ABSTRACT
Since 1989, changes in the countries of central and eastern Europe have led to the establishment of a new framework of industrial relations that is part of a broader process of social, political and economic transformation. Such changes pose important questions as to how well institutions function when they are introduced into an unfamiliar national context. In most of these countries there was a gradual process of institutional innovation in which some traditional institutions were kept and reformed and other ‘western’ structures of industrial relations were copied and adapted to local circumstances. However, the political unification of the two German states in 1990 was characterised by an ad hoc, bigbang ‘institutional transfer’ (Lehmbruch 1993) whereby west German institutions were introduced in the east. This involved a wholesale territorial expansion of west German political, economic, monetary and social institutions (including massive financial subsidies) into east Germany1 and resulted in citizens of the former GDR (German Democratic Republic) abandoning all their hitherto distinctive constitutional and legal provisions. In the words of one commentator, this amounted to an act of ‘unconditional surrender’ (van Beyme 1994:251, quoted in Hyman 1996:602).
