Capitalisms Compared
The latest volume of Comparative Social Research focuses on capitalist systems, and compares the specificities of these different systems. The contributions ranges from an analysis of Chinese capitalism, to how innovative enterprises responds to different varieties of capitalisms.
The 24. volume of Comparative Social Research is titled Capitalisms Compared, and has been edited by Lars Mjøset and Tommy H. Claussen. It contains papers by Robert Boyer, A. Tylecote and F. Visintin, Chris McNally and William Lazonic. It also contains a special section based on a contribution by Michael Shalev, "Limits and alternatives to multiple regression in comparative political economy", which addresses techniques of analysing the variety of political-economic constellations in a methodolocial way.
Over the last decade, political economists and other macro-oriented scholars have increasingsly focused on the comparative specificities of distinct capitalist systems. Mostly, these systems are studied as national systems. Such modes of capitalism are often studied with reference to various institutional dimensions: financial systems, labour relations, welfare state institutions, corporate governance, economic policy making, etc. This volume brings innovative and synthetic contributions combining as many as these institutional dimensions as possible.
So far, research on the varieties of capitalism has been dominated by the Hall son Soskice dichotomy between coordinated and liberal market economies, and their focus on challenges in the management of firms. But this research shuold be extended towards a study of more than just two types (nation states and clusters of these), and interaction of more institutional dimensions.
The underlying programme is to inspire researchers to think about ways in which their research can be cumulative. Comparisons of various systems of capitalism could grow into a large matrix of nation states on one axis and institutional dimensions on the other, but that can only be realized as the result of extensive and collective research efforts. We would like to see this as a small step in that direction, so that researchers can start to think about typological maps of the same type as the maps that have proven very valuable in the study of Western European welfare states (Esping-Andersen) and Western European patterns of political mobilization and state building (Rokkan).
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