This book will reorient the discussion not only of business interests, but of the welfare state and social democracy, for it explains not only the rise of peak associations, but their support for welfare state measures today. Martin and Swank explain American exceptionalism as well as any book...

In 2000, Nancy Plankey-Videla began an ethnography at a high-end men’s suit factory in central Mexico. Three months later, reacting to layoffs, bonus cuts, and an effort to break the union contract, which managers blamed on global competition and the U.S. recession, the largely female...

Corporations have implemented a wide range of equal opportunity and diversity programs since the 1960s. This chapter reviews studies of the origins of these programs, surveys that assess the popularity of different programs, and research on the effects of programs on the workforce. Human...

Social scientists have sketched four distinct theories to explain a phenomenon that appears to have ramped up in recent years, the diffusion of policies across countries. Constructivists trace policy norms to expert epistemic communities and international organizations, who define economic...

Internal labor markets have been explained with efficiency and control arguments; however, retrospective event-history data from 279 organizations suggest that federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) law was the force behind the spread of formal promotion mechanisms after 1964. The findings...

The Great Depression called Western nations' most fundamental ideas about economic growth into question by disrupting the march of progress. Governments responded by rejecting orthodox growth strategies in favor of new policies they hoped would turn their economies around.' In the realm of...

One of the original hopes for European unity was that a huge frontierless economic region could replicate the economic dynamism of America's post-war economy. In the past dccade thc common "market" took on another meaning as Europe became disillusioned with interventionist public policies and...

France and the United States have pursued dramatically different policies to facilitate the growth of high speed rail transport. In France, central state planners have orchestrated the development of high speed train services, while in the United States that task has been left to entrepreneurs...

How can one best grasp the social transformations of the nineteenth century? Social historians have tried training their sights on an exemplary city, a particular social group, an illustrative historical incident, or a single life. Lenard Berlanstein's novel approach is to focus on the microcosm...

Otis Graham's Losing Time is an ode, in three parts, to industrial policy. In the first part, Graham reviews the U.S. "industrial policy" debate of the early 1980s, culminating in Congress's 1984 decision against national industrial planning, which was reinforced by Reagan's landslide...