ABSTRACT
A comparison of any form of trade union activity in Britain and Germany has to acknowledge that the economy and society of the two countries represent two very different types of capitalism. As a liberal market economy or shareholder system, Britain is characterised by short-termism arising from high levels of institutional shareholding, relatively high rates of company mergers and acquisitions, and outsider systems of corporate governance (Best and Humphreys 1986; Coates 2000; Hall and Soskice 2001; Morris 1998). In contrast, Germany is a co-ordinated market economy or stakeholder system within which there is a lower financial dependency on institutional shareholding, insider systems of corporate governance and an embedded system of co-operation between financial capital, employers, governments and trade unions (Streeck 1997; Hall and Soskice 2001). These different forms of capitalism foster different types of trade unions, situated at different points within the two regulatory regimes and pursuing rather different policy options (Hyman 2001). This chapter isolates some of these differences and thus identifies key features of the context within which the trade union merger processes take place in the two countries. In pursuing these objectives, the chapter establishes some of the differences in the relationships between unions and the state and unions and employers, thus elaborating one of the key relationships of the politics of bargaining.
