  In the present paper, we carry out a detailed analysis of the presence and
mixing of various families of collective bands in $^{188}$Pb. Making use of the
interacting boson model, we construct a particular intermediate basis that can
be associated with the unperturbed bands used in more phenomenological studies.
We use the E2 decay to construct a set of collective bands and discuss in
detail the B(E2)-values. We also perform an analysis of these theoretical
results (Q, B(E2)) to deduce an intrinsic quadrupole moment and the associated
quadrupole deformation parameter, using an axially deformed rotor model.
