The Comparative Method and Comparative Political Economy

2014 ◽  
pp. 286-314
Author(s):  
Ben Clift
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Comparative Political Economy

Comparative Political Economy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Menz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Technological Parameters ◽  
Private Debt

This new and comprehensive volume invites the reader on a tour of the exciting subfield of comparative political economy. The book provides an in-depth account of the theoretical debates surrounding different models of capitalism. Tracing the origins of the field back to Adam Smith and the French Physiocrats, the development of the study of models of political-economic governance is laid out and reviewed. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) sets itself apart from International Political Economy (IPE), focusing on domestic economic and political institutions that compose in combination diverse models of political economy. Drawing on evidence from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, the volume affords detailed coverage of the systems of industrial relations, finance, welfare states, and the economic role of the state. There is also a chapter that charts the politics of public and private debt. Much of the focus in CPE has rested on ideas, interests, and institutions, but the subfield ought to take the role of culture more seriously. This book offers suggestions for doing so. It is intended as an introduction to the field for postgraduate students, yet it also offers new insights and fresh inspiration for established scholars. The Varieties of Capitalism approach seems to have reached an impasse, but it could be rejuvenated by exploring the composite elements of different models and what makes them hang together. Rapidly changing technological parameters, new and more recent environmental challenges, demographic change, and immigration will all affect the governance of the various political economy models throughout the OECD. The final section of the book analyses how these impending challenges will reconfigure and threaten to destabilize established national systems of capitalism.

scholarly journals Skill-Biased Liberalization: Germany’s Transition to the Knowledge Economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232922110065
Author(s):  
Sebastian Diessner ◽  
Niccolo Durazzi ◽  
David Hope
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Exporting Firms ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Elite Interviews

This article conceptualizes the evolution of the German political economy as the codevelopment of technological and institutional change. The notion of skill-biased liberalization is introduced to capture this process and contrasted with the two dominant theoretical frameworks employed in contemporary comparative political economy scholarship—dualization and liberalization. Integrating theories from labor economics, the article argues that the increasing centrality of high skills complementary in production to information and communications technology has weakened the traditional complementarity among specific skills, regulated industrial relations, and generous social protection in core sectors. The liberalization of industrial relations and social protection is shown in fact to be instrumental for high-end exporting firms to concentrate wages and benefits on increasingly important high-skilled workers. Strong evidence based on descriptive statistics, union and industry documents, and twenty-one elite interviews is found in support of the article’s alternative perspective.

Comparative institutional advantage: an obituary

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-578
Author(s):  
Filippo Reale
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Varieties Of Capitalism ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe article traces the remains of the theory of “comparative institutional advantage”, which was crucial during the early development of the “varieties of capitalism” approach to economics but fell into oblivion quickly afterwards. It follows the discussions of the concept over time and works out possible reasons – theoretical, methodological, and discursive – for the theory's decay. In conclusion, many arguments of the theory seem outdated today but it is a great witness to thezeitgeistof comparative political economy and institutional theory of the millennium.

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