Suchergebnisse

The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the "varieties of capitalism" has been truly outstanding. We now know far more than we ever did about the internal workings of particular national economies, and about the determinants of what Angus Maddison once termed the "proximate" causes of their competitive strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge has come in part from the work of a talented set of comparative political scientists and industrial sociologists, many of whom participate in this collection. It has also come from the work of a set of economists and economic historians with sufficient professional courage and intellectual integrity to operate at (or even beyond) the edge of their notoriously narrow and institutionally blind discipline. But because that knowledge has come from so many sources, and because so much of it has entered the public domain in the form of discrete case studies or collections of relatively disconnected essays, what the subfield now needs, more than anything else, is the consolidation of a set of organizing frameworks and governing concepts designed to go beyond proximate causes to a fuller understanding of the dynamics of competitive advantage. This is why Peter Hall and David Soskice's much-heralded collection of essays, Varieties of Capitalism, is so important a milestone in the development of the subdiscipline of comparative political economy. At long last it gives us what Pepper D. Culpepper calls here an "analytical tool kit" (p. 303): a collection of essays built around the powerful conceptual devices of "comparative institutional advantage" and "institutional complementarities"—concepts deployed to explain "how the institutions structuring the political economy confer comparative advantages on a nation, especially in the sphere of innovation" (p. v).

A response to replies by Colin Hay & Mark Wickham-Jones (both, 2002) to Coates's 2001 article makes some general comments about their arguments & initiates a discussion about the choices involved in developing a radical understanding of the Labour Party. The Labour Party's movement over time & through successive but overlapping generations is examined, noting that each of the five generations of leaders first served as "apprentices operating within the space created by the policy paradigm then dominant." Even though there is agreement with Wickham-Jones that "Labour policy is largely determined by actors occupying dominant positions within the institutional configuration that defines the party," the trajectory is also said to be impacted by such external forces as class & practices of capital accumulation. It is contended that this image of generations affected by both the past & changing realities is a useful addition to Hay's categories of "preference-shaping" & "preference accommodation." It is unhappily concluded that the Labour Party's political trajectory has become too programmed, path-dependent, & fenced in by external forces to adopt a policy change. 4 References. J. Lindroth

Some of the more critical readings of the adequacy and effectiveness of New Labour in power have been developed by scholars willing to link arguments about the trajectory of Labour politics to wider arguments about the character of the contemporary global economy and the space within it for the construction and development of distinctive capitalist models. Mark Wickham-Jones and Colin Hay in particular have made that linkage in a series of important writings on the contemporary Labour party. Their arguments are here subjected to critical review, and set against a third position on New Labour and global capitalism: one informed by the writings of Ralph Miliband on British Labour and by the arguments of Leo Panitch and Greg Albo on the limits of the 'progressive competitiveness' strategies associated with 'Third Way' social democratic governments.

Some of the more critical readings of the adequacy & effectiveness of New Labour in power have been developed by scholars willing to link arguments about the trajectory of Labour politics to wider arguments about the character of the contemporary global economy & the space within it for the construction & development of distinctive capitalist models. Mark Wickham-Jones & Colin Hay in particular have made that linkage in a series of important writings on the contemporary Labor Party. Their arguments are here subjected to critical review, & set against a third position on New Labor & global capitalism: one informed by the writings of Ralph Miliband on British Labor & by the arguments of Leo Panitch & Greg Albo on the limits of the "progressive competitiveness" strategies associated with "Third Way" social democratic governments. 47 References. Adapted from the source document.

In the debate over economic performance which has preoccupied UK policy makers for the last four decades, foreign 'models' of more successful capitalisms elsewhere have been an important point of reference. Those models have been variously market-led (USA), state-led (Japan) or negotiated/consensual (Germany/Sweden). Of late the UK's own internal economic and social settlement has itself been offered as a viable model for once successful foreign economies now in competitive difficulties. The key features of these various models are analysed, and the UK's changing post-war position on the map of models is traced. The changing fortunes of these models are then related to developments in the global economy; and an assessment made of the adequacy (and desirability) of the kind of economic order now being canvassed in the UK by the present Labour Government.