IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v34y1980i1p35-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The National Accord as a Social Contract

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Flanagan

Abstract

In September 1979 the Carter administration and the AFL-CIO issued the text of a National Accord, which discussed general principles to be followed in several areas of economic and social policy. In combining discussions of pay-price policy and other economic and social issues, the accord resembles “social contract†arrangements in several Western European countries. This invited paper assesses the viability of the National Accord as a social contract by examining three interrelated issues: the suitability of the accord as an institutional mechanism to secure wage and price restraint, given the characteristics of the underlying wage-determination process in this country; the breadth of institutional representation in the negotiations leading to the accord; and the ability of the negotiators to deliver on their commitments. The author concludes that the accord fails on all those counts to be an effective social contract, but he also argues that any social contract approach to wage and price restraint is unlikely to be successful in this country.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Flanagan, 1980. "The National Accord as a Social Contract," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 34(1), pages 35-50, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:34:y:1980:i:1:p:35-50
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/34/1/35.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:34:y:1980:i:1:p:35-50. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.