Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies

Debates surrounding institutional change have become increasingly central to Political Science, Management Studies, and Sociology, opposing the role of globalization in bringing about a convergence of national economies and institutions on one model to theories about 'Varieties of Capitalism'. This book brings together a distinguished set of contributors from a variety of disciplines to examine current theories of institutional change. The chapters highlight the limitations of these theories, finding them lacking in the analytic tools necessary to identify the changes occurring at a national level, and therefore tend to explain many changes and innovation as simply another version of previous situations. Instead a model emerges of contemporary political economies developing in incremental but cumulatively transformative processes. The contributors show that a wide, but not infinite, variety of models of institutional change exist which can meaningfully distinguished and analytically compared. They offer an empirically grounded typology of modes of institutional change that offer important insights on mechanisms of social and political stability, and evolution generally. Beyond Continuity provides a more complex and fundamental understanding of institutional change, and will be important reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Political Science, Management Studies, Sociology, and Economics.Introduction: Convergence or Diversity? Stability and Change in German and Japanese Capitalism Wolfgang Streeck and Kozo Yamamura Preface Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen 1 Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen 2 Policy Drift: The Hidden Politics of US Welfare State Retrenchment Jacob S. Hacker 3 Changing Dominant Practice: Making Use of Institutional Diversity in Hungary and the UK Colin Crouch and Maarten Keune 4 Redeploying the State: Liberalization and Social Policy in France Jonah D. Levy 5 Ambiguous Agreement, Cumulative Change: French Social Policy in the 1990s Bruno Palier 6 Routine Adjustment and Bounded Innovation: The Changing Political Economy of Japan Steven K. Vogel 7 Change from Within: German and Italian Finance in the 1990s Richard Deeg 8 Institutional Resettlement: The Case of Early Retirement in Germany Christine Trampusch 9 Contested Boundaries: Ambiguity and Creativity in the Evolution of German Codetermination Gregory Jackson 10 Adaptation, Recombination, and Reinforcement: The Story of Antitrust and Competition Law in Germany and Europe Sigrid Quack and Marie-Laure Djeli