Max Koch: Roads to Post-Fordism: Labour Markets and Social Structures in Europe.

Max Koch

Roads to Post-Fordism: Labour Markets and Social Structures in Europe

Ashgate, 2006, 190 + viiii pp.

ISBN: 0-7546-4308-5 (hbk) 50 [pounds sterling]

First published as the author's Habilitation (second doctoral degree) in 2002, this English-language monograph presents a revised and updated version of the original analysis. Koch puts forward a regulation approach, based in particular on the Parisian school, to understand decades-long trends in the labour markets and social structures of five advanced capitalist states: Germany, Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Koch argues that the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism has not necessarily led to uniform outcomes in labour organisation and socioeconomic regulation. Instead, we can observe diversity in the national trajectories of advanced capitalist states, with varying patterns of inclusion and exclusion. The book maps these diverse post-Fordist capitalist development paths along a continuum between 'capital-oriented' and 'negotiated' growth strategies. The former type is characterised by a weak state, lack of coordination in wage determination and capital-oriented regulatory reforms; and the latter by an engaged state bringing about and supporting compromises in wages and socioeconomic regulation. Through a statistical analysis of labour and social indicators over time, Koch demonstrates how the United Kingdom has pursued a distinctly capital-oriented strategy, while Sweden and the Netherlands remain most tied to a negotiated-growth strategy.

Koch's description of the shift from the Fordist regime of high growth rates, full employment and industrialisation in the 1960s to the post-Fordist period of lower productivity, higher employment and deindustrialisation will be familiar to readers of Capital & Class. What is more novel about this account is Koch's attempt to relate this shift in regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation to changes in domestic labour and social structures across five states and over time. Koch advances four hypotheses related to the composition, decomposition and finally re-composition of Fordist social structures, and tests these through an evaluation of international labour statistics supported by qualitative data. Concerning the composition and decomposition of Fordist social structures, the data tells a familiar story. The concrete historical manifestations of the Fordist growth model varied significantly across countries, leading us to speak of 'Fordisms' rather than of one uniform model. While Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands came closest to the 'genuine' or ideal type of Fordism characterised by the USA, the UK (with its weak state and fragmented labour markets) exhibited a 'flawed' type of Fordism, while Spain, emerging from Francoism in the late-1970s, was 'delayed'. Yet in the heyday of Fordism between 1961 and 1973, high growth and productivity rates were generally accompanied by full employment and rising real wages across all western European states. As Fordist development strategies came under pressure from both the demand and supply sides in the mid-1970s, all states, in turn, witnessed a decomposition of labour markets and social structures, resulting in a subsequent rise in income inequality and social stratification.

In analysing the concrete impact of the decomposition of Fordism on wages and social structures, Koch provides a useful addition to the regulation literature, which has devoted relatively little attention to social structures in its debate on the transition from Fordist to post-Fordist growth strategies. By framing his analysis within a regulation approach, Koch also makes a contribution to the broad international literature on social stratification and inequality, where regulation theory has made few inroads. Yet perhaps where Koch makes his most important theoretical and analytical contribution is in his analysis of the re-composition of labour markets and social structures under post-Fordism, arguing that the concrete processes involved in recomposing these structures are dependent on the kind of road to post-Fordism that a country pursues. In countries in which capital-oriented growth strategies prevailed, as in the UK, rising GDP growth was accompanied by a social structure characterised by long working hours, enormous income disparities, rising self-employment and the growth of the working poor. Negotiated growth strategies pursued by states such as Sweden, in contrast, are characterised by increased growth along with rising real wages, relatively short working hours, stable wage inequalities and lower poverty levels. The seemingly sanguine conclusion a reader can draw from Koch's findings is that under the right conditions, the relatively stable period of prosperity and full employment experienced by countries during the heyday of Fordism can occur again.

By calling into question the common presumption that the shift to post-Fordism necessarily constrains states' choices with regard to labour and social policy, Roads to Post-Fordism contributes to the broader body of comparative political economy literature that seeks to document and explain the different development strategies advanced capitalist states pursue. That is, instead of assuming that national differences dissolve as nations become integrated into the global economy, such approaches consider how diverse national historical trajectories--which underlie the social solidarity of the nation state--shape the choices states make in the face of common challenges. Similar to the 'varieties of capitalism' (voc) approach, Koch seeks to categorise advanced capitalist states according to different types of relationships between production regimes and social systems. What the voc literature coins 'coordinated market economies' (or CMES) and 'liberal market economies' (or LMES) correspond closely to Koch's 'negotiated' and 'capital-oriented' ideal types. Where Koch diverges from the voc literature is in his attribution of different state strategies to particular class compromises, rather than to firms and states seeking institutional arbitrage. In assessing the impact of these strategies on patterns of social inclusion and exclusion, the book also provides a much-needed addition to the body of neocorporatist literature, which tends to emphasise the role of social pacts and other institutional factors over and at the expense of examining their actual concrete effects on wages and levels of social protection. Where Koch concurs with the voc and neocorporatist approaches is in his view that maintaining a relatively high degree of economic cohesion and social protection can enhance a country's comparative productivity.

Concerning the long-term prognosis of his findings, Koch argues that while the link between the type of post-Fordist development strategies and socio-structural change is empirically assured in the cases of the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands, ongoing change in Germany and Spain leave these cases open-ended. One might also add France, Italy or Greece--countries that voc scholars have coined 'mixed market economies'--to the list of western European countries with evolving post-Fordist development strategies. Koch addresses these uncertainties by suggesting that while further research is required, his findings can 'serve as an orientation for countries in earlier development stages' (p. I73), and help to undermine the fatalism typical of much of globalisation discourse. Yet the question arises as to whether and how future decisions over development strategies will be shaped by changes in the European and global political economic space. Indeed, consistent with the regulation approach, Koch suggests that national governments are not only on the receiving end of regional or global constraints; but they are also actively involved in reshaping these arenas. While Koch focuses on the national level, leaving this transnational dimension for future research, further consideration of these transnational factors seem crucial to an understanding of the post-Fordist restructuring of labour markets and social regimes. Given that each of the states under analysis here is a European Union member, with three of the five also members of the euro zone, the ongoing transformation of European monetary and regulatory regimes will certainly have an impact on the choices these states make in development strategies. With the recent entry often post-socialist states into the European Union in states that face higher unemployment and lower wages, weak social welfare regimes and a general scepticism towards regional regulatory and redistributive agendas--leaders and workers in western European states fear that enlargement is spurring an interregional race to the bottom in terms of wage and regulatory regimes. The so-called 'Lisbon agenda', conceived to increase the competitiveness of the EU through increased liberalisation of services and the dismantling of regulatory policies, continues to place pressure on states to conform to a 'capital-oriented' regulation strategies. The issue of immigration, too, has come to dominate national and European agendas, with particular import to the national patterns of inclusion and exclusion that are of central concern to Koch's analysis.

Ongoing conflicts over whether the European and global political economy will be driven by the neoliberal agenda of economic competitiveness or by social cohesion are increasingly being played out within the European, as well as national spheres. By documenting the long-term relationship between changes in capitalist development, labour markets and social structures at the national level, Koch makes a useful empirical contribution to our understanding of the ongoing transformations within and between the advanced capitalist states of western Europe in the post-Fordist era. How these western European states will be shaped by--and continue to shape--changes in regional and global regulatory regimes is a fruitful arena for future research.