Introduction: Comparative Capitalisms Research and the Emergence of Critical, Global Perspectives

Abstract

This volume’s title centrally alludes to ‘new directions’ in Comparative Capitalisms (CC) research and thus sets the collective agenda for the multiple and diverse contributions it comprises. The shared point of departure across the chapters in this book is the observation that the CC field, which is centrally concerned with studying the differences, institutional and otherwise, between different localized ‘models’ or ‘varieties’ of capitalism, is going through several interwoven processes of rapid and consequential change:

• The dominance of Peter Hall and David Soskice’s Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach, which occupied the centre of the broad CC field for almost a decade after its publication (Hall and Soskice, 2001) has gradually eroded in recent years, as a combined result of internal (intra-CC) and external critiques. Some of the most important criticisms concern VoC’s underestimation of the really existing diversity of contemporary capitalism, its bias towards thinking in static terms and its economistic and functionalist predispositions (see, for example, Bruff and Ebenau, 2014b; Streeck, 2010). While this perspective is still influential, inspiring a ‘second generation’ of research projects framed in VoC terms, it has undoubtedly lost the dominant position it once held in CC debates.

• The latter has now passed to a broad, heterogeneous and rapidly evolving group of ‘post-VoC’ perspectives. These generally remain within the paradigmatic boundaries of neoinstitutionalism, the longstanding theoretical underpinning of CC research. Nevertheless, their proponents see the analytical problems which the dynamic ‘VoC debate’ unearthed during the 2000s as too relevant and too deeply rooted to be resolved through limited modifications or extensions of this approach’s ‘relational view of the firm’. Rather, they turn (back) to the wider neoinstitutionalist paradigm, including its historical, sociological, discursive and statist variants for analytical guidance and, on this basis, elaborate new and innovative approaches for analysing the diversity of contemporary capitalism through a focus on institutions (see, for example, Becker, 2009; Crouch, 2005; Streeck, 2012). At the same time, neoinstitutionalist CC scholarship is increasingly being challenged by proponents of critical political economy (often Marxist) perspectives. These scholars argue that it is necessary to more fundamentally shift the coordinates of CC research if we are to make sense of the manifold forms in which we encounter contemporary capitalism around the globe and, crucially, of the huge and persistent social and economic inequalities which stretch across different ‘types’ of capitalism (see, for example, Albo, 2005; Bruff, 2011; Radice, 2000).

• This theoretical debate is accompanied — and, to a considerable degree, driven — by an expansion of the geographical scope of CC research, a process which may be described as an incipient ‘globalization’ of the field. Thus, more and more world regions, including Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and, more recently, China, are coming into the horizon of CC scholars, while at the same time regional specialists increasingly draw on CC perspectives for enriching their own approaches (see, for example, Bohle and Greskovits, 2012; Huang, 2008; Schneider, 2013). This is certainly a welcome development, since it helps to bring down unhelpful disciplinary barriers to, among others, development and transition studies, but as with the wider field it is pervaded by intense debate on the best way forward in globalizing CC research.