ABSTRACT
In comparative industrial relations there are two competing traditions of analysis: nomothetic and idiographic (Hyman 2001a: 209). The former seeks to identify regularities in the behaviour of industrial relations actors or in industrial relations outcomes, which correlate with, and are assumed to be caused by, institutions that are common across national cases. Thus, in this tradition, institutions like neo-corporatism, works councils or equality legislation are believed to generate determinate effects independent of context. Those effects, moreover, will vary depending on the degree to which the causal institution is present within each national case. In idiographic analysis, cases are unique and it is regarded as problematic even to identify a common object of study across national boundaries (Locke and Thelen 1995). Common institutions may thus generate diverse effects as they are bent to existing traditions and a nationally specific institutional context. Hyman (2001a: 209) has characterised this idiographic position thus: ‘the interrelationship among the elements of each societal ensemble makes these inescapably context-bound, so that every national case must be analysed holistically; by implication there are no variables, only differences’.
