Employers, Public Policy, and the Politics of Decentralized Cooperation in Germany and France

Abstract

The analytical framework of varieties of capitalism can be grim reading for public policymakers. If their countries lack the institutional framework necessary for sustaining non-market coordination, then the counsel of many of the chapters in this volume is simple: stick with the policies that are compatible with the existing institutional framework of your country, even if that means abandoning goals that could improve both the competitiveness of firms and the wages of workers. In this chapter I argue that the diagnosis generated by the varieties of capitalism framework is indeed compelling; many modern problems of economic and social policymaking are in fact problems of coordination among companies, such that the goals of state policymakers will frequently involve convincing actors to act in concert to achieve desirable social ends. Yet the prognosis of this chapter is rather more hopeful than others in this volume for political initiatives that aspire to create coordination in policy areas where it has previously not existed. Such initiatives can succeed, even when countries lacking the framework of a coordinated market economy attempt to create non-market coordination de novo.