Varieties of Capitalist debates? National peculiarities in the debate on market liberalization in Britain, France and Germany

Abstract

To the same extent as the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach has become widely renowned it has provoked criticism. Among the points of contention the VoC approach faces is its neglect of political conflict. Due to the selective focus on labor market interactions and institutions, the approach does not pay enough attention to the context of national economic networks, that is the role of the broad public debate and the public opinion. In this paper I will move beyond the simple bifurcation between liberal and coordinated market economies that most VoC literature assumes. Using the concept of public debates, I will study the supply and demand side of political conflict in Britain, France and Germany. More generally, I assume that the different types of capitalism lead to distinct camps of actors, variations in the relationships between economic and political actors, and distinct pat-terns in the public opinion. The analysis mainly relies on novel relational data from an extensive content analysis of newspapers from 2004 to 2006. Additionally, secondary data from surveys is used to study the role of the socio-structural base of conflict. The analysis confirms the distinct nature of different capitalist models and show how the patterns of political conflict on economic policies can be extended beyond the expectations derived from the VoC approach.