Editorial

摘要

A major reason for the launch of this journal in 1995 was to encourage comparative research on European industrial relations. At the time, the English-language literature on employment in continental Europe concentrated primarily on a handful of countries (Germany, Sweden, France, etc.), though the volume which Anthony Ferner and I edited shortly before was designed to offer a wider range of reference. Research on the emerging industrial relations systems of Central and Eastern Europe was still in its infancy. And genuinely comparative analysis, setting the information on different countries to work in order to identify and explain both similarities and differences, was in scarce supply.