National Governance Capacity from the View of Comparative Political Economy – Based on the Fight Against COVID-19

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has blocked the pace of the world economic development. In the process of fighting the epidemic, different countries have formulated different policies and showed different effects from fighting it. After the end of COVID-19, the rapid social and economic recovery as well as their development require scientific and effective governance from all countries. From the perspective of comparative political economy theory, taking the COVID-19 epidemic as an example, this article points out the advantages and deficiencies of the national governance capacity, as well as seek ways to improve the national governance capacity.

Social inclusion and collective skill formation systems: policy and politics

This thematic review essay focuses on the relationship between social inclusion and collective skill formation systems. It briefly surveys foundational literature in comparative political economy and comparative social policy that documented and explained the traditionally socially inclusive nature of these systems. It reviews how the literature conceptualized the current challenges faced by collective skill formation systems in upholding their inclusive nature in the context of the transition to post-industrial societies. It then discusses in detail a recent strand of literature that investigates the policy responses that have been deployed across countries to deal with these challenges. It concludes by providing heuristics that may be useful for researchers who seek to advance the study of the policy and politics of social inclusion in collective skill formation systems.

Elephant limps, but jaguar stumbles: Unpacking the divergence of state capitalism in Brazil and India through theories of capitalist diversity

While growth in India stayed relatively stable over the last decade, Brazil fell into deep recession and a fundamental political and economic crisis. Why did these two countries, despite their similarities, diverge so massively within only 10 years? Through a paired comparison, this article probes two alternative approaches to capitalist diversity to explain the divergence among two rising economic powers and ‘state capitalisms’. It finds that through the lens of a firm-centred supply-side approach, one largely sees institutional stability in both economies, while a focus on the demand side and respective growth models makes visible fundamental destabilization in Brazil. The fragility of domestic demand, the vulnerability of global economic integration and the erosion of key social coalitions, we contend, are key to unpack the divergence between Brazil and India. This study thereby not only sheds a new light on emerging market capitalism but also discusses further possibilities for the analysis of state capitalism within comparative political economy.

Post-Keynesian Macroeconomic Foundations for Comparative Political Economy

The global financial crisis and ensuing weak growth have increased interest in macroeconomic issues within comparative political economy (CPE). CPE, particularly the dominant Varieties of Capitalism approach, has based its analyses on mainstream economics, which limits analysis of the relation between distribution and growth and neglects the role finance plays in modern economies. It overstates the stability of the capitalist growth process and understates the potential effectiveness of government interventions. Baccaro and Pontusson have suggested a post-Keynesian (PK) theory of distribution and growth as an alternative. This article generalizes their point. PK theory highlights the instability of the growth process and lends itself to an analysis of income distribution and power relations. The article identifies the analysis of financialization and financial cycles, the understanding of neoliberal growth models, and the political economy of central banks as areas where PK economics provides specific insights for CPE. It also highlights that these arguments have important implications for government policy in an era of secular stagnation with ongoing social, distributional, and economic crises.

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

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.

Punishment and Comparative Political Economy

This chapter is an exposition and critical assessment of Nicola Lacey’s work on punishment and comparative political economy. It traces the trajectory of Lacey’s work, describing how she was the first to bring the ‘varieties of capitalism’ framework to bear on the central questions of comparative penology and how she then proceeded to use an expanded version of the framework to develop an original explanation of American penal exceptionalism. The chapter then seeks to assess Lacey’s work by examining the theoretical fit between her political economy framework and the institutional characteristics of systems of criminal punishment, paying particular regard to the causal mechanism hypotheses that underpin her account.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to the main puzzle and argument motivating the book: piracy affects primarily weak states, but in those states, organized piracy is most common close to coastal areas with some governance and infrastructure. The chapter notes the limitations of existing research on maritime piracy, compares Pirate Lands with research on transnational crime, and argues that the authors’ comparative political economy focus is well-suited to capture the subnational conditions that drive armed robbery on ships and maritime piracy. The chapter sketches the research design and empirical approach. The chapter concludes with the organization of the book.