nm1222: maybe i said it at the very beginning er but maybe i didn't so f-, er 
while i talk feel free sort of to interrupt me if you have any questions 
directly as i'm going on because as you will have noticed er er i and i guess 
namex as well we have a tendency just just just to talk to the very end of the 
lecture so there is not really any time to ask questions directly at the end 
only then in the seminar but if you want to raise points directly related to 
what we are doing er just feel free to do so then we we can interrupt and and 
answer questions or give more detail er otherwise er we will with this with 
this lecture now move to er the the whole set of lecture really the the core or 
the middle part of this course where the er we will talk about er tendencies of 
change in contemporary Western societies over well roughly the past three 
decades or the post-World War Two period so the main er time span at which 
we'll be looking will always be a comparison between well roughly the 
nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties on the one hand and the nineteen-nineties 
on the other and the guiding question will always be whether there is an 
important social transformation going on er in the various fields of of social 
action in society now er we'll start with really with sort of more economic 
topics so the theme of this lecture is in well economic sociology if you want 
to call it like that or also some elements of the sociology of labour and 
sociology of the welfare state and er you may remember from er a couple weeks 
ago er that er i already gave an outline of the major areas we'll be looking at 
of the dimensions of social change er so i will er in the first few minutes 
come back to that er talk about how we can discuss the major economic changes 
and then go into much more detail than i did in the short summary which i did a 
couple weeks ago now the question which i already posed a couple of weeks ago 
was well why at all look at the post-war 
period if er one could say that i mean for er most Western countries there 
wasn't really any major institutional change i mean most Western countries at 
least from after the Second World War onwards from the ni-, late nineteen-
forties er were basically er democratically organized in political terms they 
were capitalist market societies in economic terms they were er societies 
broadly committed to a plural understanding of er social lives so nothing 
really happened in all those sort of most fundamental terms one could say 
nevertheless we will try to make an argument that there was a major change er 
so that must have been then on a slightly sort of more er more detailed levels 
of a more differentiated level er and that is what we will try to do so we have 
to describe in this lecture economic but then also political and social changes 
in a bit more detail at a at a lower level of differentiation so to say once we 
do that then er we can see that indeed there were some 
some important changes er and so what i will do now is i will try to describe 
er or give an idea as to how one could describe as indeed how sociology has 
described er over a a couple of decades within the framework of industrial 
society theory has described the societies of the nineteen-fifties nineteen-
sixties er and then i will sort of er try to show how these descriptions have 
changed and how we should really er see Western societies in a slightly 
different light nowadays in economic terms er i say this briefly as a summary 
at the beginning er the er theory of industrial society er was really based on 
the idea that er the dominant model of industrial production is er standardized 
mass production er large production runs of a rather limited number of goods er 
in large-scale factories er large-scale organizations er and those the goods 
produced the under those conditions of mass production being consumed in a 
similarly standardized way so that's 
standardized mass cos-, mass consumption as some people have said this model of 
economic organization then went with er sort of say a model of economic policy 
making er which seemed adapted and adequate to this model of economic 
organization namely on the one hand large-scale organization of both employers 
and workers sort of in unions and of employers' associations er direct 
negotiation between the top level of these large-scale organizations with very 
often the involvement of the state as a moderator and mediator between sort of 
the two conflicting organizations the state in addition intervening into the 
economy er by means of what was technically known as demand management er 
economic policy based on the Keynesian idea that er by increasing or 
diminishing government spending er you could indeed keep the economy on a 
basically stable growth path that then in consequence it's a third element the 
so it's the the economy policy 
objective we can call it or also a link between economic policy and social 
policy really namely that once you think that you can't keep the economy on a 
stable growth path then you can also argue that full employment is an objective 
of government action which can indeed be achieved there is no major problem in 
achieving it because on the basis of Keynesianism er you know how you're going 
to do it namely should employment fall below a certain level then you er have 
to increase government spending er the production will increase and employment 
will increase and accordingly sort of the move back to the growth path has been 
achieved so that is basically er we can call that a sort of full employment 
convention as it has been called recently and the basic agreement er even sort 
of among the major parties sort of the more conservative Christian parties on 
the one hand the Tories in Britain and the the more sort of left wing Social 
Democratic or Labour parties on the 
other hand during the fifties and sixties they basically agreed that that is 
the the way to do it er and that one indeed could achieve that so this is i-, 
in summary really something which i said already earlier a couple of weeks ago 
is er the idea that there is a typical er sort of organization of production 
linked to a typical economic policy mechanism er and economic policy objectives 
which in sum really describe what er the economy of in-, advanced industrial 
society is about that's the image of the nineteen-sixties so to say and now 
we'll i'll run through that and er we'll try to discuss if that has changed and 
how that has changed over the more recent period let me for that purpose also 
er draw sort of a a a kind of picture which you will er be used to already by 
now sort of this distinction between the sixties and the nineties long well 
always slightly schematic terms but i think useful terms to er carve out the 
main elements of those pictures so we'll 
compare the nineteen-sixties to the nineteen-nineties along those er three 
dimensions which i i outlined just now er the one we can call something like 
the organization of production this is standardized mass production and 
associated with that the large-scale organization combined and linked to er er 
what i call here now the economic policy arrangement or mechanism this is er 
Keynesianism on the one hand and very often indeed to varying degrees but i 
will come back to that linked to what one can call corporatism corporatism in 
the sense namely that both employers and workers get organized also in large-
scale organizations that's where there is some mapping here to the form of 
production er and that they er talk about er the development of the economy 
often er together with the state governments of the economic ministry or 
whatever the exact title is in various countries this is indeed a term with 
which you may be less familiar it's more 
typical really of continental European arrangements than of English or British 
arrangements but we come back to that and finally we have an economic policy 
objective as i just said and that is er the full employment convention now if 
we look at that you can almost immediately say that er this is no longer sort 
of really in the strong sense valid er in the sense namely that er this is the 
the one dominant or typical model of economic organization and economic policy 
but on the other hand you could also argue well we still have elements of all 
that and certainly there is standardized mass production still er there may not 
be exactly Keynesianism but er there are government interventions into the 
economy and there are these large-scale organizations and at least in some 
cases also er ideas of communication coordination of economic policy er in in 
wi-, er between these organizations and there is at least a lot of talk about 
full employment and how one gets back to 
full employment er so there is sort of a bit a mixed picture er the on the one 
hand these elements are still there on the other eleme-, hand we can also say 
that er many of these things have changed we haven't had full employment for er 
more than fifteen or twenty years depending on the country now governments may 
keep talking about it but we may have doubts about their commitment to it 
really er coordination between the economic policy actors has in has in many 
instances broken down it has been difficult to re-establish it various 
countries one talks about the need to re-establish it but it doesn't work any 
longer as effectively as it once did and there is a lot of talk about small and 
medium-sized entreprise that innovation in the economy comes really from them 
and rather not from the large-scale companies so you see there this kind of 
mixed picture which er really has has these elements still but also has lots of 
complications now er er i will try it from 
that basis then try to say something about er rather analytical possibilities 
as we can try to describe what the current situation is i mean if we try to go 
beyond at least er one or two steps beyond just saying well we have it but we 
also have new elements er try to er to analytically describe what the the 
possibilities of sociological analysis of the economy er are nowadays and in 
that context i will then refer to the various er texts which are in the course 
outline and well the particular one you you read for the seminar later on now 
you will have seen in the reading for today that er some people argue that 
standardized mass production is really er or went through er a major crisis of 
that er there was a massive decline if not a collapse of the model of 
standardized mass production the key text for that is er the one which we also 
listed under the additional readings the book by Charles Sable and Michael 
Piore er on the second industrial divide where they 
argue that indeed standardized mass production was a historical phenomenon 
which er slowly which is not at all related to the industrial revolution but 
that was really rather small-scale production but is a phenomenon of the late 
nineteenth century er when gradually er these longer production runs er 
Taylorist organization of work you know the er which i briefly mentioned 
earlier the m-, the minute and detailed er cutting up of the elements this i-, 
the the work process er to control and steer the labour power more effectively 
er in the factory and in the next step then the conveyor belt er and this er 
model together sort of Taylorist Taylorist scientific organization a-, of work 
as Taylor called it in the U-S at the beginning of this century and the 
conveyor belt driven er production of standardized good has really become known 
as the Fordist model of production on the basis of er works of some French 
economists in the er late nineteen-sixties early 
nineteen-seventies that has become known er this this model here as as Fordism 
but as a historical model of er the organization of the capitalist economy but 
it's not really typical for capitalism as such but rather typical for a 
historical development within capitalism so that means er it may as well change 
and may as well sort of decay and be transformed and that then is really the 
argument which Piore and Sable have come up with namely that if there was one 
industrial divide in the nineteenth century late in the nineteenth century 
towards standardized mass production and towards Fordism we may now be they 
wrote that in the early nineteen-eighties undergoing or going through a second 
industrial divide away from standardized mass production towards what they 
called flexible specialization that's the term which you found in the in the 
reading flexible specialization means that due to new production technologies 
basically related to er electronics 
and information technology er you can indeed what you couldn't do under 
Taylorism and Fordism er change the production runs rather quickly er so that 
you were not dependent any longer on mass production of goods and mass 
consumption of these identical goods but that you could take the example of the 
car industry could change models rath-, rather quickly or take con-, consumer 
electronics er that you could have short production runs and then just change 
the computer er assisted design and production er and produce something else 
rather flexibly but you can specialize er at short notice and during over short 
time periods er and that indeed where Taylorists and Fordists thought thought 
that the er er big organization hierarchically organized centrally planned so 
to say within the govern-, within the company that this necessarily has to be 
the most efficient model of production theorists of specialization argue 
instead that at least and in with the help 
of current technology er you can indeed organize much more flexibly and that 
that is the er the efficient way also of reacting to changing demand changing 
demand patterns er and to er changing market developments on that's part of 
this obviously on an increasingly global market and we'll just say here and 
point to a later lecture and discussion that here this is also connected to er 
a broader social change namely what we will discuss under the heading of 
lifestyles and identities that indeed from roughly the nineteen-seventies 
onwards er demand patterns also changed because er partly because of affluence 
also 'cause people er were less interested in buying sort of always the same 
kind of car which may have a major change with the season er minor change with 
the season but a rather er limited diversity er of products on offer the same 
for all kinds of more durable products er so that with a differentiation of 
life lifestyles er more emphasis given to a variety 
of id-, identities and social life that indeed er there was a demand for a 
greater variety and diversity of products so that flexible specialization is 
also a response to this kind of social change or social and cultural change 
namely different demand patterns towards greater variety and diversity now 
Piore and Sable also argue that once you do that er once you er er try to 
develop a production organization er in direction of flexible specialization 
then you also need a different kind of of company that the large-scale 
centralized hierarchical company like General Motors or Ford or so is no longer 
the most efficient model and they looked indeed at research done er on er 
central Italy and on south-west Germany er where sort of highly and sort of the 
highly affluent regions er with er world market competitive production but 
rather on the basis of many small companies rather than a few big ones this has 
become known as the theory of industrial districts but you don't have 
if you take the ex-, Italian example but you don't have like with er Fiat in 
Turin er one big company which really dominates the economy of a city they have 
a city of a million inhabitants or more where virtually everything is dependent 
from the well-being of the Fiat company was it is no longer the case but when 
you look at central Italy er then you have no big company at all but a region 
which was not only at least as affluent or maybe more affluent and more 
prosperous than northern Italy with the more sort of industrial mass production 
kind of economy er but even an economy which watered the crisis of the nineteen-
seventies the world recession recession in seventy-four seventy-five er and 
demand changes er much better at than the er standardized production economy 
did so Piore and Sable and other economic sociologists really concluded from 
that that there is a er a more efficient a f-, more flexible model of 
industrial organization also on the 
level of of company organization and that is er as i said really a model of 
industrial districts nowadays also sometimes discussed as a sort of network 
organization er not one big company but a network of smaller companies about 
which it is also important to say that the idea there is er not just er the 
idea of the innovative capacity of small and medium-sized entreprises as er to 
here in economics but also the idea that these companies are not really in full 
competition but that they so say share common resources like er certain kinds 
of education and training in a region er historical er backgrounds of er produc-
, production specialisms er that they also have er cooperative relations rather 
with er local or regional Chambers of Commerce with local or regional banks to 
finance their arrangements so indeed there's not just a question of t-, of size 
it's also the idea that there is not sort of full market competition as 
economists 
would like to tell us but rather a kind of social economic arrangement based on 
a mixture of cooperation and competition er where companies also work together 
while they're may at the same time be compete in several respects now er this 
is sort of one argument and if you looked at Piore and Sable er The Second 
Industrial Divide you will have seen that that they make that argument sort of 
very strongly that there is a a big change from this kind of organization to 
this kind of organization now as i said earlier er we may see that something 
like that happens that also maybe that we er sociologists and economists didn't 
pay enough attention to these other kinds of production er which er were more 
sort of in the shadow so to say of er the dominant mass production mentioned 
earlier because they existed and these industrial ic-, districts existed in the 
fifties and sixties they're not really new er but not much attention was 
paid to them but we may also argue standardized mass production also persists 
so that we cannot that Piore and Sable really overdraw their argument by saying 
that er the whole economy moves from one model standardized mass production to 
a different model flexible specialization any empirical study will show that 
that is not really true er that there there may be some change into that 
direction but there may as well be just a shift in attention on the part of 
observers er also journalistic observers now that is where i come to the 
diagram which is the i will not say much in detail about that because of lack 
of time there have then been er been some economists and sociologists er who 
have tried to go a step further and the main idea of this diagram is quite 
simple mainly to say that there is not any overall shift just look at it myself 
er but we really have to recognize that what exists is something like a 
plurality of worlds of production as er Salais and Storper call that this is 
the text er which is also on the course outline er The Four 
Worlds of Contemporary Industry er from the Cambridge Journal of Economics but 
you have the full details in the outline this diagram is taken from that text 
where you see if you just take a brief look in the the the main idea here is 
that we really have a variety of different basic production models er and they 
argue that sort of systemically speaking there are four er and er there could 
be more obviously one can always sort of make this argument more sophisticated 
there isn't any any need why there should be just four er below you have in the 
lower right corner what they call the industrial world that is really this 
model that's the lower right corner of their diagram now what er Piore and 
Sable tend to argue is that er due to the changes that i have been talking 
about there is a shift towards what one may want to call a network market world 
and that's the er top right er corner of this diagram er this is er roughly 
more or less it's not exactly 
the same it's what Piore and Sable say er is roughly er the idea that the whole 
economy shifts from the lower right to the upper right not least because if you 
look at the er the right order of that because the market conditions change 
from predictability to uncertainty and that is why you have to be er more 
flexible that is why you cannot er rely on long production runs of the same 
products over long periods er you have to be er you have to react flexibly er 
sort of as a producer er to the changing market environments er Salais and 
Storper say that this is not entirely wrong but it's only a part of the picture 
so that one should what one should really do is one should er look at economic 
organization in broader and more systematic terms that market changes the right 
axis the axis on the right is only one part of the change or of the conditions 
of production having said that first of all there is another element which is 
the technology and the production process 
which obviously was also part of er Piore's and Sable's argument but again they 
assume that there is a major shift into one direction only and if you take er 
Salais and Storper argue if you take market conditions and technological 
conditions into account then you er er have this variety or diversity of of 
worlds of production er different kinds of economic organization at the same 
time not really a shift over time sort of one historical transformation as the 
argument for s-, flexible specialization wanted it but er you have to look 
really at the national or local conditions to see what kinds of markets are 
there what kinds of technologies are used to produce goods er in certain areas 
or sin-, or in a national economy like say the British er and then you can say 
er where the er a major part of such an economy falls into this fourfold scheme 
i er we don't really have time to 
go into much detail but er let me just say something about the the other two 
worlds er the world of innovation that is really the that's the lower left 
corner that is not this Silicon Valley kind of business where you have er er 
sort of high-tech er production of the the cutting edge of er industrial 
technology er that's why it's on a different level of er on the technology 
scale the axis on the bottom but you may sort of like computer chips or basic 
computer equipment also do er fairly gen-, generic products er catering for a 
fairly stable and developing market so that is why this world of innovation er 
is changing rapidly in terms of the technology they use because they they use a 
high scientific input but they produce er for fairly predictable markets 
whereas the Marshallian market world er using the name of Alfred Marshall sort 
of the British economist from the late nineteenth century er is er a market 
world which also works with er high technology but has to 
adapt to rather unpredictable er market conditions then you see what they put 
er into these boxes is er quite different criteria er as to which these 
economic sectors or segments worlds as they call that er how they are organized 
there is really only the industrial world competes by price er where if you 
produce more effectively er can offer at lower prices you will be the leading 
competitor in the field in all other cases there is there are other criteria of 
competition er it can be sort of the ability to take in recent technology 
that's what they call learning it can be quite simply the quality of products 
er you may know for instance that when i men-, was mentioning south-western 
Germany er where they produce not least er tool making er technology sort of er 
factory equipment and things like that er these producers often sell at much 
higher prices than their competitors but there is the general view that these 
products are of higher quality than competitors from er from 
other countries so they don't really compete on the world market by price but 
they compete by quality and that's a quite different kind of economic 
arrangement than a competition by price i'll come back to that er in a minute 
whereas er then the network market world er that they say that price plays a 
role but quality comes in so that's a mixed criterion according to their view 
one can have and as i say i will say a bit more in a minute can have long 
discussions one can try what they have tried to do really look at in their case 
the French Italian and American economy is say what the dominant fields are 
where these economies specialize er so then for instance you find that the 
American economy is rather in the two bottom segments er it's still strong on 
in standardized mass production but it's also strong in the innovative world er 
whereas other economies have different specializations so that you have a you 
have a choice really there is not one change from 
this model to this model but there is what they call worlds in plural of 
production so this is er and this is the important to say the important 
conceptual conclusion from these observations there is not a clear line to be 
drawn from one dominant model to another but we have it's more complicated but 
we have an alternative tool to understand these developments by looking at this 
diversity or plurality of production not a a simple historical change from one 
model to the other but er a more complex change er including er a diversity of 
different arrangements in the in the present now really on the other two major 
points i'll be discussing i will basically show that er that is essentially the 
same er that again we have er among well social scientists sociologists and 
certainly among journalists often a view that things have changed in one 
direction that this model just didn't hold any longer so that a new model had 
to be developed whereas in each case one can make an argument that er it's not 
as simple as that er basic conditions have changed but that means that we are 
in a situation where as i say new models or indeed models based on some 
diversity of conditions are still in need of development if we do that here for 
er er the economic policy mechanism then it is quite clear that as many people 
have it er the argument is that Keynesianism and corporatism don't work any 
longer because of globalization that indeed both rely on a nationally organized 
economy a nationally contained economy Keynesanism does it because you have a 
government role er the government determination of er expenditure and and thus 
sort of the level of economic aki-, activity the steering of that level on the 
basis of er of government spending where that only works is if the government 
can really 
control the economy these are things which really happened er for instance in 
France in the early nineteen-eighties er when the well that was the first time 
that France had a socialist government in the post-World War Two period and 
that government er the first government under President Mitterand had a 
commitment to Keynesianism and there was high unemployment so well what they 
wanted to do according to old Keynesian recipes they wanted to increase 
government spending to push the economy to higher employment levels well they 
did that they spent a lot of money and er the economy went upwards to some 
extent but as it happened at that point of time the French economy was already 
er tightly linked to other European economies and globally linked to other 
economies across the world so the fact that the French government pumped money 
into the economy meant that many French consumers but also producers companies 
bought products abroad imported 
products so that a lot of the pump priming as it's technically called a lot of 
the deficit spending didn't really went into the French didn't really go into 
the French economy but went into economies other European economies and abroad 
so they increased their deficit without much effect on the French economy and 
this was abandoned after er a little more than a year they recognized that 
Keynesianism really depends on a national economy which you can control and if 
you cannot control it any longer because of global linkages er you just cannot 
do it you don't have the effects any longer which you would like to have the 
same is true about corporatism because corporatism relies on the fact that 
there are national organizations of the employers like C-B-I in England the 
Confederation of British Industry or like a national Trade Union Council and 
that they get together and er determine sort of wage levels er employment 
conditions and the like now 
again if you come to the conviction that er indeed i-, if you try to do that 
you may just er arrive at conclusions er which the economy cannot sustain er 
because it competes on the global level then what will happen is that er people 
will defect from these national organizations you have that that employers 
indeed say er said sort of in the nineteen-seventies well if you're going to 
agree sort of the national organization on that level of wages then i just er 
exit from the organization er i cannot pay those wages so er er the er er i 
will pay different wages so the the model of bargaining breaks down the same 
actually also not to put the blame one-sidedly on the employers also for 
workers sort of with the er not least sort of s-, the so-called knowledge based 
upper middle classes er were er increasingly then also employees er hoped to 
get a better bargain by individually negotiating with their employers rather 
than agreeing to wage conventions er then the model also 
breaks down from the employees' or workers' er point of view this was the 
crisis of the er er of the wage bargaining the centralized wage bargaining 
model which indeed happened from the well mid-nineteen-seventies onwards and 
which in many crea-, countries led to major changes of this this model not a 
drastic one but er in in some countries but in many in many cases indeed yes so 
the the idea here is if that were entirely true would be that this nationally 
organized model what's the key characteristics here that it's nation based 
gives way to something like a global neoliberalism now this is a case like the 
case with flexible specialization in the the first category global neolib-, 
liberalism that's what i said is namely that er where there is a tendency into 
that direction there was a crisis of the Keynesian corporatist model of 
economic policy it is on the other hand not true that say our European 
economies have just gone neoliberal 
have just opened to er the world market er we can still see on the one hand 
that there is what David Soskice calls varieties of capitalism this is the 
paper which we also mention on the course outline which is er unpublished er 
but is in the the copy of it or several copies are in the S-R-C collections er 
where he argues that er indeed er there are different ways of coordinating 
economies and and they indeed persist er the level of coordination does not go 
away er that may change that may adapt to new conditions er but there are sort 
of traditions of institutional arrangements which indeed are quite persistent 
of those changes he makes there a major distinction between what he calls 
coordinated market economies and uncoordinated market economies er the 
uncoordinated ones or rather the British and the American one er that is why 
the term corporatism is less well known in this country because there is a much 
lower degree of coordination than for instance in er 
Germany or Japan these are his counter-examples his examples for coordinated 
economies now this was written before the Japanese crisis but er i-, it still 
holds that the the argument namely that there are sort of quite entrenched 
institutional arrangements which don't just disappear because of deregulation 
and neoliberalism er but which adapt to new situations the point there is that 
these are indeed complex institutional arrangements where er the organization 
of er training and education is involved as you may know that there is er a 
much more organized professional training system er a company based one or a or 
a mixed system between a dual system between companies and public institutions 
in Germany where apprentices are are trained a much more formalized system than 
in this country there is er a relation between companies and banks which is 
much tighter in both Germany and Japan er where er there is the higher degree 
of coordination Soskice talks about 
where banks don't just let companies drop because they the profits decline or b-
, because they go into deficit but they try to organize restructurings er so 
really coordination between banks and er and companies and producers thirdly 
there is in some cases er coordinated work across er companies in the same 
sector er that is er are things which are now sort of discussed under the level 
of sort of competition policy where it's often argued that competition needs to 
be increased that the German or Japanese economy don't really know the 
necessary levels of competition but it can also be taken to be an advantage of 
coordination er as Soskice argues and finally there may be a kind of company 
organization that's more the Japanese model where you have large-scale con-, 
conglomerates which don't er dominate one sector but er er operate in various 
sectors so that they sustain themselves er through boom and bust because they 
never occul in all occur in all sectors at the 
same time to say that briefly the argument here is there is not just global 
neoriler-, neoliberalism but there are varieties of capitalism that's indeed 
the title of his paper and you recognize the same structure of argument is not 
a change to one new model but there is a transformation towards er a more 
complex institutional situation overall then er finally let's say something 
about the economic policy objective where there was an agreement that it should 
be sort of growth and full employment and full employment through growth that 
is the the Keynesian full employment convention as some people call it er and 
the idea that it was reachable er that it was indeed achievable with some 
standard tools now as i said earlier there is an agreement that these tools 
don't work in the same way than they used to work but if we conclude from what 
i said earlier there's also probably not necessarily the idea that one has to 
abandon that entirely now 
some people argue that and er that's again one of those fashionable terms of 
the time where some people say we have to get away from any such commitment of 
full employment what we have to do is to change the supply situation on the 
labour market people have to be flexible we have to deregulate the labour 
market we have to allow hiring hiring and firing on more easy conditions we 
have to allow variety of work situations er sort of temporary contracts part-
time contracts er temping in general er no minimum wage all that only er 
hampers the development of the economy and the creation of jobs er what one has 
to have is a maximum flexibility that's the one idea now this idea obviously 
goes along well with an idea of global neol-, neoliberalism that you should 
have markets and competition wherever you can get them what it does not do 
though er is it does not have a link between economic policy and social policy 
any longer in the same way in which the full 
employment convention had it there this full employment convention really meant 
that within a society within a nation there was an understanding that there is 
something like a common responsibility to get everybody employed and those who 
temporarily could not be employed er should get unemployment benefits on such a 
level that er they could lead a decent life er that is what i call a linkage 
between economic policy and social policy so that there is well the government 
could even say a societal commitment and consensus along that what the idea of 
flexibility means really is giving that idea up it basically shifts 
responsibility from the society to the individual er the overall conditions are 
changed in such a way that there are really almost no impediments or barriers 
to get a job er no union involvement no restrictions nothing like that but that 
that also means that everybody should see how he or she could sell her or his 
labour power er 
under whatever conditions are possible now the here there is not really a new 
model but it is also clear that at least in European societies er the 
flexibility regime is not just accepted i mean there are some people who talk 
about er offensive flexibility or constructive flexibility where they see a 
role for the unions n-, new role for the unions a new role for the regions er 
to develop the regime which er keeps up this linkage of as i will call it of 
economic and social policy i put that into brackets because there isn't really 
yet a model but the idea is that some such linkage needs to be maintained and 
that there is indeed no reason to assume it may have become more difficult than 
it was in the nineteen-sixties when this could be organized around a national 
society the national government committed to that that may no longer be 
possible however er this does not entail that there are no means and 
resources and actors to try to develop such a new model there are unions there 
are regional or city governments who could have a stronger role again partly 
because historically they had a role there is now not least er a stronger role 
of the European Union so if Keynesianism doesn't work any longer on the 
national level maybe it still works on the European level because Europe is 
less overall less import dependent than each individual member state of the 
European Union so there are discussions around how to design really this this 
model which are open sort of which are open-ended there is no solution for it 
yet but er there is also the view that there is no need to embark fully on a 
model of flexibility to conclude er what you have seen and the way in which i 
introduced this model at the very beginning er and that is one of the important 
questions here in this model there is a linkage between organization of 
production economic policy mechanism and economic 
policy objective one follows from the other if you have standardized mass 
production you have standardized work situations you have er a likelihood of 
the common workers' consciousness and trade union development er who can 
operate in large-scale organizations who can get organized and o-, are 
organizable because they are in these large-scale organizations you have er a 
national government er or in a national level towards they relate both the 
unions and the employers and thus you can construct sort of a socially 
responsible community er to arrive at a linkage of economic and social policy 
so this this works the one relates to the other or rather it worked it was the 
model of the fifties and sixties it doesn't work any longer in the same way and 
one possibility here is to argue in favour of a model which combines flexible 
specialization and global neoliber-, neoliberalism and flexibility which does 
away with all the institutions and 
boundaries which there were and just hopes that by flexibilizing this you can 
create a new kind of viable economic regime now as i've tried to say briefly 
there are reasons to assume that that while it is a coherent model but that it 
just wouldn't er be socially viable that it would er create er high 
inequalities er of a level in kind which one tried to abolish over much of the 
social and economic policy developments of the earlier Second World War period 
so that is why one has to search for a model to relate the variety of worlds of 
production in the different sort of historically developed settings which have 
varieties of coordination between economies varieties 
of capitalism to develop that into a new linkage of economic and social policy 
but this is obviously less clear-cut er we can less take it for granted than 
the old model the old model was quite stable it was conventionalized indeed it 
developed over a a long time sort of from the eighteen-eighties eighteen-
nineties to the nineteen-sixties and through many struggles obviously workers' 
struggles not least er we don't have that now there is not such a stability 
there are not these conventions which hold each other er but there that does 
not mean that they couldn't be developed in principle and that is what many 
sort of social and economic actors are really working on at this point okay 
thank you