The United States, Germany, and Japan - the world's three most powerful and successful free market societies - differ strikingly in how their governments relate to their economies. Comparing Policy Networks reports the results of collaborative research by three teams investigating the social organization and policymaking processes of national labor policy domains in the United States, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s. The researchers gathered information about policy goals, communication patterns, and political support connections from 350 key national organizations, including labor unions, business associations, public interest groups, government agencies, and political parties. These networks reveal similar conflict divisions between business and labor interests, but also distinctive patterns within each nation. Unique combinations of informal policy-making networks and the national political institutions may in part explain the differences in power structures and legislative decisions.

"Comparing Policy Networks is a noteworthy piece of work. Further exploration of the data, using conceptual language of the sort the authors advocate, will very likely make a major contribution to the political economy literature." Roger V. Gould, American Journal of Sociology

"...they show how our understanding of the very nature and meaning of the state has improved....the author deftly accomplishes his goal of showing that efficient and rational development is a social fiction whose meaning reflects neither efficiency nor rationality but the larger social fictions of different cutural systems....smoothly written and lively exposition of great coherence." John Boli, ASQ