Political Economy Of Capitalisms

Foreword
An Introduction to the Political Economy of Capitalism
Robert Boyer, an Old-Style Economist Producing New Ideas
Regulation Theory, a Practical Method to Examine the Different Forms of Capitalism
Widespread Distribution of an Adaptable Analytical Framework: Diversity of Regional and Historical Configurations
Preface to the English Edition
A Reassessment of the Globalization Process
Revisiting the Long-Run History of Pandemics
A New Transnational Platform Capitalism
The Intricacy of Economic and Political Powers
Political Representations Matter: Populism at Work
From Complementarity to Systemic Rivalry: The United States and China
The Crossover Between European and Asian Integrations
Ecology Between Conflicting Time Horizons and the Dilemma of Global Commons
Dedication and Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1.1 The New Classical Macroeconomics Has Failed
1.2 The Concept of Capitalism is Back
1.3 Combining Marxist Approach and Annales Historical School
1.3.1 The Seven Questions of Regulation Theory
1.3.2 The Fundamental Principles of the Theory
1.4 Developments in Response to the Second ‘Great Transformation’
1.5 The Uncertain Restructuring of Capitalism
1.6 The Challenging Issue of Institutional Emergence
References
Part I The Basics
2 The Institutional Forms on Which a Capitalist Economy is Based
2.1 Back to Political Economy
2.1.1 From Thomas Hobbes to Adam Smith
2.1.2 Methodological Individualism Against the Invisible Hand
2.2 The Hidden Institutions of a Market Economy
2.2.1 The Monetary Regime, the Basic Primary Institution
2.2.2 The Market is a Social Construct
2.2.3 The Diversity of Forms of Competition
2.2.4 From Labor Demand to the Wage–labor Nexus
2.2.5 From the Producer to the Firm Seen as an Organization
2.3 The Central Question of Regulation Theory
2.4 The State–economy Relationship
2.4.1 The Choice of a Monetary Regime is Political
2.4.2 No Fair Competition Without Public Intervention
2.4.3 Wage–Labor Nexus and Citizenship
2.4.4 A State Subjected to Contradictory Forms of Logic
2.4.5 A Nation-State as Part of the World Economy
2.5 Conclusion: The Five Institutional Forms
References
3 From the Iron Laws of Capitalism to the Successive Regulation Modes
3.1 A Critical Reading of Marxist Orthodoxy
3.1.1 Specifying the Form of Social Relations
3.1.2 Changes Within the Social Relations Themselves
3.1.3 No Grandiose Dynamics of the Capitalist Production Mode
3.1.4 The State is the Vector of Institutional Compromises and not just the Agent of Capital
3.1.5 Every Crisis is Different
3.2 Building of Intermediate Concepts: Institutional Forms
3.2.1 Regulation is Inherently Problematical
3.2.2 How Do Regulation Modes Finally Emerge?
3.3 Contrasting Regulation Modes Over the Centuries
3.3.1 An Old Style of Regulation up to the End of the Eighteenth Century
3.3.2 The Competitive Regulation Typical in the Nineteenth Century
3.3.3 Change Over a Long Period: The Interwars Period
3.3.4 Monopolistic Regulation: The Golden Age
3.4 Contemporary Regulation Modes
3.4.1 The Intensification of Competition, Including at the International Level
3.4.2 A Regulation Mode Dominated by Services?
3.4.3 A Financialized Regulation Mode
3.5 Conclusion: Equilibrium, Disequilibrium… Regulation
References
4 Accumulation Regimes and Historical Dynamics
4.1 From Reproduction Schemes to Accumulation Regimes
4.1.1 Origin and Meaning
4.1.2 A Succession of Accumulation Regimes
4.2 Characterizing Modes of Development
4.2.1 Extensive Accumulation and Competitive Regulation
4.2.2 Intensive Accumulation Without Mass Consumption
4.2.3 Intensive Accumulation with Mass Consumption
4.2.4 Extensive Accumulation with Increased Inequality
4.3 Formalizing Fordism in Order to Study Its Viability and Crises
4.3.1 The Key Sequences
4.3.2 The Basic Equations
4.3.3 The Three Conditions of Viability
4.3.4 The Sources of Crisis
4.4 A General Model Including Several Regimes
4.4.1 Reintroducing Factors of Competition
4.4.2 A Multiplicity of Productivity and Demand Regimes
4.4.3 Another Look at Periodization
4.5 Conclusion: The Concept of Fordism is Important but not the Only One
References
5 A Theory of Crises
5.1 The Growth-Crisis Dialectic
5.1.1 The General Conception
5.1.2 A Whole Range of Crises
5.1.3 Guidelines for Understanding the History of the Crisis
5.2 The Endogenous Decline of a Development Model
5.2.1 The Crisis of Fordism
5.2.2 A Formalization of Endometabolism
5.2.3 A General Characteristic
5.3 Accumulation Tends to Go Beyond the Area of Regulation
5.3.1 From the Very Beginnings of Capitalism
5.3.2 Fordism Destabilized by Internationalization
5.3.3 Dependent Economies: The Crisis of Export-Led Development Modes
5.4 Financial Liberalization Destabilizes Accumulation Regimes
5.4.1 The Contours of a Finance-Led Accumulation Regime
5.4.2 A Regime Which Can Be Viable but Instable in the Long Run
5.4.3 Finance, a Factor of the Propagation of Crises
5.4.4 The Incoherence of an Accumulation Regime, Temporarily Hidden by the Plasticity of Globalized Finance
5.5 Conclusion. The Recurrence of Crises and Their Changing Forms
References
Part II Developments
6 The Logic of Action, Organizations and Institutions
6.1 Rationality is Always Related to a Context
6.1.1 The Many Different Objectives of Firms
6.1.2 Individual Rationality Has as Many Forms as There Are Institutional Contexts
6.2 Markets as Social Constructs
6.2.1 The Most Complex Form of Coordination
6.2.2 The Challenge of Digitalization
6.3 Institutional Forms as a Set of Institutional Arrangements
6.3.1 Interest Versus Obligation, Horizontality Versus Verticality
6.3.2 Institutional Economics: The Necessity of a Taxonomy
6.3.3 The Wage–Labor Nexus—An Institutional Form that Combines Contrasting Principles of Coordination
6.3.4 The Financial Market System: The Illusion of Self-Organization
6.4 Organization and Institution: From Isomorphism to Hierarchy
6.4.1 The Theory of the Variety of Capitalism: Firms Shape Their Own Institutional Environment
6.4.2 The Theory of Regulation: Institutions Shape Organizations
6.4.3 The Productive Model as a Bridge Between Micro and Macro
6.5 The Institutional Basis of Realistic Microeconomics
6.5.1 Institutional Forms Shape Behavior
6.5.2 The Discordance Between the Time Frames of Institutional Forms Stimulates Both Economic Dynamics and Crisis
6.5.3 Long-Term Transformations—Back to Polanyi
6.6 Conclusion: Institutions as an Essential Link Between Macro and Micro
References
7 The New Institutional Arrangements of Contemporary Capitalism
7.1 Variety of Productive Models, Diversity of Forms of Capitalism
7.1.1 Ensuring that Management Tools Are in Coherence with Institutional Arrangements
7.1.2 A Significant Variety in Time and Space
7.1.3 Heterogeneity of Productive Models in the Same Country
7.2 Sectoral and Local Institutional Devices
7.2.1 The Example of the Wine Industry
7.2.2 Recognizing the Heterogeneity of Sectoral Configurations
7.3 The Social Innovation System (SIS)
7.3.1 Capitalism is About Innovation and Hybridization, not About Repetition
7.3.2 A Broad Conception of Innovation: Organizations and Institutions, Finance and State
7.3.3 The Level of Social Systems of Innovation is an Empirical Issue
7.3.4 The Diversity of Innovation Systems is Indicative of Complementarity at National Level
7.3.5 The Coexistence and Complementarity of NISs
7.4 The Skill Regime: Between the Wage–labor Nexus and the Education System
7.4.1 From the Societal Effect to the Skill Regime
7.4.2 Skill Distribution Contributes to Shaping Innovation Patterns
7.4.3 The Divergence Between the German and the French Trajectories
7.5 National Welfare Systems
7.5.1 The Outcome of the Interaction Between Three Logics
7.5.2 Widely Differing Configurations
7.5.3 Welfare as a Means of Correcting Disequilibrium of Accumulation
7.5.4 The Social Democratic Economies as Welfare Capitalism
7.5.5 Why Are Social Democratic Regimes so Resilient
7.5.6 Market Competition, an Uncommon and Expensive Form of Welfare
7.6 Inequality Regimes and Development Modes
7.6.1 Competing Theories
7.6.2 The Processes by Which Inequality is Engendered and Reinforced
7.6.3 Mixing These Processes Within Each Socioeconomic Regime
7.7 Environment Institutional Devices
7.7.1 A Theoretical Challenge
7.7.2 A Sixth Institutional Form or a Series of Institutional Devices?
7.7.3 Dependency on the Type of Capitalism
7.7.4 Temporality Conflicts, Threshold Effects and Irreversibility
7.7.5 Toward the Reversal of the Hierarchy Between the Economy and the Environment?
7.8 Conclusion: As Different Forms of Capitalism Evolve, Institutional Arrangements Become More Complex
References
8 Politics and Economics: The Political Economy of the Modern World
8.1 Public Intervention According to Economic Analysis
8.1.1 Contemporary Conceptions of Economic Policy
8.1.2 A Normative Vision: The Search for Market Efficiency and/or Social Justice
8.1.3 The Social Conflicts as Central to Policies Formation
8.2 Separation and the Intertwining of Economics and Politics
8.2.1 The Market Becomes Independent of the Political Sphere
8.2.2 The Coevolution of the State and Capitalism
8.2.3 Contemporary Society: The Intricacy of Polity and Economy
8.2.4 Conflicting Temporalities
8.3 A Return to Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas
8.3.1 The Hegemonic Bloc Hypothesis and Its Political Manifestation
8.3.2 Institutional Configurations as Expressions of a Political Coalition
8.3.3 An Original Hegemonic Bloc and the Crisis It Suffered in Italy in the 2000s
8.4 How a Politico-Economic Regime Comes into Existence
8.4.1 A Process of Abstracting and Generalizing Practices
8.4.2 Four Forms of Articulation and Mediation
8.4.3 Each Development Mode Corresponds to a Politico-Economic Regime
8.4.4 Response to Crisis Is Also Conditioned by Institutional Heritage
8.4.5 The Politico-Economic Regimes Differ Across Different Forms of Capitalism
8.5 The Role of Ideas: Was Keynes Right?
8.5.1 Systemic and Circular Causality
8.5.2 Finance Invent Fictional Projections
8.5.3 Neoliberalism as a Process of Transformation of Representations
8.6 The Political Sphere During Major Crises
8.6.1 The Inertia of Representations
8.6.2 Innovations Do Not Immediately Become Systemic
8.7 The Paradoxical Status of Economic Policy in the Regulation Theory
8.7.1 The Encounter of Simple Ideas with Policies Requiring Justification
8.7.2 The Reassuring Normative Theories in Response to Uncertainty
8.8 Conclusion: Political Economy Versus Economic Science?
References
9 Diversity and Renewal of the Different Forms of Capitalism
9.1 From Theories of the Convergence of Systems to “Capitalism Against Capitalism”
9.1.1 The Soviet Regime That Was
9.1.2 The Time of Economic Miracles
9.2 The Diversity of Forms of Capitalism
9.2.1 At the Crossroads of Four Forms of Logic, Inspired by the Market, the Firm, the State and the Community
9.2.2 The Different Theoretical Approaches to the Diversity of Forms of Capitalism
9.2.3 The Interlinking of the Political and Economic Spheres Underlies the Diversity of Forms of Capitalism
9.3 Capitalism Goes on
9.3.1 The Asian Breakthrough, a Challenge for the Theories
9.3.2 Hybridization, a Renewal Process for the Different Forms of Capitalism
9.3.3 The Forms of Capitalism that Followed the Soviet-Type Regimes
9.3.4 Shareholder Value Capitalism
9.3.5 Network Capitalism
9.4 China—The Emergence of a New Form of Capitalism
9.4.1 An Uninterrupted Series of Reforms
9.4.2 An Original Social Relationship—A Host of Local Corporate Entities
9.4.3 A Competition-Driven Development Mode
9.4.4 A Dominated and Dualistic Wage–Labor Nexus
9.4.5 The Impact on International Integration of the Internal Disequilibrium of the Accumulation Regime
9.4.6 The Many Sources of Crisis
9.5 The Dynamics: The Diversity of the Trajectories
9.5.1 The Two Factors of Evolution: Endometabolism and Hybridization
9.5.2 The Trilemma of Flexibility, Dynamic Efficiency and Social Justice
9.5.3 A Spiral Evolution Between Recurrence and Novelty
9.6 Internationalization Increased the Diversity Within Capitalism
9.6.1 Latin America: Tensions Between Rentier Regime and Capitalist Logic
9.6.2 The Divergence Between Asia and Latin America
9.6.3 Geographical Proximity Does Not Mean Identical Forms of Capitalism
9.7 An X-Ray View of Contemporary Forms of Capitalism
9.7.1 The Three Forms of Capitalism in the Old Industrialized Countries
9.7.2 The Four Forms of Asian Capitalism Are Different Again
9.8 Conclusion: A Regime Feeds on Its Expansion and Its Crises
References
10 The Levels of Regulation—National, Regional, Supranational and Global
10.1 The Nation-State, the Area of Fordism
10.1.1 National Compromises Take Precedence Over International Constraints
10.1.2 This Spatial Hierarchy Has Been Challenged
10.2 The Two Steps in the Inversion of Institutional Hierarchy
10.2.1 A Fiercer International Competition
10.2.2 The Dominance of Finance Over Nation-States
10.3 The Reconfiguring of the Various Regulation Modes in Response to Internationalization
10.3.1 The Intrinsic Fragility of Finance-Led Regimes
10.3.2 The Spectacular Crises of Development Led by Investment and International Credit
10.3.3 Two Regimes of Contemporary Industrial Capitalism
10.3.4 Crises but Also Resilience of Social Democratic Regimes
10.4 Rentier Regimes and Their International Role
10.4.1 The History of Capitalism and Energy Prices
10.4.2 Theorizing the Return of the Rent
10.4.3 Rentier Regimes Are Not Capitalist
10.4.4 Rentier Regimes and the Dynamics of the World Economy
10.5 The Concept of Globalization Is Too Comprehensive
10.5.1 A Multifaceted and Complex Process
10.5.2 New Transnational Actors and Arrangements
10.6 European Integration Lies Between the National and the World Level
10.6.1 Making Use of Several Disciplines and Social Sciences
10.6.2 Interplay of Political and Economic Spheres
10.6.3 Erroneous Representations and Diagnoses
10.6.4 Fine Tuning National Economic Policy Has Become Problematical
10.6.5 How a Radical Institutional Innovation Was Underestimated
10.6.6 Can Contrasting Regulation Modes Coexist Within the Euro Zone?
10.6.7 Diverging Macroeconomic Trajectories
10.6.8 A Fault Line Dividing Northern and Southern Europe
10.7 Which International Regimes?
10.7.1 The Lessons from the European Experience
10.7.2 The Lessons of East Asian Integration: Keeping Exchange Rates Flexible
10.7.3 Globalization? Increased Interdependence Between the Four Main Political-Economic Regimes
10.8 Conclusion: Toward a Geopolitical Analysis for Regulation Theory
References
11 From One Regulation Mode to Another
11.1 Why is Institutional Change so Difficult?
11.1.1 Is the Cause Simply Institutional Inertia?
11.1.2 Stability at the Cost of Inefficiency
11.1.3 Collective Action and Institutional Change
11.1.4 The Need for Political Intermediation
11.1.5 The Collapse of the Old Order
11.2 Do Wars Constitute Matrices for New Regulation Modes?
11.2.1 The Other Front, from 1914 to 1918
11.2.2 A General Theme Often Underestimated or Ignored
11.3 The Reconfiguration of Institutional Architectures
11.3.1 What Path Dependence for Institution?
11.3.2 Comparative Historical Institutionalism and Regulation Theory
11.4 From a Series of Marginal Changes to the Emergence of Another Hegemonic Bloc
11.4.1 The Silent and Gradual Rise to Power of Finance
11.4.2 A Way Out of the Lock-In Typical of Institutional Configurations
11.5 The Role of Economic Actors in Interconnected Networks
11.5.1 The Network Structure Matters
11.5.2 The Cultural and Political Fields May Overcome Economic Domination
11.5.3 The Structure of the Field and Its Key Economic Actors
11.6 Ideas, Interests and Political Considerations and the Advent of Regulation Modes
11.6.1 At the Origin of the Euro
11.6.2 The Primacy of the Political Sphere
11.6.3 The Persistence of Ineffective Austerity Policies
11.6.4 How an Erroneous Theory Can Persist and Justify a Policy
11.7 The Interlocking and Complex Nature of the Contemporary World
11.7.1 What Sort of Innovation Can Satisfy Five Imperative Needs?
11.7.2 The Future Will Not Be a Reproduction of the Past
11.8 Conclusion: The Challenge of Silent Transformations
References
12 Conclusion/Analyzing and Understanding a Tipping Point in the History of Capitalism
12.1 The Deepening and the Complexity of the Institutions of Capitalism
12.2 The Embeddedness of the Economic Sphere
12.3 Regulation and Crisis Go Together
12.4 The Endogenous Transformation of Institutional Forms
12.5 The Recurrence but Novelty of Major Crises
12.6 Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: Many Forms and Much Uncertainty
12.7 Toward New Intellectual Alliances
References
Bibliography
Index