Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:31:27.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Practice of the Theory of Industrial Adaptation in Britain and West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

THE TERM ‘INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION’ HAS RECENTLY EMERGED as a rallying call in the vocabulary of economic policy-makers in national governments and international organizations. At the same time the political consequences of the adaptation process, such as the reorientation of whole areas of government activity towards industrial priorities, or the escalation of unemployment, have redefined the agenda of economic policy for students of politics. This article, based on a comparison of the systems of industrial adaptation that have operated successfully in West Germany over the post-war period and, far less successfully, in Britain, focuses on the subsidy issue in the two countries and points to the hypocrisy of official economic doctrines and programmes. Insofar as governments must concern themselves with economic activity, issues such as subsidy must be evaluated not in pejorative, polemical fashion but in terms of their goals and of policy frameworks within which they can be controlled.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 OECD, Industry in Transition: Experience of the 70s and Prospects for the 80s, Paris, OECD, 1983.

2 Ibid., p. 144.

3 See Dyson, K. and Wilks, S. (eds), Industrial Crisis: A Comparative Study of the State and Industry, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1983.Google Scholar

4 OECD, Economic Survey, United Kingdom, February 1983.

5 Regional Industrial Development, Cmnd 9111, 1984, para. 20.

6 See particularly Lindblom, C., Politics and Markets: The World’s Political Economic Systems, New York, Basic Books, 1977.Google Scholar

7 OECD, Transparency for Positive Adjustment: Identifying and Evaluating Government Intervention, Paris, OECD, 1983.

8 Shepherd, G. et al. (eds), Europe’s Industries: Public and Private Strategies for Change, London, Frances Pinter, 1983.Google Scholar

9 Abernathy, W. et al., Industrial Renaissance: Producing a Competitive Future for America, New York, Basic Books, 1983.Google Scholar

10 See K. Dyson and S. Wilks (eds), op. cit., pp. 252–3 for development of this theme.

11 Offe, C., ‘Crises of Crisis Management: elements of a political crisis theory’ (first published (1973), in Keane, J. (ed.), Contradictions of the Welfare State: Claus Offe, London, Hutchinson, 1984.Google Scholar

12 Riemer, J., ‘Alterations in the Design of Model Germany’ in Markovits, A. (ed.), The Political Economy of West Germany, Praeger, 1982.Google Scholar

13 Crouch, C., ‘Varieties of Trade Union Weakness: Organised Labour and Capital Formation in Britain, Federal Germany and Sweden’, West European Politics, 3 (1), January 1980.Google Scholar

14 OECD, Positive Adjustment Policies: Managing Structural Change, Paris, OECD, 1983.

15 See Wilks, S., Industrial Policy and the Motor Industry, Manchester University Press, 1984,Google Scholar ch. 1.

16 European Economy, No. 16, November 1983, p. 112.

17 Horn, E. J., Management of Industrial Change in Germany, Sussex, European Research Centre, 1982.Google Scholar

18 Knott, J., Managing the German Economy, Lexington, 1981.Google Scholar

19 See K. Dyson and S. Wilks (eds), op. cit.

20 J. Riemer, op. cit., p. 81.

21 E. J. Horn, op. cit., p. 104.

22 The Economist, 4 February 1984, Survey p. 11.

23 See Dyson, K., ‘The Politics of Corporate Crisis in West Germany’, West European Politics, 7(1), 01 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 ‘Subsidies in the Federal Republic of Germany’, European Economy, 19 March 1984, p. 46.

25 See Grant, W., The Political Economy of Industry Policy, London, Butterworths, 1982, p. 14.Google Scholar

26 See the Industry Act 1972 Annual Reports published as House of Commons papers.

27 Financial Times, 3 May 1984.

28 See The Guardian, 13 January 1984.