Varieties of state capital: What does foreign state-led investment do in a globalized world?

Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state-led investment does in a globalized economy, especially in its host states. Comparative capitalisms research has analyzed foreign state investment as a potential source of patient capital for coordinated and mixed market economies. However, this patient capital framework cannot explain the recent surge of protectionist sentiments, even among the ‘good hosts’ of state-led investment. Therefore, we extend the patient capital argument and develop a broader framework centered on the globalized nature of foreign state investment. We create and empirically illustrate a novel typology based on different modes of cross-border state investment – from financial to strategic – and different categories of host states. Our results provide a new pathway to study the rise and effects of cross-border state investment in the twenty-first century.

The politics of comparing capitalisms

Research engaged in the comparison and analysis of different forms of capitalism has been a significant growth area of political economy scholarship in the 21st century. Yet this scholarship, referred to in the article as the Comparative Capitalisms literatures, has struggled to respond to the challenges posed by post-2007 developments in and across the global political economy. This article engages with the critique offered by a number of critical-geographical interventions: the variegated impacts and experiences of conditions of crisis highlight the fact that questions of variety and unevenness necessitate a considerably more holistic methodological approach to comparison than a singular ‘national state as container’ focus would allow for. While important, these ‘variegated capitalism’ interventions have not said enough about comparison as an intrinsically political research practice. Building on the work of especially Juliet Hooker, Reecia Orzeck and Heloise Weber, the article makes the case for (i) being explicit about what is analytically and politically at stake in the act of comparing, and (ii) putting analytical and political concerns on an equal footing. It further argues that a broadly conceived critical political economy approach, discussed in the final section, is best-placed to make the most of the potential of such an understanding of comparison. This makes it possible to deploy research strategies that juxtapose different constellations of crises, conflicts and contradictions in order to articulate critiques of capitalism and/or focus on social and political struggles taking place in, against and potentially beyond the ‘cases’ being considered.

The German variety of grocery retailing: A historical institutionalist analysis of a non-core industry

This article undertakes a historical institutionalist analysis of the German grocery retail industry. It shows that the institutions that shape this non-core industry are not just modifications of those that shape German export-oriented manufacturing core industries. Retail institutions are fundamentally different, and many of them do not promote coordinated relationships of firms. This challenges the assumption of comparative capitalisms research that all-encompassing national institutions characterize Germany as a coordinated market economy. Further, retail institutions have developed their specific characteristics not just over the last decades, as theories of dualization might suggest. Rather, they are frequently rooted in a German petite bourgeoisie or Mittelstand tradition reaching back to the 19th century. A second critical period was the 1960s and early 1970s, when political struggles that resulted from the retail revolution further transformed retail institutions. Based on the literature from various academic disciplines and on original empirical research, the article reconstructs the historical development of the whole set of institutions that has shaped a specific German grocery retail structure dominated by retailers’ cooperatives and hard discount chains. The analysis of an important non-core industry also intends to contribute to a fuller understanding of the institutions that frame the German economy as a whole, including conceivable complementarities between core and non-core sector institutions.

Varieties of Skills Profiles in Latin America: A Reassessment of the Hierarchical Model of Capitalism

Research on the politics of skills formation in Latin America is severely underdeveloped. This article offers a novel characterisation of the supply of skills in the region or ‘skills supply profiles’, taking inspiration from the comparative capitalisms literature. We identify four configurations of skills supply profiles – universalising, dual academic-oriented, dual VET-oriented and exclusionary – and analyse their historical dynamics. By doing this, we challenge general assessments of Latin America's skills formation systems as pertaining to one overarching type. This sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the politics of skills in the region and their connection with different development alternatives.

Comparing Capitalisms: Debates, Controversies and Future Directions

Various strands of the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature agree that the advanced economies have liberalized in recent years, bringing with it rising income and wealth inequality and job insecurity; although these perspectives differ in important ways, there is much common ground between them to explain this heightened level of inequality and insecurity. Through reviewing contributions to three key CC perspectives since 2007/2008, we argue that they have tended to focus on developments in co-ordinated market economies, leading to a neglect of growing structural crises in liberal market economies, which have contributed to the UK and the USA entering uncharted socio-political waters. We extend recent work that emphasizes how variation between countries in labour-market institutions, different corporate forms and states’ fiscal policies help to explain income and wealth inequality to highlight future research agendas that seek to combine more systematically these institutional areas to explain social inequalities, workers’ experiences and socio-political crises within capitalist systems.