The Governance of American Manufacturing Sectors: The Logic of Coordination and Control

This paper was presented at a colloquium held by the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften on April 26, 1989 in Munich. The colloquium was entitled "Der Föderalismus vor den Anforderungen der Gegenwart". In view of present tendencies towards globalization and the emergence of supranational political institutions, the question is raised whether federal constitutions are becoming anachronistic. In contrast to interpretations, which underline the compensatory functions which a federal political structure can fulfill in the process of modernization, it is here argued that poli tical structures such as German federalism are examples of a highly successful evolutionary form of social order. Federalism constitutes a multi-level decision structure which is in principle of a higher adapted value than the hierarchical forms of unitary states.