Construction and exhaustion of the German neo-corporatist model. The Reunification as a consecration of the social fragmentation process.

As an important part of the neo-corporatist structure developed in Germany after the Second World war, the principle of joint implication was used by various protagonists in professional relations to consolidate the legitimacy of their practice and negotiations. From an institutionalist viewpoint, this article first analyses the conditions, which in this; context, governed the construction of long-lasting and effective compromise in the field of industrial relations and vocational training. The next point of interest is the changeover in the 1980-90s where, due to the actions of social movements and the new economic context, the action margin of workers' unions, firms, employers' unions and Lander becomes more restricted. The difficulties met by these different institutions in order to represent increasingly diversifying interests explain why they opted for more decentralised and varied regulation procedures. After 1989, the transfer of work and training regulations and institutions of the former German Republic to the new Lander in fact accelerate in the whole of Germany the ageing of regulations introduced after the Second World war.