From+Comparing+Capitalisms+to+the+Politics+of+Institutional+Change


 * “From Comparing Capitalisms to the Politics of Institutional Change”**
 * Gregory Jackson and Richard Deeg**

Summary by Sonja **1.** **Building Blocks** **a.** The Building blocks of comparative capitalism literature began with Marxist analysis and structure of the world system. It grew with an increasing knowledge of the role of the state and neo-corporatist literature. It also grew under labor scholars, business scholars, and culture studies. **b.** It is a study on the inputs—on the supply side rather than on the demand side. **c.** It sees institutions as complementary to one another. **d.** Depending on the arrangement and character of institutions, common pressures can lead to distinct problems. **e.** Primary methodology- case-based comparative approach **2.** **Alternative Frameworks for CC** **a.** Varieties of capitalism (VoC) **i.** Based on Peter Hall and David Soskice’s work (2001 **ii.** Capitalisms are defined as “production regimes defined by strategic interaction among firms, employees, and shareholders.  **iii.** Two kinds of capitalist production regimes: liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs)  **b.** National business systems  **i.** Diversity in business systems determined by: degree and scope of ownership integration and degree and scope of integration among firms  **ii.** Yields eight types of business systems  **iii.** Institutions are compared by: states, financial systems, skill development and control, trust and authority (these bring out the difference between the institution’s environment and the internal aspects of the firm organization)  **c.** Governance  i. Compares the mechanisms by which economic activity is governed: markets, hierarchies, communities, the state, networks, associations ii. Two underlying dimensions: self interest versus social obligations, horizontal or vertical power structure iii. Industrial sector initially used as the unit of analysis (rather that the state) iv. “Social systems of production” emphasizes difference between mass production and alternative patterns v. Compares the mechanisms to their spatial organization vi. Also applied to a broad comparison of countries that are capitalist versus those that are not. **3.** **Comparing Comparative Approaches to Capitalism** **a.** //Make sure to check out the table on 690 for a visual review of the literature.// **b.** Capitalism as configurations: domains, dimensions, and typologies **i.** Basically, the unit of analysis varies based on approach. The different unit of analysis you choose (whether kinds of capitalism, individual states, etc) affects how parsimonious you are. **ii.** “These issues of comparative method remind us that studying capitalist diversity involves trade-offs between studying institutional diversity as a parsimonious and testable ‘variable,’ or seeing cases as highly contextual and all causal effects as contingent” (692). **c.** Comparative institutional advantage **i.** Can be different depending on the type of economic activity and how diverse the institutions are. **ii.** VoC uses a firm-centric approach **iii.** More attention recently to macroeconomic performance (including growth, unemployment) **iv.** The authors think there should be more emphasis on the distributional consequences of diverse capitalisms. **4.** **Institutional Path Dependence** **a.** The degree to which institutions are complimentary to one another affects how strong the path dependence will be. **b.** Not all capitalisms are heading toward the same place—they are path dependent. **5.** **Other things to consider** **a.** Politics shape institutions and institutional change, and have a dramatic affect on comparing capitalism. **i.** Coalitional approaches highlight this. **b.** The state usually figures into the analysis as “structure” but hardly as an actor… should it be considered an actor? **c.** Constructivist political economy: the importance of the role of ideas and discourse in shaping policy and accordingly the economy. **d.** How can the CC literature be more linked with //international// political economy rather than just domestic?
 * Summary:** Jackson and Deeg take a “comparative capitalisms” approach. Different forms of capitalism have “distinct institutional configurations,” which form “comparative institutional advantage,” and are bolstered by “institutional path dependence.” The article highlights a few different approaches to comparative capitalism, and examines the role of politics.
 * Outline:**