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How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan, by Kathleen Thelen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 333 pp. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-521-83768-5. $29.99 paper. ISBN: 0-521-54674-5.
A skilled workforce has long been one of the keys to economic success for the advanced capitalist countries. Kathleen Thelen's excellent new book shows how four of these countries, Germany, Britain, Japan, and the United States, each developed different sets of institutions that guided the training and skill formation of workers from the late 1800s through much of the twentieth century. She draws both cross-national and historical comparisons not only to show how each country's skill formation regime developed its own unique characteristics, but also to advance our theoretical understanding of how institutions change in general. As a result, this is an important book (even for those who are not interested in national training regimes per se) because it sheds new light on the processes and mechanisms of institutional change.
Thelen's argument is complex. In brief, however, she argues that in Germany, the state granted organized artisans early monopoly rights to train workers and certify their skills, but firms in skill-intensive industries, notably metalworking, sought to seize these rights for themselves. Later, social democratic unions organized skilled workers and sought to democratize and...