Institutional transfer: Industrial relations in eastern Germany

Can industrial relations be successfully transferred between countries? This paper reviews experience in eastern Germany since unification in 1990. The evidence is that the close integration in western Germany between the two elements of the 'dual system' of interest representation - trade unions and works councils - has not been replicated in the east. Hence the formal identity of institutions does not prevent substantial differences in their functioning. This may be explained both in terms of the adverse economic circumstances in the east since unification, and of the distinctive socio-cultural inheritance of the former system