ABSTRACT

This volume brings together well-known scholars from a wide range of disciplines to provide a superb analytical and historical overview of how state policy has affected established economic and labour market systems in France and Britain.
The contributors to this book explore some crucial questions:
* how 'dirigiste' was the French state in reality
* why was state intervention more acceptable in France than in Britain
* how do the differences in state intervention help to explain the respective economic performances of the two countries since the second world war?
The book draws on hitherto unpublished primary research by scholars in economic and social history, industrial relations, economics, law, political science, sociology and social policy. As such, it is a timely and welcome intervention into debates concerning the politics of modern labour markets specifically and the role of the state in economic modernization more widely. It will have strong appeal to researchers and students in several discplines.

chapter 1|21 pages

Introduction

Political economy and modernisation 1

part I|132 pages

Modernisation and the Sphere of Industrial Politics

chapter 4|28 pages

The ‘Real' World of the Engineering and Electrical Industries in the Parisian Basin

The development of state intervention, 1925–1955

chapter 5|21 pages

Americanisation and its Limits

The reconstruction of Britain's engineering industries, 1945–1955 1

part II|118 pages

Regulating Labour Markets

chapter 8|14 pages

Arbitration in Context

Socio-economic conditions and the implementation of the law on conciliation and compulsory arbitration in the Parisian metal industries and light engineering in the Arve Valley

chapter 9|14 pages

Collective Agreements in France in the 1930s

Products, territorities and scales: the Saint-Etienne example

chapter 10|18 pages

France and Unemployment Insurance From 1920 To 1958

The myth of social security

chapter 11|18 pages

The Evolution of the Contract of Employment, 1900–1950

The influence of the welfare state

chapter 13|17 pages

State Regulation and Industrial Organisation

The London workshop trades, 1911–1960

chapter 14|18 pages

The State and the Labour Market

Reforming employment in the public sector 1