Capitalist constitutions: Supply-side reform in Britain and West Germany, 1960-1990

In spite of the political and economic pressures for convergence among advanced industrial democracies, the organization of economic activity continues to differ between countries. This thesis examines the factors that underpin this variance in the postwar period by exploring economic and industrial reform efforts in two countries, Great Britain and West Germany.;Its empirical focus is on two sets of policy initiatives attempted in both countries in two different periods. In the 1960s, West German and British governments introduced 'corporatist' policy experiments designed to institutionalize consensual control of the supply-side economy. In the 1980s, however, governments in the two countries pursued 'neoliberal' economic policies, in particular by attempting to weaken the power and standing of organized labour. Despite the broad similarity of these initiatives, however, the outcomes they produced varied significantly. In contrast to West Germany, coordination among British employers over the control of production inputs failed to emerge despite the corporatist initiatives of the 1960s. In contrast to Great Britain, however, efforts to instigate neoliberal reform of the labour market were a conspicuous failure in West Germany during the 1980s.;The dissertation seeks an explanation for these varying outcomes in two sets of institutional differences between the two countries-variations in the organization of capital, and the different properties of formal constitutions. First it develops a microfoundational account of differences in West German and British employers' preferences over public policy, as well as differences in their capacity for collective action. Second, it argues that the feasibility of political reform in the two countries is shaped by the impact of constitutional arrangements, in particular their characteristic distributions of power and credibility properties. These arguments are then explored through a detailed empirical analysis of six policy histories in the two countries, covering a range of industrial, economic and industrial relations policy initiatives.