Co-determination in Germany

When the Labour Government began to nationalize industries in Great Britain, swarms of social scientists descended upon that island. They wanted to study this “great experiment,” which many of them viewed as the trail-blazer for an inevitable trend in all modern industrial societies. That was nine years ago. Now it seems that the nationalization dogma has lost most of its force even in Labour circles. But another great experiment has been in progress on the Continent, in West Germany: Mitbestimmung, the scheme under which labor participates in the management of private industrial corporations. In part it was born out of British disillusionment with socialism's erstwhile cure-all. Because of its novelty and uniqueness, it is attracting increasing attention from social scientists. But this time, the different disciplines are unevenly represented. Economists, and especially experts in labor relations, have shown the most interest. When they run across a student of politics in pursuit of the same quarry, they often express surprise. And the Germans, who are being visited, interviewed, questioned, polled, and subjected to every conceivable form of social scientific scrutiny, react even more strongly. They are positively puzzled: “You are not a Nationaloekonom? But then surely an Industrie- or Betriebssoziologe, or perhaps a Jurist ….” The political scientist is an animal of which few of them have heard. And fewer still can imagine off-hand why he would want to concern himself with co-determination.