2000: The Reconstruction of German Corporate Governance: Reassesing the Role of Capital Market Pressures. Papier für die Konferenz First Jackson/Höpner/Kurdelbusch Germany 48

In the 1980s one of the key preoccupations of comparative political economy was the mapping of broad institutional differences in national models of capitalism and the linking of these differences with outcomes such as economic performance (Lange and Garrett 1985; Soskice 1990; Zysman 1983). In the 1990s, however, the focus has shifted to the problem of convergence between national models: what are the pressures for convergence and how strong are they (Boyer and Drache 1996; Crouch and Streeck 1998)? With the risk of some oversimplification, the majority view in this debate sees international capital markets as the primary driver in this process and posits quite substantial pressures for convergence toward a market-oriented "Anglo-American " model. In the area of corporate governance the mechanism driving convergence is the (increasingly) global search by portfolio investors for higher returns; companies are (increasingly) being faced with the following basic choice: adopt the shareholder value (i.e. "shareholder interests first") model of corporate organization or be starved of the external capital needed to survive. Some even speculate that shareholder value may have become the central organizing principle of the latest phase of capitalism (Boyer 2000). This paper denies neither the significant changes that are taking place in asset management nor the fundamental challenges non-liberal varieties of capitalism such as the postwar German "social market economy " are facing. Its fundamental claim however is that the majority view grossly overestimates the role of capital markets and the degre