This book does not set out the results of a specific research study, nor does it present a fully developed theory. It is the outcome, instead, of the accretion, so to speak, of analytical insights derived from various research studies conducted in recent years by the present writer and from the theoretical reflections that accompanied them. The overall analytical framework proposed here was by no means clear when these studies were carried out and when these reflections were developed. I have found it necessary, in fact, to re-examine them carefully, to complete them with further analysis and to seek out the connections among them. The structure of the book emerged only gradually as the implications of each piece of analysis for the others, and the interconnections among them, became clear.

Why this overall analytical framework was not initially clear, and indeed at first sight may seem arbitrary to the reader, warrants some explanation. The reason lies in the increasingly sharp division of scientific labour – and the scant incentive to scholars who wish to overcome the specializations of their disciplines – with regard to both tools of analysis and the topics that have traditionally been addressed by the discipline. As will become immediately clear to anyone familiar with the contemporary social sciences, the topics examined in Part I of this book are conventionally the concern of political economy, to some extent of political sociology, and of political science. The topics addressed in Part II pertain to the sociology of work, to industrial economics and to industrial relations.