Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions

by Edited by J. Rogers Hollingsworth , Robert Boyer

• ISBN13: 9780521561655
• ISBN10: 0521561655
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book argues that there is no single best institutional arrangement for organizing modern societies. Therefore, the market should not be considered the ideal and universal arrangement for coordinating economic activity. Instead, the editors argue, the economic institutions of capitalism exhibit a large variety of objectives and tools that complement each other and cannot work in isolation. The various chapters of the book explore challenging issues in the analysis of differing institutional arrangements for coordinating economic activity, asking what logics and functions they follow and why they emerge, mature and persist in the forms they do. They conclude that any institutional arrangement has its strengths and weaknesses and that such institutions evolve according to a logic specific to each society. They also note that institutions continuously respond to changing circumstances, and are not static entities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
List of Contributors	xi
Coordinaton of Economic Actors and Social Systems of Production	1	(48)
J. Rogers Hollingsworth
Robert Boyer
PART I. THE VARIETY OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS AND THEIR COMPLEMENTARITY IN MODERN ECONOMIES	49	(140)
Robert Boyer
J. Rogers Hollingsworth
The Variety and Unequal Performance of Really Existing Markets: Farewell to Doctor Pangloss?	55	(39)
Robert Boyer
A Typology of Interorganizational Relationships and Networks	94	(33)
Jerald Hage
Catherine Alter
Associational Governance in a Globalizing Era: Weathering the Storm	127	(27)
William D. Coleman
Constitutional Orders: Trust Building and Response to Change	154	(35)
Charles F. Sabel
PART II. HOW AND WHY DO SOCIAL SYSTEMS OF PRODUCTION CHANGE?	189	(122)
Robert Boyer
J. Rogers Hollingsworth
Beneficial Constraints: On the Economic Limits of Rational Voluntarism	197	(23)
Wolfgang Streeck
Flexible Specilization: Theory and Evidence in the Analysis of Industrial Change	220	(20)
Paul Hirst
Jonathan Zeitlin
Globalization, Variety, and Mass Production: The Metamorphosis of Mass Production in the New Competitive Age	240	(25)
Benjamin Coriat
Continuities and Changes in Social Systems of Production: The Cases of Japan, Germnay, and the United States	265	(46)
J. Rogers Hollingsworth
PART III. LEVELS OF SPATIAL COORDINATION AND THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF INSTITUTIONS	311	(120)
Philippe C. Schmitter
Perspectives on Globalization and Economic Coordination	319	(18)
Wyn Grant
Globalization in Question: International Economic Relations and Forms of Public Governance	337	(24)
Paul Hirst
Grahame Thompson
Clubs are Trump: The Formation of International Regimes in the Absence of a Hegemon	361	(34)
Lorraine Eden
Fen Osler Hampson
The Emerging Europolity and Its Impact upon National Systems of Production	395	(36)
Philippe C. Schmitter
PART IV. CONCLUSION	431	(54)
From National Embeddedness to Spatial and Institutional Nestedness	433	(52)
Robert Boyer
J. Rogers Hollingsworth
Index	485