Regulation Theory and Australian Theorising of Institutional Change

Abstract: This paper critically introduces regulation theory as a methodology for analysing Australian industrial relations institutional change, by firstly comparing the international literature with the limited, pragmatic domestic applications of the approach, and secondly, by making several preliminary comments about the likely content of a regulationist explanation of the evolution of the Australian wage relation. Several features are particularly significant: the early and significant role of the State, and the State-initiated monopolist mode of wage regulation that pre-dated UK and the US institutional arrangements by forty years