Varieties of Capitalism

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Varieties of Capitalism or varieties of capitalism is a political-economic explanatory approach that economists, social scientists and political scientists use to analyze the differences between varieties of capitalist economic systems.

The theory can be summarized in terms of three characteristics:

  • The individual company is the starting point. That is, the distinguishing feature between forms of capitalism is what kind of coordination of the economic activity of a company is the predominant one. Accordingly, a distinction can be made between market relationships, hierarchies, hybrid forms, but also cooperation and deliberation. Depending on which type is prevalent, a country is referred to as a liberal market economy (LME) or a coordinated market economy (CME).
  • There are complementary relationships between institutions (institutional complementarities go back to the economist Masahiko Aoki ( Stanford )). This means that the efficiency of one institution is increased by the effectiveness of another (complementary institution). As a result, economic systems are relatively stable structures: changes in individual institutions lead to far-reaching problems.
  • Different incentive mechanisms within the systems lead to different comparative institutional advantages. This means that companies in a certain institutional structure are relatively better at producing certain goods and services than others that operate in other environments. This contradicts a widespread view that different market economies are converging and all tend towards a liberal system (convergence).

Theory development

The approach has its predecessors in the area of neo-corporatism , neo-institutionalism and through the new institutional economics as well as the newer economic sociology , especially Mark Granovetter . The main representatives of the approach, which was mainly developed at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), are Peter A. Hall ( Harvard ) and David Soskice ( Oxford , LSE and WZB) through their book of the same name, published in 2001 .

Newer approaches try to couple the subdivision of the Varieties of Capitalism with different welfare models and with electoral systems.

criticism

The approach has been criticized primarily for its static treatment of institutional change.

Furthermore, the Varieties of Capitalism approach is held to be functionalist. One cannot assume that actors do indeed support the production configuration that corresponds to “their” model of capitalism. In this respect, the erosion of the “ German model ” is traced in many empirical studies and contrasted with the stability of this model postulated by Hall and Soskice.

The main proponents of this criticism include Wolfgang Streeck and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mark Granovetter: Economic Action and Social Structure. The problem of embeddedness. In: American Journal of Sociology , Volume 91 (3), 1985, pp. 481-510.
  2. ^ Martin Schröder: Integrating Welfare and Production Typologies. How Refinements of the Varieties of Capitalism Approach Call for a Combination with Welfare Typologies. In: Journal of Social Policy , Volume 38, 2009, pp. 19–43.
  3. ^ Thomas Cusack, Torben Iversen, David Soskice: Economic Interests and the Origins of Electoral Systems. In: American Political Science Review , Volume 101, 2007, pp. 373-391.
  4. ^ Wolfgang Streeck, Kathleen Thelen: Beyond continuity: Institutional change in advanced political economies. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005.
  5. ^ Vivien Schmidt: The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002.

literature

  • Peter A. Hall, David Soskice: Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001.
  • Bruno Amable: The Diversity of Modern Capitalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003.
  • Lucian Cernat: Europeanization, Varieties of Capitalism and Economic Performance in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2006.
  • Colin Crouch: Models of Capitalism. In: New Political Economy , Volume 10 (4), 2005, pp. 439-456.
  • Daniel Gingerich, Peter Hall: Varieties of Capitalism and Institutional Complementarities in the Macroeconomy. An empirical analysis. MPIfG Discussion Paper 04/5. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne 2004 ( online ).
  • Colin Hay: Two Can Play at That Game ... or Can They? Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties of Institutionalism. In: David Coates (Ed.): Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties of Approaches. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2005, pp. 106-121.
  • Jonas Pontusson: Varieties and Commonalities of Capitalism. In: David Coates (Ed.): Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties of Approaches. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2005, pp. 163-188.
  • Martin Rhodes: Varieties of Capitalism and the Political Economy of European Welfare States. In: New Political Economy , Volume 10 (3), 2005, pp. 363-370.
  • David Soskice: Divergent Production Regimes: Coordinated and Uncoordinated Market Economies in the 1980s an 1990s. In: Herbert Kitschelt, Peter Lange, Gary Marks , John Stephens (Eds.): Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pp. 101-134.
  • Martin Schröder: Integrating Varieties of Capitalism and Welfare State Research: A Unified Typology of Capitalisms. Palgrave, New York 2013.
  • Wolfgang Streeck: German Capitalism. Does it exist? Can it Survive? In: Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Mapping Convergence and Diversity. Sage, London 1997, pp. 33-54.

See also

Web links