A Long Cycle in Industrial Relations,or: Regulation Theory and Political Economy

ABSTRACT: The main purpose of this paper is to test the Regulation Theory (la Théorie de la Régulation) ‘ on a subject — the long cycle of rigidity/flexibility in labour markets and industrial relations we have experienced between the late sixties and now — that should be one of the central concerns of such a theory, being linked to one of its basic concepts: the Rapport Salarial. Does the theory of regulation help us (more than rival theoretical frameworks do) in explaining why we underwent a rigidity/flexibility cycle? And in explaining why this cycle took such different forms in different countries? In order to achieve this purpose, the author first distinguishes several meanings, or dimensions, or rigidity/flexibility (money and real wage, numerical, functional, intensive, dualistic, geographical) and goes to some length in analysing why comparisons in this field between national industrial relations systems and labour market arrangements are rather difficult to perform. Having done that, the author argues that regulation theory is of little help in understanding our diachronic question — why we went through a flexibility cycle — because such a theory does not make any strong bet on the causes of change in the institutional arrangements of labour markets and industrial relations. On the synchronic question — why the forms of the cycle have been so different cross-nationally — the conclusion is that Regulation Theory can be useful as a focusing device, as an ideal-type, but that a lot of nationally-specific materials have to be added in order to obtain adequate answers. The paper ends up with a methodological discussion on the statute of regulation theory. It is argued that it is neither theory nor history: it is a series of ideal-types of system-integration, connected by ex-post, historical linkages.