Government-Industry Relations S.
1 primary work
Book 4
Hostile Brothers
by Alan Cawson, etc., Kevin Morgan, Douglas Webber, Peter Holmes, and Anne Stevens
Published 1 July 1990
"Hostile Brothers" presents the findings of a major research project on government-industry relations in the consumer electronics and communications industries of Britain, France and West Germany. The authors interviewed over 300 senior managers, civil servants, trade unionists and industrial experts in depth to provide a comprehensive account of how these industries have adapted to technical change and international competition in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular they chart the emergence of multinational firms as the major political actors engaged in negotiations with governments and the European Commision over public policy. The authors developed a new theoretical approach, drawn from Weber, to analyse how public policy for industry is formed by major multinational firms seeking to insulate themselves from the uncertainties of market competition. They show how different combinations of market closure and competition arise from variations in technology, economic structure and political regime, and how trade liberalization and technological change produce very different outcomes according to the specific features of the industry in its national context.