THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE BARGAINING SOCIETY - WAGE SETTING IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES, 1950 TO 1992

It is commonly believed that corporatist bargaining institutions have been in general decline in the 1980s and 1990s. The leading explanatio ns of the purported universal trend toward greater decentralization of collective bargaining are the impact of technological change, changes in the occupational structure, and growing international economic int egration. Decentralization should be particularly visible in the Nordi c countries, because collective bargaining was more centralized in the se countries in the 1960s and 1970s than in any others in Western Euro pe. In this article, the authors present data on the changes in the ce ntralization of wage bargaining in the four Nordic countries since 195 0. They document that a significant decentralization of collective bar gaining has occurred in Sweden, as is well known, but not in the other three. The article concludes with a review of possible explanations o f Swedish exceptionalism.