In May and June of 1968 a dramatic wave of strikes paralyzed France, making industrial relations reform a key item on the government agenda. French trade unions seemed due for a golden age of growth and importance. Today, however, trade unions are weaker in France than in any other advanced capitalist country. How did such exceptional militancy give way to equally remarkable quiescence? To answer this question, Chris Howell examines the reform projects of successive French governments toward trade unions and industrial relations during the postwar era, focusing in particular on the efforts of post-1968 conservative and socialist governments. Howell explains the genesis and fate of these reform efforts by analyzing constraints imposed on the French state by changing economic circumstances and by the organizational weakness of labor. His approach, which links economic, political, and institutional analysis, is broadly that of Regulation Theory. His explicitly comparative goal is to develop a framework for understanding the challenges facing labor movements throughout the advanced capitalist world in light of the exhaustion of the postwar pattern of economic growth, the weakening of the nation-state as an economic actor, and accelerating economic integration, particularly in Europe.

Togman provides a comparative analysis of French and U.S. immigration policies from 1945 to 2000. He explores why nations implement the immigration policies they do, why some governments allow or even encourage large-scale immigration while others restrict it, why some states shift from liberal to restrictive entry policies and vice versa. Focusing on critical historical junctures, Togman illustrates how different institutional structures in France and the United States led these countries to implement divergent entry policies. Political institutions are shown to act as an intervening variable, helping determine what, if any, influence other factors such as economic conditions and cultural traditions have over a nation's immigration laws. Scholars and students of French politics, U.S. politics, comparative politics, and immigration policies will find this work helpful.