We provide a new framework to account for the diverging paths of political development and state building in China and Japan during the second half of the nineteenth century. The arrival of Western powers not only brought opportunities to adopt new technologies, but also fundamentally threatened...

The American and British systems of industrial relations on the eve of World War I -- The impact of World War I: experimenting with corporatism -- The twenties: the retreat from wartime corporatist experiments and the quest for new forms of voluntary organization -- The Great Depression and the...