Comparative Capitalisms Research Research Articles

An emerging ‘China-threat-corporatism’? CRRC’s acquisition of a German locomotive company and its impact on labour relations

The China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) is presently the largest player in the global rolling stock industry and has increasingly expanded to mature markets. In 2019, CRRC acquired a German locomotive company, establishing a manufacturing foothold in the EU. This paper presents the findings of extensive field research on the impact of CRRC’s investment on industrial relations. Drawing on comparative capitalisms research and recent debates on the German model of industrial relations, we discuss key developments in the post-merger process. Our study reveals a continuity in industrial relations at the shop-floor level, characterized by stable co-determination practices. Nevertheless, the acquisition of the locomotive manufacturer has contributed to a new form of ‘China-threat-corporatism’, wherein trade unions and business associations have collaborated to advocate successfully for measures to protect the local rolling stock industry from Chinese competition.

Avoiding the China shock: How Chinese state-backed internationalization drives changes in European economic governance

The state-backed internationalization of Chinese companies has led to conflicts in the EU over potential market distortions and security concerns. The EU has responded to this challenge with increasing state intervention and defensive measures in trade and investment regulation, competition policy, and industrial policy. Drawing on comparative capitalisms research and Neo-Gramscian perspectives on European integration, we analyze how European economic governance has changed under the pressure of Chinese competition. Based on 31 semi-structured expert interviews and a document analysis, this exploratory study examines the EU’s response in these policy fields. We observe a gradual, albeit contested change of European Economic Governance in two phases since 2017, primarily driven by a new “China-threat-coalition” in Germany. We argue that there is no overall paradigm shift in the neoliberal mode of European integration, but there are nonetheless significant changes as new “filter functions” have emerged that tend to “bypass” EU economic governance and filter out “market-distorting” state-capitalist influences.

The revenge of multiplicity: Chinese capitalism under systemic competition

The re-emergence of conflict at the apex of the global political economy between the United States and China makes it imperative to establish analytical connections between geopolitics and national political-economic development trajectories. However, just as realist international relations conceals ‘domestic’ causes of international conflict, most comparative capitalisms (CC) research has systematically underplayed the role of geopolitics and the global political economy as forces structuring and driving national economies. Furthermore, both IR and CC analyses misleadingly treat states as analogous and independent ‘units’, rather than relationally constituted and internally heterogenous political forms whose existence and reproduction requires explanation. As such, CC fails to examine either the geopolitical preconditions for, constitution of, or the geopolitical outcomes of growth models. This article presents an uneven and combined development (U&CD) account of the connections between global order, geopolitical economy and Chinese capitalism, showing how – rather than an alien infiltrator – Chinese state capitalism is both a product, and increasingly a transmitter, of the dynamics of competitive capital accumulation operating in the global political economy. In this way, I contribute to the development of heterodox CC literature by advancing i) a conception of capitalism as a geopolitical-economic system, (ii) an example of how national cases can be treated as dialectically related to and sites for the emergence of the global geopolitical economy, and (iii) a concise application of this method to the case of Sino-US relations.

Varieties of state capital: What does foreign state-led investment do in a globalized world?

Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state investment does in a globalized economy, especially in host states. Comparative capitalisms research has analyzed foreign state investment as a potential source of patient capital for coordinated and mixed-market economies. However, this patient capital framework cannot explain the recent surge of protectionist sentiments, even among the “good hosts” of state-led investment. Therefore, we go beyond the patient capital argument and develop a novel framework centered on the globalized nature of foreign state investment. We create and empirically illustrate a novel typology based on different modes of cross-border state investment—from financial to strategic—and different categories of host states. Our results provide a new pathway to study the rise and effects of cross-border state investment in the 21st century.

In search of developmental capitalism institutions:

How can we explain that some emerging economies grow faster than others? What explains the sustainability of their growth? Not all types of capitalism in emerging markets contribute equally to sustainable growth rates that undergird development. Comparative capitalism research on European economies temporary growth models aims to more properly grasp change in the varieties of capitalism approach. Adoption of the growth models in emerging markets capitalism research requires attention to integration into the global economy and to political coalitions, and the need to deal with the methodological challenges, given high labor market informality and political instability. This article seeks to make sense of changes in the components of successive growth models throughout a path-dependent capitalist variety, expand the growth model analytical framework by testing elements alongside demand (and supply) based on a case study of Brazil, and explore coalitions in economic reform to identify growth model’s social blocs. The article’s results unveil challenges to the employment of existing concepts and analytical framework; the need to build bridges between growth models and the political economy of development; and an exploratory assessment of growth model contributions to Brazil's postwar development. Thereof, in the long term, interest shifts of economic elites between liberal and non-liberal economic regimes suggest a fragility of repeated attempts to form a durable developmental coalition, a process dynamic that frays state-permeated capitalism positive externalities. It concludes that both path dependent developmental institutions, which hinder change, and growth instability limit the possibilities of designing institutional reforms out of the middle-income trap.

Intro: Comparative Capitalism Research in Emerging Markets – A New Generation

ABSTRACT In introducing this special section of New Political Economy, this paper explores the key themes that emerge from the three papers included in this special section presents a new generation of CC research in EMs which seeks to reconcile classical institutionalist approaches to capitalist variety with more recent attempts to shift back from supply-side to macroeconomic demand side factors, as well as brining the role of the state back in. This opening article summarises the key contributions we see emerging from this new generation of research and argues that it holds important lessons not just for the study of EMs but also advanced economies. We identify several important research questions for further research; but we also suggest that even the new approach that this new generation of CC research takes may not be enough to address the most pressing issue facing capitalist economies, namely the degradation of our natural environment.

The German variety of grocery retailing: A historical institutionalist analysis of a non-core industry

This article undertakes a historical institutionalist analysis of the German grocery retail industry. It shows that the institutions that shape this non-core industry are not just modifications of those that shape German export-oriented manufacturing core industries. Retail institutions are fundamentally different, and many of them do not promote coordinated relationships of firms. This challenges the assumption of comparative capitalisms research that all-encompassing national institutions characterize Germany as a coordinated market economy. Further, retail institutions have developed their specific characteristics not just over the last decades, as theories of dualization might suggest. Rather, they are frequently rooted in a German petite bourgeoisie or Mittelstand tradition reaching back to the 19th century. A second critical period was the 1960s and early 1970s, when political struggles that resulted from the retail revolution further transformed retail institutions. Based on the literature from various academic disciplines and on original empirical research, the article reconstructs the historical development of the whole set of institutions that has shaped a specific German grocery retail structure dominated by retailers’ cooperatives and hard discount chains. The analysis of an important non-core industry also intends to contribute to a fuller understanding of the institutions that frame the German economy as a whole, including conceivable complementarities between core and non-core sector institutions.

In search of institutional complementarities: Comparative Capitalism and economic policy reform

ABSTRACT The Comparative Capitalism research programme has become the dominant institutional approach with regard to the study of advanced economies. Still, very few scholars use it to develop proposals for economic policy reform. The introductory paper to the special issue discusses how this can be changed. It highlights the considerable institutional differences between contemporary models of capitalism. Moreover, it demonstrates how core Comparative Capitalism notions such as “institutional complementarities” can be used for designing policies. However, it also points to recent developments in Comparative Capitalism research that replace the traditional Varieties of Capitalism preoccupation with micro-economic equilibria through the heterodox macro-economic preference for the balancing out of Growth Models

Public-private coordination in large emerging economies: the case of Brazil, India and China

ABSTRACTDifferent modes of economic coordination constitute a key aspect of the Comparative Capitalisms research framework. With regard to emerging economies, the close relationship between the state and business has been perceived negatively as an instance of corruption and patrimonialism that are considered to be economically harmful. This paper addresses the puzzle why some large emerging economies – China, India, and Brazil in particular – have seen considerable economic growth since the 2000s despite such 'failures' or 'institutional deficits'. We find strong evidence for a public–private mode of coordination based on reciprocity. This inter-personal mode of coordination helps to explain an unexpected degree of institutional coherence of capitalism, albeit to different degrees, in the large emerging economies under scrutiny. We argue that while there is evidence of economically productive public–private coordination in China and India, economic coordination in Brazil by comparison is much more contested, and thus less beneficial economically.

Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds.), New Directions in Comparative Capitalism Research: Critical and global perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 236, ISBN 978-1-137-44460-8

Bibliography: Hancke, Bob: Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds.), New Directions in Comparative Capitalism Research: Critical and global perspectives, ERIS, 2-3-2017, pp. 98-100. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v4i2-3.10

Comparative Capitalisms Research: The Intellectual Openness and Political Possibilities Inherent to Critical, Global Perspectives on Capitalist Diversity

Comparative Capitalisms Research: The Intellectual Openness and Political Possibilities Inherent to Critical, Global Perspectives on Capitalist Diversity

Varieties in Comparative Capitalisms Research: A Critical Juncture

This article addresses Richard Westra, Ian Bruff and Matthias Ebenau's responses to my prior review essay on their edited volumes. In my initial survey, I concluded that both volumes reinvigorate the radical potential of contemporary Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literatures, but warned against the tendency in critical research to trace capitalism solely at its worst. I posited that this pessimism undermines the volumes’ pedagogical potential and threatens to bring us to intellectual cul-de-sacs. The authors respond in different ways to this critical engagement: Westra provides a guideline to trace such an intellectual pessimism in the (neo-)Marxist political economy and points to the so-called ‘Uno approach’ as an alternative direction that opens our intellectual horizons to social change in (post-)capitalism. In contrast, Bruff and Ebenau regard my review as less monochromatic than other discussions of their research project but nevertheless assertively retort to my critique. This reply seeks to engage the aforementioned scholars in a discussion, while reconsidering the alleged pessimism of critical CC research as informed optimism. Such informed optimism must be found in a critical research that (i) is based on a deeper reflexive theoretical discussion rather than a one-sided deconstruction of mainstream scholarship; and (ii) derives from a holistic approach broadened by a human-centred perspective, which also exposes us to actually existing alternatives within as well as to (post-)capitalism. Given that such approaches are currently only implicit, the many ongoing crises of contemporary capitalism represent a critical juncture not only for mainstream, but also for critical CC research.

Book review: Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds), New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research: Critical and Global Perspectives

Book review: Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds), <i>New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research: Critical and Global Perspectives</i>

Book Review: Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds), New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research: Critical and Global Perspectives

Book Review: Matthias Ebenau, Ian Bruff and Christian May (eds), <i>New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research: Critical and Global Perspectives</i>

On New Travels in Space-Time: Theoretical Rediscoveries after the Crisis in (Comparative) Capitalism(s)

This review essay on the books New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research and The Future of Capitalism After the Financial Crisis uses the prism of ‘travelling theory’ to appraise whether both edited volumes meet their proclaimed aim to challenge the alleged reductionisms inherent in the Comparative Capitalisms (CC) research and reinvigorate the CC agenda's radical potential to analyse contemporary capitalism in critical and global perspectives. The verdict is affirmative as both volumes (i) introduce new as well as forgotten approaches to combined inter-spatial and inter-temporal comparisons into the CC literature, which then (ii) allows for the rediscovery of a multitude of roads to (knowledge about) really existing capitalisms. However, the essay urges some of the authors to avoid tracing capitalism only at its worst, which leads to an exaggerated intellectual pessimism and fatalism. Finally, putting both volumes into the context of post-socialist Central and Eastern European (CEE) capitalism, the review documents the continuing relevance of empirical discoveries in CEE for developing an expanded critical-global CC scholarship.

Towards middle-range theory building in development research: Comparative (historical) institutional analysis of institutional transplantation

The development studies community needs to work towards building cumulative knowledge that lies between all-encompassing universal truths that leads to a ‘one solution fits all’ approach, on the one hand, and empirically rich atheoretical context-specific details, on the other. Drawing on the comparative capitalism research, which operates at the ‘middle-range’, the article demonstrates the usefulness of comparative (historical) institutional analysis as a way of deriving middle-range insights on capitalism and development, and in particular, the highly contested practice of embedding foreign institutions in local contexts (often referred to as ‘institutional transplantation’) that prevails in development policy. It illustrates how middle-range theory building in this area can advance development research in a way that better informs policy and practice.

Varieties of capitalism in emerging economies

Our contribution discusses the field of comparative capitalism research and it application to emerging economies. Based on criteria for a critical institutional analysis we review alternative models for the analysis of emerging market capitalisms. In doing so, we identify the model of state-permeated market economies (SMEs) as a suitable reference for emerging economies. Finally, the model of SMEs is discussed in the context of South African capitalism.

Neither National Boundaries Nor Transnational Social Spaces: Accounting for Variations of CSR Practices in Varieties of Capitalism

The paper empirically re-examines the role of national institutions and trans-national social spaces in accounting for variations in CSR practices. Based on a longitudinal study of corporate social reporting in UK and Germany, the paper concludes that corporate stakeholder salience patterns are outcomes of interaction effects between national institutional boundaries and trans-national social spaces. It pushes the institutionalist frontier of research to corporate stakeholder salience – which is a precursor and intrinsic to both corporate accountability and corporate social responsibility. In addition, it opens a new vista of looking at corporate social reports – i.e. not only as artefacts of accountability, but also carriers and reflectors of national and trans-national characteristics and influences. The paper finally highlights implications of the findings for CSR and comparative capitalism research, respectively.