Flexible Bureaucracies in Labor Market Regulation

URL is to book. Chapter listed in TOCThis paper compares and contrasts the U.S. and French systems of labor market regulation. The U.S. system is specialized: Regulating authority is dispersed among a host of different agencies each with a relatively narrow jurisdiction, and as a result with responsibility for a very limited domain. Authority is further divided between the federal and the state governments. The French system is a unified or general system: A single agency is responsible for the enforcement of the whole labor code. As a result, the French system is a street-level bureaucracy in which considerable power and authority rests with the line agents, the work inspectors themselves. The structure of the system (quite paradoxically in the light of the centralization generally attributed to the French state) gives the inspectors virtually complete autonomy in the geographic area to which they are assigned. As a result, and contrary to the contrast generally drawn between civil law and common law countries, at least in the literature of economics, the French system is considerably more flexible and able to adjust to variations in economic and social conditions across the territory but also over time than is the U.S. system. The contrast is of broader importance because the French system was adopted by Spain (and Italy) and from there spread to Latin America, where the issue of labor standards enforcement has become central to bilateral trade treaties with the United States. The paper goes on to discuss the various managerial issues posed by the two systems and the problems of reconciling their contrasting dynamics in a unified global trading regime

Convergence in industrial relations? : the case of France and the United States

July, 198

Il dualismo nelle economie industriali

L'analisi dualistica come strumento per la comprensione e il controllo di un'economia industriale avanzata. Relazioni tra lo sviluppo economico e il dualismo; tecnologia, mercato del lavoro e squilibri territoriali. Il dualismo dell'economia italiana in un contesto internazionale.- Presentazione #7- Gli autori #9- Indice #11- 1. Il contributo dell'analisi dualistica per la comprensione e il controllo di una eco-nomia industriale, Roberto Artioli #13- 2. Dualismo nelle economie avanzate, Robert T. Averitt #27- 3. Lo sviluppo della macroimpresa e l'avvento dell'economia dualistica, Alfred D. Chandler #39- 4. Potere e protezionismo nel settore "moderno" dell'economia americana, Walter Adams #51- 5. Fondamenti tecnologici del dualismo, Michael J. Piore #63- 6. Alcune considerazioni sugli aspetti terri-toriali del dualismo economico, Berardo Cori #77- 7. L'analisi dualistica e le necessità della pianificazione francese, Henri Aujac #89- 8. Il dualismo come problema attuale della politica industriale in Spagna, Ramón Tamames #99- 9. Sviluppo economico e dualismo: Il caso italiano, Andrew Stevenson #119- 10. Sistema imprenditoriale e sistema poli-tico in Italia, Giuseppe Are #13