The Impact of Industrial Policy and Structural Changes on Codetermination in the German Steel Industry

Abstract

During the last fifteen years the American economy has been unable to continue the impressive growth that characterized the postwar quarter century. Particularly during the 1970s, the malaise that infected American society had been accentuated by the apparently superior performance of competing countries. First France, then Germany, and finally Japan appeared to have discovered, in turn, a unique policy that guaranteed economic growth and stable employment. Initially it was “Le Plan”, the indicative industrial planning by an elite Gaullist technocracy that assigned quantitative and qualitative investment targets to key industries, then German Codetermination,^* and lastly the mysterious establishment of industrial strategies by Japan’s Ministry of Industry and Trade that were held responsible for the successive peak performances of these countries. The apparent common denominator of the French-German-Japanese experiences was government intervention in the market economy: industrial policy and employee-union participation in managerial decision making, that is, codetermination.