Comparative Capitalism Research Articles

Winning the transition: Strategic state action in France and Germany amid the low carbon transition and energy shock

European economies are in flux, destabilized by the low carbon transition (LCT) and post-Ukraine energy shock. How are states responding to this instability? This article contributes to emerging environmentally focused Comparative Capitalisms (CC) scholarship by developing a novel framework for analysing how state action is shaped by the demand-competitiveness-energy nexus. We comparatively examine the cases of France and Germany since 2022, drawing upon 19 elite interviews and documentary analysis of stakeholder accounts, to advance three arguments. First, it is essential for CC frameworks to integrate energy supply dynamics to understand state action and processes of capitalist development. Second, the asymmetric impact of the LCT on France and Germany has shaped distinct state-led capitalist restructuring designed to protect and extend national competitive advantages. For Germany, this has primarily involved ‘greening’ its existing export-led model of growth, whereas French state actors are attempting to advance its interests via the ‘strategic autonomy’ (SA) agenda at the domestic and regional levels. Finally, the energy shock has initiated more interventionist state action in Germany that exposes critical instabilities in its export-led growth model. This analysis has significant implications for CC scholarship and its understanding of capitalist development by illustrating the significance of energy supply dynamics and advancing understanding of how disequilibrium can be theorized within the literature.

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.

Understanding ‘dependency’ through the comparative capitalisms framework: conceptualisation of Greece as a dependent market economy

ABSTRACT This article relates to debates about dependency of countries in the global political economy. It conceptualises dependency by drawing on the concept of ‘mechanisms of dependency’, and builds a synergy with the Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literature (i.e. institutional and third-generation perspectives). The article expands the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework by applying the established category of Dependent Market Economy to Greece. Building on financialisation as a mechanism of dependency, the article argues this locked Greece into reliance on external debt, dependent position within the Eurozone, as well as vulnerable situation after reforms demanded by the creditors were implemented. However, due to internal historical-structural issues with its capitalist model, Greece was unable to minimise the negative impact of financialised dependence, and is internally weakly prepared to escape from its peripheral status in the future if external dependence will be removed. The article argues that conceptual synergy between dependency theory and the CC literature is desirable in order to provide a more holistic account of interaction between external and internal factors in the context of dependent capitalist varieties.

Comparative Capitalism, Growth Models and Emerging Markets: The Development of the Field

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, the study of emerging markets has become one of the most vibrant fields of Comparative Capitalism (CC) scholarship. CC studies have not only mapped a range of different emerging market capitalisms but have also identified both functional and dysfunctional types that further differ based on their integration into the global economy. The article reviews the evolution of these ideal-typological efforts, ranging from the notion of dependent market economies in Central Eastern Europe to hierarchical market economies prevalent mostly in Latin America, from patrimonial capitalism (such as in Russia) to state-permeated capitalism (based on the study of China and India). While the CC study of emerging markets has also addressed some of the criticisms posed against the earlier Varieties of Capitalism-framework, it still faces significant analytical and methodological challenges. Against this background, the article proposes to incorporate the Growth Model approach into the CC framework and probes its usefulness for the analysis of emerging market capitalisms.

From Varieties of Capitalism to European Growth Models: towards a critical synthesis

The widespread belief that globalization would lead to the gradual convergence of advanced capitalist economies was challenged by the emergence of the Comparative Capitalism (CC) literature. Arguably the most influential approach within CC is the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) model which argues that differences among advanced capitalist economies not only do not fade away but may be amplified due to the disparate comparative institutional advantages that various socioeconomic models may hold. VoC, nonetheless, was soon criticized -among others- for its binary ontological framework and heuristic shortcomings by the second generation CC. Contemporary writings within the third generation CC suggest a radical break from VoC as the focus should be, it is argued, on the demand, rather than the supply, side of the economy. This article posits that while the third generation CC has shifted attention to other institutional and policy fields, emphasizing essentially macroeconomic issues vis-à-vis economic policy reform, an epistemological rapprochement between the two main strands of CC could offer a more contextualized understanding of the different proposals put forward by the member states regarding the on-going Eurozone reform effort.

Comparing Capitalisms: Debates, Controversies and Future Directions

Various strands of the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature agree that the advanced economies have liberalized in recent years, bringing with it rising income and wealth inequality and job insecurity; although these perspectives differ in important ways, there is much common ground between them to explain this heightened level of inequality and insecurity. Through reviewing contributions to three key CC perspectives since 2007/2008, we argue that they have tended to focus on developments in co-ordinated market economies, leading to a neglect of growing structural crises in liberal market economies, which have contributed to the UK and the USA entering uncharted socio-political waters. We extend recent work that emphasizes how variation between countries in labour-market institutions, different corporate forms and states’ fiscal policies help to explain income and wealth inequality to highlight future research agendas that seek to combine more systematically these institutional areas to explain social inequalities, workers’ experiences and socio-political crises within capitalist systems.

Dependent versus state-permeated capitalism: two basic options for emerging markets

Abstract Can comparative capitalism (CC) assist us in understanding both the rise and the current challenges of emerging market capitalism? This article applies analytical instruments developed in CC scholarship on emerging markets to address this question. During the last two decades, CC scholarship – defined by common features such as the emphasis on institutional contexts that are sticky and most important at the national level – has evolved considerably. This contribution to the third generation of this scholarship highlights the degree of international economic integration as the central strategic choice to be faced by emerging economies. It does so by systematically comparing dependent market economies of East Central Europe with the state-permeated economies of China, India and Brazil. The core finding is that both types of capitalism have been able to mobilize substantial institutional complementarities during the last three decades but will face considerable economic and political challenges in the years ahead.

Crisis and austerity: the recent trajectory of capitalist development in Brazil

ABSTRACTIn the methodological framework of comparative capitalism (CC) of this special edition, the article analyzes theoretically and empirically, in the scope of economic globalisation, the recent trajectory of Brazilian capitalist development. The objective is to emphasise the crisis of the variety of coordinated and state-regulated capitalism (2003–2016) and its subsequent metamorphosis into a variety of ultraliberal and undemocratic capitalism (2016 in progress), which has been dissolving the social protection and public policy network. The central issue that this article proposes to answer is how this transition was carried out, in view of the government's successful response to the systemic financial crisis of exogenous origin that emerged in 2008, and the political inability to face the endogenous crisis that erupted in 2014. The meaning of this last liberal/radical modality of capitalism is the fact that it conducted by the Michel Temer's government, which came to power by means of a parliamentary coup disguised by democratic legality, and which was welcomed by the Judiciary, the Congress, the press and the wealthy classes. The conservative coalition of parliamentary government deepened the fiscal adjustment initiated by Dilma Rousseff at the 2015 threshold, deteriorated the living conditions of the poor and accentuated the scope of financial capitalism despite the pressures of a mass based democracy.

Theorizing Sino-capitalism: implications for the study of comparative capitalisms

ABSTRACTAlthough not central in the literature on Comparative Capitalisms (CC), the case of China is highly salient. This is not just because of the country’s sheer size and international economic influence, but also because the Chinese political economy can provide fertile ground to theorize on aspects of CC that are widely recognized to pose challenges. I employ the analytical framework of Sino-capitalism to demonstrate the importance of an open and evolutionary approach. Specifically, Sino-capitalism centres on state-centric modes of governance interacting dialectically with bottom-up networked modes of entrepreneurship exposed to market forces and global capital. The dialectic evolutionary quality of Sino-capitalism contrasts with the more static comparative approaches in most of the CC literature. China’s emergent capitalism forces the observer to open up the black box of capitalist evolution and ‘bring back in’ classical approaches to studying political economy. Capitalist political economies are thus conceived of as encompassing different politico-economic spheres, each with its own logic. Leveraging the analytical framework of Sino-capitalism for the continued theoretical development of CC elucidates in this manner the architectonic role of the state, the chronic re-composition and rebalancing of the institutional spheres of state and capital, and the existence of contradictory cum symbiotic politico-economic logics that reproduce capitalism.

Rebalancing the Economy, Refurbishing the State: The Political Economic Logic of Sino-Capitalism in Contemporary China

China represents a highly significant case that can inform debates on the nature and logic of capitalism, especially those expressed in the wider Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literature. This is not just because of China’s sheer size and international economic influence, but also because China’s form of capitalism – Sino-capitalism – opens up new avenues for theoretical inquiry in CC. Specifically, Sino-capitalism’s constitution demonstrates the importance of Régulation Theory’s more open and evolutionary approach to understanding CC.Sino-capitalism conceives China’s political economy as driven by the dialectic of top-down state-centric modes of governance interacting with bottom-up networked modes of entrepreneurship based on market competition. This contrasts with the more static comparative approaches in most of the CC literature. In particular, this conception highlights how compensatory institutional complementarities are central to understanding CC. To illustrate Sino-capitalism’s dynamic of reproduction, the article looks at recent policy initiatives that aim to rebalance China’s development model. Even though rebalancing incorporates more forceful economic liberalization, retaining and strengthening state control over crucial areas of socio-economic governance is central. China is therefore pursuing a policy package that seeks to strengthen state governance capacity and market forces in tandem, illuminating the chronic re-composition and rebalancing of institutional spheres via top-down/bottom-up dialectics shaping Sino-capitalism.

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.

Neo-pluralist political science, economic sociology and the conceptual foundations of the comparative capitalisms literatures

In this paper, we critically assess two of the key conceptual foundations for the comparative capitalisms (CC) literatures, neo-pluralist political science and economic sociology, in order to identify more clearly the deep intellectual roots of these literatures. Principally, we focus on how the strengths of neo-pluralism and economic sociology – their attention to detail in considering the huge range of ‘types’ of capitalism that exist across the world – come at a high price. Put briefly, the redefinition of ‘capitalism’ as ‘the economy’ concentrates research agendas on the specific political and social conditions found across the world, leaving ‘the economy’ relatively untouched. In consequence, ‘capitalist diversity’ is quickly, and often silently, equated to ‘political diversity’ or ‘social diversity’. As such, a key weakness of CC scholarship, identified by various authors in this Capital & Class special issue – that it does not provide a satisfactory theoretical understanding of capitalist societies – is a problem that runs deeper than the limitations that can be observed in contemporary debates. The implications of our argument are discussed in the conclusion.

Varieties of capitalism or varieties of relationships of forces? Outlines of a historical materialist policy analysis

Our article focuses on a question that is at the core of comparative capitalisms (CC) scholarship and historical materialist state theory: What is an appropriate theory of institutions in capitalism? How can we conceptualise institutions in relation to the fundamental contradictions and power relations of capitalism? Starting from the social foundations of institutions, the aim of this article is to show how institutional complementarity and institutional change can be explained through analysing shifting relationships of social forces. With our newly developed method of a ‘historical materialist policy analysis’, in which we have integrated insights of CC approaches, we seek to show how an empirical investigation of relationships of forces can be operationalised. This is briefly illustrated in an analysis of the constellation of forces in the current Euro crisis.

Critical political economy and the critique of comparative capitalisms scholarship on capitalist diversity

This introduction to the special issue focuses on the rise to dominance in debates on capitalist diversity of approaches which take institutions as their starting point, rather than the wider social relations in which institutions sit and are constituted by. However, although this is part of broader trends across the social sciences over the last three decades, the self-marginalisation of critical political economy perspectives from these debates was also a factor, as was the declining dialogue between critical political economy researchers rooted in different geographical and philosophical traditions. Echoing the influence on the emergent Conference of Socialist Economists of German-language debates on the state in the 1970s, we call for renewed dialogue between researchers from different linguistic and intellectual backgrounds in the name of a renewed critique of dominant comparative capitalisms (CC) approaches. In so doing, we emphasise the range of alternative perspectives that can be offered through such dialogues and critiques, and thus the significant potential for further collaboration and advances in our understanding of capitalist diversity.

A “BRIC”-variety of capitalism and social inequality: The case of Brazil

The focus of this contribution is on the mode of capitalism within the industrialized sectors of “emerging markets”. Particularly in the context of the rise of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) this question has gained considerable importance, also for the development of the world economy as a whole. The core question is whether the type of capitalism within these economies is similar to the capitalist variety of the triad, or diverges in more or less permanent ways. The article gives a preliminary answer to this question, by developing a rough sketch of a “BRIC” model of capitalism and illustrating this model with the case of Brazil. In terms of theory, the article extends the Comparative Capitalism (CC) perspective to the BRICs. On the one side, the focus is on the classical questions of CC, i.e. the determinants of economic development and the differences to other types of capitalism, on the other side the relationship between these varieties and social inequality. It argues that the “state-permeated market economies” of the BRICs rely on clans as a mode of social coordination. As demonstrated by the case of Brazil, this type of capitalism can be quite successful, but is based on a highly unequal distribution of economic and political resources.

Mapping stability and change in advanced capitalisms

Within the study of comparative capitalisms (CC), there is little consensus on the core traits, proper labels, or categorization of different capitalist economies. This paper seeks to clarify the discussion by constructing an empirical index that can be used to map advanced capitalist economies. The index is based on a dozen variables organized into three key domains: the organization of labor, the organization of business and the role of the state. In terms of cross-national comparison, the distribution of states largely matched theory, although with greater diversity among liberal economies and relatively less among European economies than would be expected. Over time, there has been a general movement toward liberalization with some states, such as New Zealand, liberalizing substantially. Alternately others, mainly Ireland, have actually become more coordinated. Beyond descriptive mapping, this paper also demonstrates how the CC index can be used to provide analytical leverage over questions of the taxonomy of capitalisms, the connection between models and economic performance and the relative contribution of diverse institutions toward economic performance.

From comparing capitalisms to the politics of institutional change

ABSTRACT The notion of distinct national varieties or systems of capitalism gained considerable currency in the last two decades. This review essay highlights three theoretical premises which define what we call the comparative capitalisms (CC) approach to political economy: First, national economies are characterized by distinct institutional configurations; second, these configurations are a source of comparative institutional advantage; and third, the configurations are stabilized by institutional path dependence. Within these common premises, the CC literature contains a number of competing theories and we highlight the fundamental distinctions among them and draw out their respective limitations. We specifically examine the role of politics within the CC literature and how emerging conceptions of politics may contribute to understanding institutional change in capitalist systems.

How Many Varieties of Capitalism? Comparing the Comparative Institutional Analyses of Capitalist Diversity

This essay reviews the development of approaches within the comparative capitalisms(CC) literature and points to three theoretical innovations which, taken together, define and distinguish these approaches as a group. First, national economies are characterized by distinct institutional configurations that generate a particular systemic “logic” of economic action. Second, the CC literature suggests a theory of comparative institutional advantage in which different institutional arrangements have distinct strengths and weaknesses for different kinds of economic activity. Third, the literature has been interpreted to imply a theory of institutional path dependence. Behind these unifying characteristics of the literature, however, lie a variety of analytical frameworks and typologies of capitalism. This paper reviews and compares these different frameworks by highlighting the fundamental distinctions among them and drawing out their respective contributions and limitations in explaining economic performance and institutional dynamics. The paper concludes that the way forward for this literature lies in developing a more dynamic view of individual institutions, the linkages between domains, and the role of politics and power.