National approaches to consumer protection in France and Germany, 1970-1990

This research investigates the growth of product market regulation in France and Germany from 1970 to 1990. It finds that these countries have pursued divergent strategies for regulating their domestic product markets. France has treated consumers as citizens, granting them special political protections against product risk. Germany has treated consumers as producers, emphasizing consumer information as a means of combatting market failure. This policy divergence resulted from the different institutional contexts in which the issues of consumer policy were first raised and resolved. As a consequence of these broad institutional differences, France and Germany have put in place divergent national consumption regimes, in which different sets of consumer and producer interests are systematically emphasized in government regulation. Such national divergence in consumption regimes is important because it will increasingly influence consumer and producer decisions about product choice, and these choices in turn set the terms of national variations of capitalism.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Trumbull, Johnathan Gunnar, 1968-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Suzanne Berger.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36098

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36098