ABSTRACT
The vast field of research questions dealing with globalization can, broadly speaking, be divided into two interrelated but nevertheless different types of work. One which is preoccupied with the phenomenon itself, in other words proving and respectively disproving the new quality of internationalization, and one which takes intensified globalization for granted as a new reality and therefore concentrates on its consequences on socio-political systems and actors. Whereas the first category of work has dominated social science in the last ten years, the second has attained great importance more recently, notably in the field of comparative political economy. At the forefront of these studies is the question of whether or not economic internationalization leads to institutional convergence. This core question of comparative political economy is experiencing an impressive renaissance in the literature (see for example Crouch and Streeck, 1997; Kitschelt et al., 1999). It also stands at the beginning of our conceptual remarks on the implications of globalization on industrial relations.
