The End of the Rhineland Model? Changing Labour Relations in Germany - Evidence from the Minimum Wage Debate

Abstract

Hypothesis: Effects of globalisation, European Integration and re-unification have pushed the German political economy away from its unique institutional setting, framed as Rhineland Capitalism or the Rhineland Model. Legislative decisions in the last years and current positions of politicoeconomic actors in wage setting mechanisms - a distinctive part of the Rhineland Model - seem to foster that shift and illustrate the incremental 'Anglo-Saxonisation' of the German political economy.