In the comparative political economy of rich democracies there is a long tradition of classifying countries into one of a small number of categories based on their economic institutions and policies. The most recent of these is the Varieties of Capitalism project, which posits two major clusters...

This paper outlines an institutionalist political economy approach to capitalism as a specific type of social order. Social science institutionalism considers social systems to be structured by sanctioned rules of obligatory behavior. Its perspective is one of collective ordering, or governance,...

The paper reviews the origins of the comparative study of capitalism and of the diverse approaches applied to it in contemporary political economy. It distinguishes four models accounting for differences in the institutional make-up of national capitalist economies, which it refers to as the...

This paper shows that a more accurate depiction of the development of China's private sector is gained by considering the complex interaction between bottom-up and topdown processes. First, the paper analyzes the general characteristics of Chinese capitalism to help understand and classify the...

Despite the ubiquity of illegality in today's financial markets, systematic scrutiny of the phenomenon of financial crime is lacking in the fields of economic sociology and political economy. One field of research in which the illegal behaviors of business elites have long taken center stage is...

Political economy and economic sociology have developed in relative isolation from each other. While political economy focuses largely on macrophenomena, economic sociology focuses on the level of social interaction in the economy. The paper argues that economic sociology can provide a...

Using aggregate analysis, this paper examines the core contentions of the "varieties of capitalismʺ perspective on comparative capitalism. We construct a coordination index to assess whether the institutional features of liberal and coordinated market economies conform to the predictions of the...

The Great Recession renewed calls for a return of state activism in support of the European economy. The widespread nationalization of ailing companies and the growing activism of national development banks led many to celebrate the reappearance of industrial policy. By reviewing the evolution...

Has the strategy of the "external constraint" (voluntarily limiting the country's policy-making discretion by tying it to the European mast) contributed to Italy's stagnation over the past twenty-five years? The existing literature is divided on this question. The dominant interpretation is that...