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| Thelen, Kathleen |
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Max Planck Research Award for Humanities and Social Sciences |
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Social Institutions in Changing Times |
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Pension reforms, health scheme reforms, and social system reforms – industrialized nations all over the world are faced with profound and radical changes. Fundamental parts of a country’s political system have to face challenges hitherto unknown. The world of labour, due to the influence of new technologies, is changing considerably. Among other things, Kathleen Thelen deals with the origins, development and meaning of institutions taking care of a balance of interests between capital and labour – that is, for example, with trade unions and employers’ federations and their role in the respective society. Current systems of industrial relations can only then be renewed in a meaningful way when their historic peculiarities are recognized and analysed in detail by using a "theory construction kit" to explain institutional changes. In addition, Kathleen Thelen was able to refute a wide-spread assumption: According to popular belief, "globalisation" is responsible for the differences between political economies of the industrialized nations to be blurred and, instead, receive a uniform, "neoliberal" direction in line with the American model. But the environment in which the respective political parties and institutions move around is much too complex and multifaceted for a much dreaded "forcing into line" on a global scale to be successful. Currently Thelen examines what influence the various institutions have in the field of the respective work relations of a society on vocational education and thus on the formation of human capital. Kathleen Thelen is working at the Northwestern University in Illinois as a professor for Political Science. |
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