Bending the Rules: Institutional Analysis, Political Change, and Labor Market Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies

The relationship among economic contexts, political institutions, and the dynamics of national policymaking can be examined through an analysis of contemporary French and German labor market reform. Economic austerity and the failure of earlier policymaking models have led to qualitative shifts in the incentives facing governments and interest groups. These shifts have produced new bargaining patterns—"competitive interventionism" in France and "conflictual corporatism" in Germany—within formal institutional stability. These changes have implications for understanding national models of capitalism and institutional change and require rethinking the relationship between formal institutions and the dynamics of bargaining across economic and historical contexts.