We launched our investigation of the national labor policy structures and processes of the U.S., Germany, and Japan from the organizational state approach. By imposing a single research design involving nearly identical measurement, data collection, and analysis procedures, we sought to eliminate any variation attributable to methodological techniques. Hence, if cross-national differences were observed, we should interpret them as genuine. Nothing in our analytic or empirical approach necessarily constrained either differences or similarities from emerging. Indeed, the chief advantage of conducting rigorous comparative research lies in its capacity to sort out unique from common elements in a manner inaccessible to investigations of one nation.

As may already be evident from the preceding chapters, we discovered certain broad similarities, but also many important differences. Distinctive policy-making structures characterize the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Although they belong to the same genus, each is a distinct species; or, to switch to a musical metaphor, the national organizational states reflect variations on a theme. These variations arose in distinctive institutional histories that continue to be played out on the contemporary stage. But they also exhibit new, previously unnoticed aspects. These new aspects surfaced and became apparent during our investigations of the interorganizational influence networks. The organizational state leads to images of structure built up from those empirically measured relationships. Accordingly, existing theoretical models, derived mainly from institutional styles of analysis, cannot be expected fully to capture or describe the structures and systems that surface from the organizational state approach.