BOOK REVIEWS

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1990.tb00358.x
Date01 March 1990
Published date01 March 1990
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
28:
1
March
1990
0007-1080
$3.00
BOOK
REVIEWS
The Search for Labour Market Flexibility: The European Economies in Transition,
edited by Robert Boyer. Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1988,304
pp.,
$67.
In this collection, Boyer sets the work
of
seven economists associated with the
European Federation for Economic Research in
a
comparative examination
of
change and crisis in the economies and industrial relations systems
of
France,
Britain, Italy, Belgium, West Germany, Spain and Ireland. The analytic framework
is that of the French ‘regulation school’; this means that the selection
of
issues and
empirical material, the periodization
of
crises and the key institutional changes in
each country and in Europe
3s
a whole cannot be read without engaging with the
broad theoretical premises of the regulation approach.
This analyses capitalist growth and crisis in terms of periods
of
different forms of
‘regulating’ the wage-labour relation, moving from accommodation to breakdown at
the general macro level
of
the economy, social norms and expectations. These
periods have different structural and institutional forms, and the term ‘regulation’
is
the ‘dynamic process by which production and social demand adapt
.
.
.
In a system
dominated by the logic of the capitalist market and by capitalist relations, the success
of
regulation is gauged by its ability to guide and channel the process
of
capital
accumulation, and to contain the imbalances that this tends constantly to generate’
(p.
8).
This approach also distinguishes between cyclical crises
of
recession, and
structuralor
major crises of the system of regulation.
Underlying the discussion of each nation-state in this collection is the central
concept
of
‘Fordism’. This is a specific form
of
wage-labour relations regulation,
involving the conception both
of
a standardized, semi-skilled labour process, and
of
a
wider economic balance between production and aggregate demand.
In
this
interpretation, the classic capitalist crisis of overproduction is held at bay by a
‘virtuous circle’ of sustained growth: in return for continuous productivity increases
in mass production, workers’ rising consumption norms encourage wage rises which
keep pace with productivity, and sustain an expanding market. This
of
course
is
an
oversimplification; the distinction between Fordism (seen as the motor of growth)
and Keynesianism (see
as
a stimulus to demand)
is
drawn, but more importantly,
Boyer acknowledges the heterogeneity
of
different national contexts. Each chapter
shows the differences in the roles
of
the state, trade unions, social security systems
and industrial and labour market heritages,
so
much
so
that at the empirical level it is
evident that the concept of ‘Fordist growth’ becomes very problematic, both as
a
description
of
each country’s postwar experience aod as a general analytical device.
From this, Boyer warns against ‘importing the American model’
of
Fordism
(on
which the theory was first based) and assuming ‘a gradual convergence
of
institutional forms
of
wage/labour relations’. Indeed, he concludes, ‘such an extreme

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