about high levels of concentration-limited
domestic markets and late industrialisation-also favour greater product specialisation
and less complex production systems (Ingham’s other infrastructural variables). The
result is a less differentiated and fragmented trade union structure, which reinforces the
existing potential for centralisation and institutionalisation of industrial relations.
The bulk of Ingham’s monograph is an attempt t o apply these arguments to explain
the differing extent t o which industrial conflict has been institutionally contained in
Britain and Sweden. Judging by the comparative data on industrial concentration
presented for other nations,z7 it is evident that this infrastructural theory has little
general applicability, at least without introducing additional variables. Furthermore,
research by other scholarsz8throws serious doubt on the adequacy of Ingham’s descrip-
tion and explanation of developments in the two countries on which he focused. Rather
than reviewing the specific points of dispute, I think it is more useful here to consider a
more general theoretical issue raised by the debate between Ingham and his critics.
I n attempting t o shift the analytical locus of comparative explanation away from the
conventional reliance on functionalist reasoning and the accidents of culture and his-
tory, Ingham made an innovative and constructive step forward. But in placing such
heavy emphasis on the economic substructure, he fell into the trap of adopting the same
mechanistic interpretation of Marxist analysis which has so often been attacked by its
critics. I t would seem, however, that in his analysis of actual class struggles, Marx relied
on history, context, and process, in combination with a more abstract grasp of the forces
and contradictions inherent in capitalism, to illuminate real-world events. Rather than
representing two alternative epistemologies, it can be argued that the ‘dynamic’ and
‘static’ modes of understanding are both essential and indeed complementary.
While Ingham takes pains not t o be perceived as a determinist, his theory has a
decidedly deterministic flavour. The outcomes of collective mobilisation by labour and
capital cannot be reasonably attributed solely or even primarily to the constraining or
facilitating effects of the structure of the material system in which the social relations of
production are located. Pre- o r extra-industrial characteristics of class composi-
tion-such as the extent of cross-cutting (ethnic, religious, geographical) cleavages
within the working class, o r the balance between landed-aristocracy and merchant
elements of the ruling-class-also set crucial limits o n the mobilisation process.
A t the same time, Ingham also errs in attributing the dominant role to employers in
the formation of industrial relations institutions. Viewed in historical perspective,
employer organisation has typically occurred in response to an actual o r perceived
challenge to capital by working-class movements. It makes more sense, and is certainly
more faithful to Marx, to conceive of the development of worker and employer organ-
isations dialectically, that is, as an ongoing process of challenge and response. In
addition, if working-class mobilisation is viewed, as it should be, as having explanatory
status, much which is opaque in Ingham’s account can be clarified.
By viewing the organisational power resources of labour and capital as merely
 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS THEORY 31
reflecting infrastructural features of societies, Ingham is clearly at a loss to explain why,
for example, ‘normative regulation’ attained hegemony over Swedish industrial rela-
tions at the time when it did (the late 1930s). The argument developed by KorpiZgfills
this gap by focusing on the historical development of labour mobilisation in both
industry and the polity. Specifically, the decisive political victory of the Social Democ-
rats in 1936, based on strong and co-ordinated union and party organisation, opened up
a new ‘conflict strategy’ for the Swedish working class, in which the expectation of
long-run benefits from the State became a substitute for direct confrontation with
employers in the industrial arena.

THENEWPOLITICAL
THEORIES
Korpi’s argument provides a natural bridge to the third and final comparative
approach to industrial conflict which will. be considered here, namely the political
theories. Like Ross and Hartman (although far more emphatically), theorists of this
persuasion identify the role of the State and labour political action as critical indepen-
dent variables-but from a perspective which has more in common with that of Ingham
than that of industrial relations institutionalism. Since I have analysed the strengths and
weaknesses of these political theories elsewhere,” only their most essential features
need to be noted here.
The most crucial difference between ‘political’and ‘industrial relations’ approaches is
the insistence of the former that industrial conflict is something more than an incident of
the collective bargaining process. Rather, the strike constitutes one working-class
strategy-political action is another-in the acting out of class conflict in capitalist
societies.
This type of reasoning was first brought to the fore in Shorter and Tilly’s study Strikes
in France 1830-1968. In a provocative chapter of international comparisons, they
argued that the substantial differences among nations in the level and ‘shape’ of strike
activity which emerged after the Second World War were directly linked to variations in
the extent of working-class participation in the governmental process.
Where the strike rate soared, revolutionary unionism acquired new organisational resources in a
drive for political representation. Where the strike rate fell, workers had been accepted into the
polity, and now needed no longer use strikes as a meansof pressing political demands.Where the
strike rate fluctuated,as in North America, labour had discardedthe industrial work stoppageas
a means of political action, turning instead to political parties?’
The key here is the assumption that ‘the industrial work stoppage’ primarily serves
labour as ‘a means of political action’-a highly debatable contention. Furthermore,
Shorter and Tilly’s analysis implies that what organised workers seek to gain from
political action is integration into the state apparatus, whereas I would argue that they
are motivated by more specific ‘economic’ goals such as job security and income
redistribution.
In an important twelve nation comparison, Hibbs has argued for and tested out a
somewhat different explanation of the inverse relationship between the political power
of the working class (‘power’ here operationalised in terms of left party control over the
executive branch), and the level of industrial In Hibbs’ view the reason why
strikes tend to wither away under leftist governments is that in pursuing interventionist
economic and social policies, such governments move the locus of class struggle out of
the labour market and into the political process.
The difficulty with bothof the theories discussed so far is that they fail toconvincingly
explain why the leaders and members of unions would be willing to sacrifice the strike
weapon in the event that the labour movement acquires political legitimacy,” or given
that government budgets outdistance market sources of income.” One promising
avenue for dealing with this issue is the notion mentioned earlier, that alterations in the
32 BRITISH J O U R N A L OF I N D U S T R I A L R E L A T I O N S

relative power resources of the major classes in society open up the possibility of an
alteration in their conflict strategies.
In addition, Pizzorno’s conceptualisation of the relationship between unions and the
state as one of ‘political exchange’ can help us to identify the political bargains which
underly a conflict strategy based on industrial peace.% Such bargains also have institu-
tional prerequisites, e.g., a broadly based and centralised union movement, close ties
between labour unions and parties, to which Pizzorno’s theory draws our attention.
In so far as the existence or nonexistence of such prerequisties-the most fundamen-
tal one of course being a politically powerful working class-remain unexplained by the
new political theories, then despite obvious and important theoretical differences, they
are reducible merely to Ross and Hartman’s generalisations. To contribute to an
understanding of where ‘the prerequisites’ come from, Korpi and I have put forward a
model which explains variations in both the industrial and political strength of labour
movements in terms of the presence or absence of objective constraints on working-
class mobilisation. Thus far we have concentrated on cleavages within the working class
as the major type of constraint, but as Stephens has shown, other factors derived from
Marxist theory, such as Ingham’s infrastructural variables, may also need to be taken
into account.36

THEWISCONSIN
FOUNDING
FATHERS
At this point I propose to broaden the scope of the enquiry beyond the explicit study
of industrial conflict and into the comparative industrial relations field as a whole. Here
the classic challenge has of course been to explain fundamental points of diversity
among national labour movements. And the classic English language work of this
variety is Selig Perlman’sA Theory ofthe Labor Movement. It was Perlman’s contention
that ‘three dominant factors’ could explain the differingcharacter and fortunesof labour
movements in different countries. The first of these was ‘the demonstrated capacity. . .
of the capitalist group to survive as a ruling group’.37In contrast to Marxist theorists,
Perlman saw this capacity as depending not on capitalism’s material or political founda-
tions, but rather on the capitalists’ ‘will to power’, as reflected in their ability to convince
the subordinate classes of the legitimacy of their rule. The severity of the challenges
which the capitalists face is determined by Perlman’s second factor, namely the influ-
ence wielded by ‘intellectuals’ over the labour movement and society at large. As
Perlman saw it, the anti-capitalist doctrines of the intelligentsia are utterly alien to the
central institutions of the labour movement, the trade unions. The third factor, then, is
the struggle of the unions to ration job opportunities among their members. Indeed, this
is inevitably the central preoccupation of a ‘mature’ labour movement, which has
liberated itself from alien ideologies and is free to respond to the need of the workers for
defence against what they perceive as scarcity of economic opportunity.
It will be immediately apparent that, as Gulick and Bers have shown in some
Perlman’s theory is little more than a system of interlocking definitions. A labour
movement’s degree of maturity, that is, its location on a scale running from ‘business’ to
‘revolutionary’ unionism, depends on the robustness of labour’s natural pull towards
economism in the face of the intellectuals’ push towards revolution. Since the strength of
the capitalists’ will to power in Perlman’s system is identical to (the inverse of) the power
of the intellectuals, what we are left with is one constant-the scarcity consciousness of
the workers-and one variable-the influence of the intellectuals.
In fairness to Perlman, in comparison with the ‘theoretical’ (perhaps more accurately,
ideological) reflections recorded in his book, the four country case studies which form
the bulk of it contain considerably more pertinent and interesting analyses. Capitalism’s
ability to withstand revolutionary challenges emerges from this account as depending
above all on the relative power resources of the contending classes. The absence of
 I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS THEORY 33
pre-industrial class rigidities or a ‘settled’ wage-earning class, the draining away of
working-class talent into politics and business, the abundance of economic opportunity,
the complex ethnic and religious composition of the labour force, and the fact that the
lower classes were not obliged to struggle for fundamental political rights-all these
uniquely American attributes explain the lack of class-consciousness of American
labour and therefore the weakness of its challenge to capital.= The triumph of ‘non-
political’ unionism is in practice explained by this very weakness of the labour move-
ment, due not only to its limited basis of class solidarity, but also to the ‘enormous
strength of private property in America’ (a product of the early and diffuse spread of
property ownership), and to peculiar institutional characteristics which render ‘Ameri-
can governments . . . inherently inadequate as instruments of economic reform’.e0
In analysing the Russian and German cases, Perlman once again abandoned his
formal theoretical framework, this time in favour of. a perceptive discussion of the
potential for capital to find allies among middle-class elements, the peasantry, the
Church and the State in its struggle to ward off labour’s revolutionary challenges. It is all
the more fortunate that Perlman hit upon these variables because, as his critics have
unquestionably demonstrated:l his primary formal explanation-the interpretation of
the role and stance of the ‘intellectual’ in European labour movements-was quite
erroneous.
It is interesting to note that the great difference between Perlman and his mentor (and
later, colleague) John R. Commons, is that while both were agreed on the fundamental
appropriateness of A.F.L.-style unionism to the American environment, only Perlman
felt the need to enshrine it as the model to which all other labour movements should and
would be drawn.4z In a tantalisingly brief excursion into systematic cross-national
comparison, Commons set out to answer the self-same question as Perlman: why some
labour movements aim at the ‘displacement of capitalism’ and others are content to
‘bargain’ with it, while recognising that there is ‘scarcely a single principle or permanent
trend’ with universal appli~ability.~~ Rather than regarding organised labour’s bargain-
ing activities as necessarily its central or ultimate function, as Perlman did, Commons
recognised that what we have called the conflict strategy of labour movements would
vary in different national contexts (and within nations, in different historical contexts).
The only characteristic which is common toall labour movements-whether they aspire
primarily to control over production, control over the State, or job control-is that all
are ‘a reaction and a protest against capitalism’.“
Ironically, this perspective and the theory which Commons built upon it place him
much more firmly within the Marxist tradition than that of the institutional school of
industrial relations of which he was the founding father.” Commons insisted (like
Ingham) that capitalism can take on a variety of different forms, and that labour
movements reflect this diversity. He also argued (like Korpi) that the character and
strength of labour’s collective action is a function of the potential for class solidarity
among the workers. This in turn was seen as depending, on the one hand, upon the
severity of the internal divisions within the working class, and on the other upon the
circumstances under which (to use E. P. Thompson’s term) the working class is ‘made’.
Commons thus ends up with the following three key factors:
Factor I The predominant type and direction of the development of capitalism: The
early and gradual development of factory production in England is said to account for
the correspondingly early and gradual development of a ‘distinct working-class viewpoint’
in the English labour movement.* On the other hand, what Commons calls ‘merchant
capitalism’ (under which goods are made but not marketed by small producers) per-
sisted much longer in continental Europe, and thus so too did utopian movements
hoping to replace the merchant-middlemen with producers’ co-operatives.
Factor 2 The degree of working-class fragmentation: where the workers are ‘divided by
language, religion, politics, skill, colour, race and geography’, Commons argued that
34 BRITISH J O U R N A L OF I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

‘only the few who can lift themselves above the mass into craft unions’ are capable of
collective action, and only on a narrow basis of common economic interest.4’
Factor 3 The historical origin of working-class loyalties: if the workers ‘are driven
together by a history of common subjection t o a military, aristocratic, ecclesiastical o r
proprietary lordship, as in continental Europe, they fall into the widespread solidarity of
class struggle and a powerful socialist political party. But if this solidarity is the result of
the advance of the employer capitalist, then they vacillate between industrial unionism
and socialist par tie^.''^
Commons’ explanation of the differing character of the labour movement in the four
countries comprehended by his theory is summarised in Table 1.

A Schematisation of Commons’ Argument

Type and direction of Fragmentatmn of

capitalism’s development working class

1 France 1 Merchant, slow

transition to employer
Resistance to feudal
Producer w-cperatmn

or Church or State
Merchant, rapid LOW
autocracy
transition to empeer Control of the polity

Britain Vacillates
Resstance to
Employer
employer capitalism

L U.S.A. High Job regulaton

It should be noted that while Commons also dealt with the fate of labour in Italy, Russia
and Australia, the analysis of these cases was less closely tied to his theory. Thus in
discussing the fascist revolution in Italy, Commons refers only to his first factor,
suggesting that fascism is one possible resolution of the general problem raised by the
new middle class created by the division of labour under advanced capitalism. In dealing
with the Russian case Commons lapses entirely into the historical-descriptive style
which in fact characterises the bulk of his article.
Australia, finally, he sees (like the U.S.) as a ‘new country’ characterised by employer
capitalism and the early attainment of universal suffrage; but which differs from the
American case in having an ethnically homogenous working class and a broadly based
and highly politicked labour movement. To account for the formation of a Labour
Party, Commons points out that unlike his counterpart in the U.S., the Australian
worker was not endowed with the social and economic opportunities afforded by the
existence of ‘free land’ and repeated waves of i m m i g r a t i ~ n Through
.~~ labour’s conse-
quent political mobilisation and the fruits of political action (compulsory unionism and
arbitration), as well as the absence of national or other cleavages within the working
class, unionism in Australia was able to penetrate the labour force to a far greater extent
than in the United States.
I d o not wish to dwell any further here on the contributions of the ‘Wisconsin school’.
My point is that once Commons’ work is stripped of its institutionalist overlay, and
Perlman’s of its fumbling and ideologically motivated attempt at formal theory, we
discover an impressive array of rich and exciting analytical leads for comparative
theorising. Furthermore, as we have already seen, these leads bear a close family
resemblance t o some of the more promising work of contemporary analysts in the
 INDUSTRlAL RELATIONS THEORY 35
specific field of industrial conflict. The remaining task of the paper is to identify some of
the theoretical insights which are to be found in the more recent comparative industrial
relations literature.
Precisely because this literature is rarely theoretical in any explicit sense it is all the
more important to attempt to codify its analytical content. It is also worthwhile to make
the point (one which is not acknowledged in the literature concerned) that, as was the
case with industrial conflict, the major lines of theorising which can be identified are
remarkably similar to those found in the long-forgotten writings of the classic forebears
of the modem study of industrial relations.50This is not only or even mainly an issue of
determining the true ancestry of the theories concerned. The issue is rather how the
industrial relations field can hope to progress theoretically in the future. For, rather than
attempting to further refine modem paradigms which have already outlived their
usefulness, we may do better to take stock of the neglected insights of the past. More
generally, my point is that if knowledge is to advance (i.e., if theories are to be improved
or disproved) it will have to advance cumulatively. And that requires a greater aware-
ness of both past and present literature than most of us currently possess.

CURRENT
APPROACHES
TO ‘AMERICAN
EXCEFTIONALISM’
The purpose of the remainder of the paper is, as already stated, to offer some
representative samplings from the contemporary comparative industrial relations litera-
ture. The first four works to be discussed-by Kassalow, Sturmthal, Lipset and Ken-
dalFl--share a common interest in European-American comparisons. Specifically,their
concern (along with many other scholars of courserz has been with the question of
‘American exceptionalism’, i.e. the relative weakness of socialist ideology and political
organisation in the United States. The interpretations of Sturmthal and Kassalow may
be regarded as representative of contemporary approaches to this issue in American
industrial relations. Both authors lay considerable emphasis on differences between
Europe and the U.S.in the socio-political context in which the workingclass entered and
experienced industrialisation.
Several years before popularised a similar hypothesis, Sturmthal argued
that:

. . . roughly speaking, the success of Marxian Socialism in European labor has been closely
related to the strength of the feudal tradition . . . Feudalism determined the class consciousness
of the European worker-at least in the sense of making him ready to accept a social philosophy
based upon the existence and conflict of clearly determined social classes. It also aroused in him
the desire to change the order of hierarchy.%

Sturmthal added that the legacy of enlightened absolutism-‘the belief in the all-
powerful state’-had ‘convinced the Continental European that political power was the
key instrument of social transformation’.%
Kassalow has emphasised other specifically European experiences responsible for the
development of multi-functional labour movements-in his words, a ‘total reaction’ to
the workers’ condition. He describes, for example, how classconfiningpatterns of social
and cultural life (e.g., in education), the stimulus to collective action provided by the
workers’ struggle for political rights, suppression by the state of labour’s rights to
individual mobility and collective combination, and the existence of guild traditions all
operated to enhance the solidarity and consciousness of the working class.
The defining characteristic of Sturmthal’s and Kassalow’s approach is that it explains
the character of social movements which arose (as Commons stressed) in reaction to
capitalism with reference to historical features which predate or are seemingly indepen-
dent of the rise of capitalism itself. This is equally true of Lipset’s attempt to portray
contrasts in union behaviour between northern Europe and the ‘new nations’ of North
36 BRITISH J O U R N A L OF I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

America and Australia as arising from contrasting ‘dominant value systems’ in the
societies concerned. The question of the origins of the value systems is unfortunately
excluded from the analysis (Lipset appears to regard them as historical accidents), so
that the theory is essentially a series of logical relationships the validity of which must be
taken o n good faith. The following three examples will suffice to indicate the character
of Lipset’s hypotheses.
1) A central American value is deemed to be the individual’s responsibility for his or
her own success, and this is seen as having worked against the formation of class-based
organisations like unions.
2) The same success ethic, in assigning priority to ends over means, also helps to
explain the high material rewards offered to American union leaders and their pro-
pensity t o attain a dictatorial position over the members.
3) The relative militancy of American unions is interpreted in terms of both the
normative stress o n achievement, which encourages conflict rather than co-operation in
intergroup relations, and the other supreme American value, equality, which is said to
intensify discontent by broadening the scope of workers’ reference groups.
In short, the argument is that industrial relations systems can be viewed as micro-
cosms of the cultures in which they are located. ‘Culture’ in effect functions here as a
residual category necessary to account for diverse behaviour patterns in societies whose
economic and social structures are assumed to be identical. In fact, given Lipset’s
implicit convergence assumptions, social values must explain the observed diversity of
behaviour, and the theory degenerates into tautology. The obvious possibility that
differingvalue-systems have their origins in large part in differingobjective structuresof
power and opportunity is never considered.
O u r final example of analytical approaches to American exceptionalism is derived
from Kendall’s recent book, The Labour Movement in Europe. Kendall’s analysis is
more in the form of a seriesof disjointed historicalobservations than a systematic theory
(which is unfortunately not atypical of the comparative industrial relations field). In
fact, he explicitly rejects most of the dominant theoretical perspectives-both radical
and conservative-and ends u p with a mixed bag of conclusions which bear some affinity
to every one of the authors hitherto considered.
The analytical problem, as Kendall defines it, is actually one of Anglo-American
exceptionalism. In contrast t o most other experts, who see Britain as combining features
of both European and American industrial relations, he suggests that important
similarities between U.S. and U.K. unions-their preoccupation with wage bargaining
and their organisational unity and financial strength-set them apart from European
labour movements. T h e differences in question are seen as deriving from variations in
the economic, social, cultural and historical circumstances which accompanied the
origins and development of labour organisation.
Part of the explanation for Anglo-American exceptionalism is the comparative vigour
of entrepreneurial capitalism in these countries. Citing a variety of geopolitical and
historical causes, Kendall argues that industrialisation came earlier in Britain and the
U.S. than in Europe and was based o n superior technology and markets. Together with
more open recruitment into the entrepreneurial class and easier access to investment
funds, these conditions favoured the growth of a laissez-faire economy. As a result, mass
support for the competitive market system was greater, and the role of the State and
politics in economic life was more limited in Britain and America than on the continent.
This strand of Kendall’s argument is somewhat reminiscent of the Wisconsin
school-compare, for example, Commons’ distinction between employer and merchant
capitalism, o r Perlman’s emphasis on the American commitment to private property.
Kendall’s second major variable-the relative independence of the industrialisation
process from ‘the trammels of a precapitalist past’-was also discussed by Commons
and Perlman, and of course is the major element in Sturmthal’s interpretation of
 I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS THEORY 37
American exceptionalism. Kendall argues that economic interests and cleavages
emerged in much purer form in Britain and America. This was due on the one hand to
the fact that the role of pre-capitalist institutions (the Church and the monarchy) wasno
longer an issue in national life by the time of industrialisation, and on the other hand to
the greater ‘senseof homogeneity of the national labour force’ than in Europe, where
feudalism (later, peasant proprietorship), family-based enterprises, and regional and
linguistic cleavages fostered local rather than diffuse loyalties.56
Kendall’s conclusion is that both economic and socio-political conditions created a
marked difference between the British-American and European contexts in the degree
to which ‘the prevailing modes of human economic behaviour are characterised by rules
of abstract economic rationality’P’ Hence the economism and internal unity of the
British and American union movements, compared with politicisation and reli-
gioudideological divisions in Europe.5WAt this point the argument resembles Lipset’s
value-system theory, with the important difference that Kendall devotes considerable
attention to the reasons why capitalist valuesemerged in relatively pure form in England
and the United States. Unfortunately, however, Kendall’s argument falls down badly on
specifics, such as why a labour party in Britain but not America, why have the German
unions always been so much more financially self-sufficient than the British, how are the
at times fratricidal (albeit non-‘ideological’) cleavages within the British and American
union movements to be explained, etc.? In the end, while Kendall’s richly detailed
exposition is of value in providing the reader with a ‘feel’ for different contexts of labour
movement formation, as a theory it is neither innovative nor persuasive.

LORWINS FRENCH EXCEPTIONALISM

For our next example of comparative industrial relations theorising we turn from
American to French exceptionalism, and the work of Val Lorwin. Subsequent to the
completion of his comprehensive study The French Labor Movement in 1954, Lorwin
went on to speculate as to the reasons for the persistence of weak and ‘alienated‘ (my
term) unionism in France, but not in neighbouring Belgium nor in Lorwin’s home
cou try, the United States.5s
?
Li ‘e Kendall’s, his approach is an eclectic blending of economic and social history.
Specifically, Lorwin brings to bear three types of explanatory factor: (1) Key environ-
mental contexts, social, economic and political; (2) influences on working-class mobil-
isation; and (3) historical accidents. His observations may be systematised as follows:

1. Contextual features
1.1 The characteristics of economic development: Belgium’s earlier industrialisation
made it easier for its workers ‘to accept the imperatives of a capitalist industrialism’
than in Additionally, in contrast to the U.S., the small scale and slow
growth of French industry afforded its workers only ‘modest expectations of
amelioration’, for which they compensated by ‘utopian dreams of apocalyptic
change’.61
1.2 Political structure and traditions: French unions have been weakened by their
dependence upon the good will of an ‘overorganised‘ and ‘overcentralised’ state.”
At the same time, political parties have facilitated the infusion of class politics into
the French labour movement, whereas in the U.S. parties have ‘sought to coalesce
interest groups for periodic electoral victories, not to control mass organisations for
the attainment of absolute power’.a Finally, the French worker ever sinceJ789 has
fallen victim to a ‘myth of revolution’ which has not handicapped his more prag-
matic Belgian or American counterparts.
1.3 The role of Catholicism: as ‘the predominant religion’ of America’s immigrants,
Catholicism ‘weighed powerfully against radicalism’,w whereas in France, the
Church contributed to the politicisation of social tensions by continuing to keep
38 BRITISH J O U R N A L O F I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

alive the explosive issues of the Revolution. In Belgium, on the other hand, the
Church was able to play an integrating role by supporting the constitutionality of
the State and sponsoring a cross-class political party.=
2. Influences on working-class mobilisation
2.1 The composition of the working class: in America it was composed largely of
immigrants who wished to escape the ‘stigma’ of class, whereas in France group
consciousness was more easily affirmed in a working class formed by internal
migration.=
2.2 The burden of feudal traditions: in France, where this burden was heaviest, so too
was the predisposition to view the labour problem as one of class subordination,
rather than to accept capitalist values of competitive individ~alisrn.~~
2.3 The characteristics of labour organisation: as a result of their clientilistic relation-
ship with the State and syndicalist ancestry, French unions are organisationally
weak and have been unable to achieve a durable balance of power with the
employers (cf. the United States). Also in contrast to France is the tight meshing of
the Socialist party, unions and co-operatives in Belgium, which made its labour
movement more resistant to Communist influence.s8
3. Historical accidents
3.1 Size of country: the Frenchmens’ perception that ‘Theirs was a large, populous, and
powerful nation’ nourished ‘illusions of freedom in foreign policy’ which have
helped politicise and divide the labour movement. The small size and consequent
economic vulnerability of Belgium have ‘made for greater responsibility in the
unions’ relations with the nation’ than in France.@
3.2 The impact of the world wars: both the Belgian and French labour movements were
moving in a moderate direction prior to the First World War, but in France ‘postwar
recriminations over Socialist and union support of the war’, which ‘would have been
absurd in Belgium’, laid the foundations for the Communist split.70In the next war,
whereas the Nazi occupation of Belgium ‘brought labour and employer leaders
together’, the Vichy regime in France ‘deepened social antagonism^'.^'
While this is not an exhaustive summary of Lorwin’s two articles, it should suffjce to
convey the type of arguments used in this sort of literature. The approach is essentially
one of stringing together ad hoc insights generated by close familiarity with a few
country cases. Once again (as with Kendall), the inductive and unsystematic nature of
Lorwin’s analysis leaves it vulnerable to attack when evaluated as a series of abstract
generalisations. This is shown by certain obvious inconsistencies within and between the
two articles. If the chauvinsim induced by great power status has made for a more internally
divided and politicised labour movement in France than in Belgium, why is this not true
afortiori of the United States? If poor economic performance is a factor accounting for
the traditional radicalism of French labour, why wasn’t this radicalism diminished by
subsequent affluen~e?’~ What accounts for the contradictory effects of Catholicism in
the three countries?
I argued earlier that the implicit nature of theorising in much of the comparative
industrial relations field has led many people to ignore an important source of analytical
insights in industrial relations. But the other side of the coin is that undisciplined
theorising increases the likelihood of indulging in contradictory reasoning, as well as
raising the risk that instead of progressing, our stock of knowledge remains fixed, each
new work merely rediscovering insights already recorded by its predecessors. One
response to this problem has been to try and provide a common frame of reference for
comparative research by specifying all the factors which have been discovered to exert a
strategic influence on industrial relations sy~terns.’~The problem with this approach is
the absence of any over-arching analytical principles capable of ordering and linking the
various ‘strategic factors’.
Another approach, far more desirable in my view, has been to attempt to anchor
 I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS THEORY 39
comparative analysis firmly within the context of explicitly theoretical debates. This is
true, for example, of Dore’s novel reformulation of convergence theory in the context of
a British-Japanese ~omparison.~‘ A third alternative is to begin the comparative
endeavour on the basis of one’s own explicit theory. This was Dunlop’s strategy, but if
we exclude those who have merely modified or simply restated his theory, the only other
original contribution of which I am aware is that of COX.'^ By way of conclusion, I
therefore propose to outline the contributions of Dore and Cox, in the hope of indicat-
ing some useful directions for future scholarship in the comparative area.

Two POTENTIAL
STRATEGIES
FOR FUTURE
SCHOLARSHIP
The question Dore poses himself is how we can account for the existence of striking
national divergence between ‘employment systems’, despite their similar material
(technological) base. And, given the existence of common substructures, will super-
structures converge, and if so in what direction? His position on the convergence thesis
is strikingly different from that of both its proponents and opponents. Employment
systems are becoming more alike, but rather than seeing Japan’s ‘backwardness’ in
development as having produced an anachronistic industrial relations paternalism (the
usual convergence interpretation), Dore argues that Japan’s ‘late development’ tele-
scoped its employment system into becoming the image of the West’s future.
Dore’s explanation of ‘Japanese exceptionalism’ is complex, in that it is steeped in an
intimate and detailed awareness of the historical record, and it proceeds on a number of
different levels. First he points out that the modem large enterprise system of perma-
nent employment emerged in a specific historical context-that of a destroyed economy
and state. Under these circumstances, both the workers’ drive for security and organisa-
tion, and management’s interest in restoring the supply of skilled labour, were logically
served by enterprise-based employment. Secondly, however, Dore shows that there are
demonstrable historical precedents for the modem system, although he adds that such
precedents have a variety of different origins. Some were an unconscious carryover from
feudal times and some were consciously adapted from traditional practices, while others
were borrowed from abroad.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it is argued that the historical circumstances under
which the capitalist economy and class structure came into being have had decisive
consequences for the subsequent character of class relations. For example, the fact that
class consciousness is much weaker in Japan than in Britain is linked to the fact that the
feudal period of cultural homogeneity more closely preceded industrialisation, and also
that the educational system was from the first much more universalistic in curriculum
and structure. But Dore is most concerned here to make the more general point that key
elements of the context of Japan’s industrialisation were not uniquely Japanese, but
rather are characteristic of second generation industrialisers (late developers).
Some examples: the absence of an indigenous technological evolution and its charac-
teristic craft stage favour the enterprise rather than the market or public provision as the
primary arena of occupational training. The development of an educational system prior
to industrialisation renders an intra-enterprise career system appropriate to both work-
ers’ and employers’ needs. The fact that other countries have already experienced the
union challenge and developed ‘social technologies’ for neutralising it encourages
employers to promote non-market mechanisms of worker commitment to employment.
And so does the fact that egalitarian values have already overtaken the laissez-faire
ideology of early capitalism. Dore thus concludes that while specifically Japanese
attributes, both cultural and historical, provided a congenial environment for the growth
of a paternalistic capitalist strategy, the critical factor is that such a strategy appeared
economically rational to Japanese but not British employers because industrial relations
in Japan were institutionalised more than half a century later than in Britain.
40 BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

I do not wish to enter here into the general controversy surrounding Dore’s overall
thesis, or specific objections that have been or could be raised against specific points of
fact or interpretation in his book. I also don’t want to emphasise the novelty of the main
lines of Dore’s analysis, since obviously many other students of comparative industrial
relations have also stressed the importance of the timing and character of industrialisa-
tion and the historical context in which it takes place. Dore’s contribution also falls far
short of providing an explicit deductive framework for future scholars, and has much in
common with the eclecticism of approach and concentration on detail characteristic of
most of the other works we have surveyed. None of this is necessarily ‘bad’, and indeed
in my view Dore has provided a valuable model for other researchers in two respects.
Firstly, the diverse strands of description and analysis have a common integrating
thread, namely Dore’s preoccupation with the important theoretical issue of con-
vergence. And secondly, by concentrating on only two country cases and dealing with
these cases in a consistently and systematically comparative fashion, Dore succeeded in
minimising the danger of lapsing into either vacuous description or superficial compari-
son.
Cox’s recent contribution to what he calls ‘prospective’ theorising represents another
exciting and innovative approach, but one which is quite different in character to Dore’s.
The scope is much broader and the empirical foundation is much weaker, since Cox is
attempting to forge abstract analytical tools for research rather than produce concrete
research outputs. His starting point is an explicit and searching critique of the purposes,
epistemology and methodology of conventional industrial relations approaches. In his
view we need a conceptual framework which is universal rather than ethnocentric in
scope, critical rather than reformist in objectives, and historical rather than functionalist
in its mode of understanding. Current theoretical developments are criticised for their
heuristic rather than explanatory character, and for their unwillingness to seriously
question either the origins or the change-potential of the status quo.
The analytical instrument which Cox proposes to take the place of the Dunlopian
industrial relations system is a multiplicity of ‘modes of social relations of production’.
These are conceived of as ideal types which are to be inferred from specific historical
contexts. The contextual characteristics from which inferences are to be drawn are the
objective ‘structure of power relationships governing the production process’, and the
‘subjective ideas and expectations’ associated with a particular power structure. Perceiv-
ing conflict and structural transformation as the central dynamic by which modes of
social relations of production are forged, Cox proposes that the ideal types be linked
together sequentially in order to shed light on ‘the process through which historical
structures emerge, become consolidated, and are ultimately transformed’. And to help
understand this process of change, he offers a variety of propositions and conceptual
tools for analysing both objective sources of conflict and their mediation by the con-
sciousness of the actors. Like Marx, Cox’s chief organising principle here is that each
distinctive mode of production produces a characteristic pattern of relations between
dominant and subordinate groups (i.e.. class structure). Shifts in the distribution of
power due to changes in the production process, the emergence of new forms of
consciousness, or changes in the composition of ‘hegemonic coalitions’ may lead to the
transformation of the system.
My capsule summary hardly does justice to Cox’s thoughtful and quite detailed
discussion. Furthermore, because what he is proposing is essentially a strategy for
theoretical analysis rather than a series of fully articulated generalisations, it is as yet
difficult to judge the potential payoffs of his approach in doing cross-national compari-
sons of the kind I have been d i s c ~ s s i n gWhat
. ~ ~ can be said at this stage is that Cox has
done us the service of opening up for debate some fundamental issues concerning how to
go about understanding industrial relations from an international perspective, and
exposed important drawbacks of most of our present modes of understanding. If in the
 I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS THEORY 41
future similar searches for a coherent theoretical perspective can go hand in hand with
more systematic and cumulative sifting and criticism of empirical generalisations, then
the comparative industrial relations field may yet realise its potential as a hothouse for
industrial relations theorising.

REFERENCES

1. The interested reader not familiar with this literature will find most of it in the pages of the
British Journal oflndustrial Relations and theIndiatrial Relations Journal. For rare but useful
examples of thebretical reappraisal by American scholars, see Gerd Korman and Michael
Klapper, ‘Game Theory’s Wartime Connections and the Study of Industrial Conflict’,Indus-
trial and Labour Relations review, 32 (l), 1978, pp. 24-39; and George Strauss and Peter
Feuille, ‘Industrial Relations Research: A Critical Analysis‘, Industrial Relations, 17 (3) 1978,
pp. 259-77.
2. Language and other bamers necessitate confining this discussion to Anglo-American con-
tributions to the industrial relations discipline. Since the discipline is itself very much an
Anglo-American creation, this limitation may not be unreasonable.
3. Robert W. Cox, ‘Pour une etude Prospective des Relations de Production’, Sociologie du
Travail, 19 (2), 1977, pp. 113-37.
4. In the future however it will be desirable for the discussion to press beyond the realm of
reviewing past approaches. One might hope that Nicholas Blain’s paper (‘Approaches to
Industrial Relations Theory: An Appraisal and Synthesis’, Labour and Society, 3, 1978)
marks the last of this genre.
5. In a major recent attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ Dunlop, Wood et al. (S. J. Wood et al., ‘The
“Industrial Relations System” Concept as a Basis for Theory in Industrial Relations’, British
Journal oflndustrial Relations, 8 (3), 1975, pp. 291-308) have suggested that hisconceptscan
be most effectively utilised in the study of how rules are made. By thus trying to correct
Dunlop’s bias, these authors appear to have missed his most basic point.
6. Everett M.Kassalow, Trade Unions and Industrial Relations: A n International Comparison,
Random House, New York, 1969.
7. Walter Galenson (ed.), Comparative Labor Movements, Prenticc-Hall, New York, 1952;
pages 104-72 contain Galenson’s own chapter on Scandinavia.
8. Adolph Sturmthal and James G. Scoville (eds.), The International Labour Movement in
Transition, University of Illinois Press, 1973.
9. Murray Edelman and R. W. Fleming, The Politics of Wage-Price Decisions: A Four-Country
Analysis, University of Illinois Press, 1965; Bruce W. Headey, ‘Trade Unions and National
Wage Policies’, Journal of Politics, 32 (2), 1970, pp. 407-39.
10. Ronald Dore, British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Indus-
trial Relations, University of California Press, 1973.
11. Deliberately excluded here are attempts to explain cross-nationaldifferences in the causes of
short-runfluctuations in strike activity. Major contributions in this area have been made by
David Snyder (‘Early North American Strikes: A Reinterpretation’, Industrial and Labor
Relations review, 30 (3), 1977, pp. 325-41) and Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr. (‘Industrial Conflict
in Advanced Industrial Societies’, American Political Science Review, 70 (4), 1976,
pp. 1033-58).
12. Arthur M.Ross and Paul T. Hartman, Changing Patterns of Industrial Conflict, Wiley, New
York, 1960.
13. H. A. Marquand et al., Organized Labour in Four Continents, Longmans, Green and Co.,
1939.
14. John T. Dunlop and Walter Galenson (eds.), Labor in the Twenrieth Century, Academic Press,
New York, 1978.
15. J. E. T. Eldridge, Industrial Disputes: Essays in the Sociology of Industrial Relations, Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1968, pp. 26-9.
16. Arthur M. Ross and Donald Irwin, ‘Strike Experience in Five Countries, 1927-1947: An
Interpretation’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 4 (2), 1951, p. 339.
17. K. G. J. C. Knowles, Stri&es-A Srudy in Industnai Conflict, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952, p. 96.
18. Ross and Hartman. OD. cit., D. 68.
19. Everett M. Kassalow; ‘Discussion of Arthur Ross’s Paper’, Proceedings of Twelfth Annual
Meeting of Industrial Relations Research Association, 1959, p. 171.
20. Op. cit., p. 172.
21. Everett M.Kassalow, ‘Industrial Conflict and Consensus in the United States and Western
42 BRITISH J O U R N A L O F I N D U S T R I A L RELATIONS

Europe: A Comparative Analysis’, unpublished paper, December 1977, Proceedings of the

Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the I.R.R.A.
22. Hugh Clegg, Trade Unionism under Collective Bargaining: A Theory Based on Comparisons
of Six Countries, Blackwell, Oxford, 1976, p. 4.
23. Op. cit., p. 76.
24. Op. cit., p. 10.
25. Geoffrey K. Ingham, Strikes and Industrial Conffict, Macmillan, London, 1974, pp. 8-9.
26. Op. cit., p. 42.
27. Op. cit., p. 40.
28. Peter Jackson and Keith Sisson, ‘Employers’ Confederations in Sweden and the U.K. and the
Significance of Industrial Infrastructure’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 14 (3), 1976,
pp. 306-23; Walter Korpi and Michael Shalev, ‘Strikes, Industrial Relations and Class
Conflict in Capitalist Societies’, British Journal of Sociology, 30 (2), 1979, pp. 164-87.
29. Korpi and Shalev, op. cit.
30. Michael Shalev, ‘Strikers and the State: A Comment’, British Journal of Political Science, 8
(4), 1978, pp. 479-92; idem, ‘The Politics and Economics of Industrial Conflict: Some
Cross-national and Over-time Questions and Answers’, Paper presented to ‘State and Capital-
ism’ Seminar, Harvard University, May 1979.
31. Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly, Strikes in France 1830-1 968, Cambridge University Press,
1974, p. 317.
32. Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr., ‘Onthe Political Economy of Long-run Trends in Strike Activity’,
British Journal of Political Science, 8 (2), 1978, pp. 153-75.
33. Shorter and Tilly, op. cit.
34. Hibbs, 1978, op. cit.
35. Alessandro Pizzorno, ‘Political Exchange and Collective Identity in Industrial Conflict’,
Crouch and Pizzorno (eds.), The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968,
Vol. 2, Macmillan, London, 1978.
36. John Stephens, The Transition to Socialism, Macmillan, London, 1979.
37. Selig Perlman,A Theory ofthe Labor Movement, Augustus M. Kelly, New York, 1966 (reprint
of 1928 edition), p. 3.
38. Charles A. Gulick and Melvin K. Bers, ‘Insight and Illusion in Perlman’s Theory of the Labor
Movement’, Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 6 (4), 1953, pp. 510-31.
39. Perlman, op. cit., pp. 162-9.
40. Op. cit., p. 170.
41. Charles A. Gulick, Austria fiom Hapsburg to Hitler, University of California Press. 1948;
Adolph Sturmthal, ‘Comments on Selig Perlman’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 14
(4), 1951, pp. 483-96.
42. Needless to say, Perlman is not unique in having fallen victim to what Val Lorwin (The French
Labor Movement, Harvard University Press, 1954, p. xviii) once defined as the ‘Judy O’Grady
or sister-under-the-skin fallacy’ in comparative industrial relations research. The more recent
theory of convergence towards American-style ‘pluralistic industrialism’ also belongs in this
category (Clark Ken, et al., Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labor and
Management in Economic Growth, Harvard University Press, 1960).
43. John R. Commons, ‘Labor Movement’, Encyclopedza of the Social Sciences, 8, Macmillan,
New York, 1932, pp. 683, 695.
44. Op. cit., p. 682.
45. The irony is of course that Commons’ entire career-both in academe and in policy-
making-an be interpreted as a drive to develop a refutation of and alternative to Marxism.
See especially Leslie Fishman, Theories ofthe American Labor Movement, unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1957.
46. Commons, op. cit., p. 687.
47. Op. cit., p. 683.
48. Op. cit., p. 683.
49. This analysis raises the crucial question of why the American labour movement failed to follow
in Australia’s footsteps once the unique ‘opportunity’ factors singled out by Commons had
disappeared. His implied answer was that ‘Diffusion of corporate ownership, labor legislation,
voluntary concessions by giant corporations . . . [and] the important system of promotion’ had
eliminated not only the rationale for a political labour movement but perhaps even the basis
for an economic one (op. cit., p. 694). Like other admirers of ‘welfare capitalism’, Commons
failed to anticipate the structural crisis and labour eruption which came so soon after his article
was written.
50. The fact that only the Wisconsin classics have been discussed here is simply a reflection of my
own inclinations and limitations. The ‘classic’Marxist writings obviously also have much to say
which is of direct theoretical relevance to the study of industrial relations. (For a useful
 I N D U S T R I A L R E L A T I O N S THEORY 43
introduction to this literature see Richard Hyman, Marxism and the Sociology of Trade
Unionism, Pluto Press, London, 1971.) A specific example of past insights repeating them-
selves is Galenson’s attempt (1952,op. cit.), to link patterns of economic development and
labour ideology in the Scandinavian countries. As William M. Lafferty (Economic Develop-
ment and the Response of Labor in Scandinavia, Universitetsforlaget,Oslo, 1971)has shown,
Galenson’s major hypothesis is actually a restatement of the analysis earlier developed by
Edvard Bull, Sr.
5 1. Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Trade Unions and Social Structure’,ZndustriaIRelations, 1 (l), 1961,
pp. 75-89 and 1 (2), 1962,pp. 89-110.
52. For surveys of the broad gamut of literature and opinion on the subject of American excep-
tionalism, see Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Why No Socialism in the United States?’, Bialer and
Sluzar (eds.), Sources of Contemporary Radicalism, Westview Press, 1977,pp. 31-149; and
J. H.M. Laslett and S. M.Lipset (eds.), Failure ofa Dream? Essays in the History ofAmerican
Socialism, Doubleday, Garden City, 1974.
53. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, Harcourt, New York, 1955.
54. Sturmthal, 1951,op. cit., p. 687.
55. Op. cit., pp. 486-7.
56. Kendall’s line of argument here is strikingly similar to that earlier developed by S. M. Lipset
and S. Rokkan (‘CleavageStructures, Party Systemsand Voter Alignments: An Introduction’,
Lipset and Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments, Free Press, New York,1967)
to account for cross-national divergence in party systems.
57. W. Kendall, The Labour Movement in Europe, Allen Lane, London, 1975,p. 310.
58. Kendall’sanalysisalso has a diachronicelement. Thus for example he dwells at some length on
the Russian Revolution, fascism and the world wars as causes of national diversity, and on the
impact of changes in economic structure on labour movements. However, since he views
historic differences between the different movements as relatively enduring, it is sufficient
here to deal only with the static part of the analysis.
59. Val R.Lorwin, The French Labor Movement, Harvard University Press, 1954;idem.,‘Reflec-
tions on the History of the French and American Labor Movements’, 3ournal of Economic
History, 17 (I), 1957,pp. 25-44;idem., ‘Labor Organizations and Politics in Belgium and
France’, E . Kassalow (ed.), National Labor Movements in the Postwar World, Northwestern
University Press, 1963.
60. Lorwin, 1963,op. cit., p. 162.
61. Lorwin, 1957,op. cit., p. 33.
62. Op. cit., p. 35.
63. Op. cit., p. 41.
64. Op. cit., p. 32.
65. Lorwin, 1963,op. cit., p. 162.
66. Lorwin, 1957,op. cit., p. 33.
67. Op. cit., p. 31.
68. Lorwin, 1963,op. cit., p. 160.
69. Op. cit., p. 161.
70. Op. cit., p. 163.
71. Op. cit., p. 160.
72. For an important attempt to address this question, see Richard F. Hamilton,Afluenceandthe
French Worker in the Fifth Republic, 1957.
73. Kenneth F. Walker, ‘The Comparative Study of Industrial Relations’,Z.Z.L.S. Bulletin, No. 3,
November 1967, pp. 105-32; idem, ‘Strategic Factors in Industrial Relations Systems-
A Programme of International Comparative Studies’, Z.Z.L.S. Bulletin, No. 6,June 1969,
pp. 187-209.
74. Dore, op. cit., see note 10.
75. Robert W. Cox, Socwlogie du Travail, 1977.
76. However, his approach has already produced ideal-types which may be of value for typological
purposes; see Robert W. Cox, ‘Approaches to a Futurology of Industrial Relations’,1.1.L.S.
Bulletin, No. 8 , 1971, pp. 139-164; idem, ‘World Systems of Labor and Production’, a
paper presented at the Ninth World Congress of the International Political Science Associa-
tion, Montreal, August, 1973.