ABSTRACT
The nation as a unit of analysis has now become of major interest with an array of different frameworks and collections of comparative studies as well as single nation studies (Clark and Mueller 1995, 1996). This chapter will review the development of institutional and structural perspectives and then compare three different current perspectives:
the actor-culture theorising of Hofstede (1980);
the new institutionalism (e.g. Scott 1995);
the claim by Sorge (1991, 1995) that societal capacities are most significant when directed towards resolving tensions between sectors in respect of conflicting contingencies.
