Both the varieties of capitalism school (VOC) and regulation theory (RT) address the issue of how and why capitalisms differ. If VOC challenges the primacy of liberal market economies (LME) and stresses the existence of an alternative form, i.e. coordinated market economies (CME), RT starts from...

Zwischen 1972 und 2002 sind in der deutschen Sozialpolitik die Verflechtungen der Politiker mit dem Bereich der gesellschaftlichen Interessenträger zurückgegangen. Anhand einer Analyse der Karrieren der Mitglieder des Bundestagsausschusses für Arbeit und Sozialordnung zeigt das Papier, dass...

The concept of path dependence is being used in highly deterministic ways in neo-institutionalist analysis, so that studies using this framework have difficulty in accounting for, or predicting, change. However, the original Polya urn model from which path dependence theory draws predicts that...

In dem Discussion Paper wird ein Vorschlag zum Verständnis der theoretischen Problemstellung der Marktsoziologie herausgearbeitet und dabei das Problem der sozialen Ordnung von Märkten in den Mittelpunkt gerückt. Märkte sind, so der Ausgangspunkt, hochgradig voraussetzungsvolle Arenen...

Europe's 'political space', its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the...

The article introduces the concept of hegemony to leadership theory, which has developed mainly as a critique of hegemonic stability theory. We argue that it makes sense to combine the two theories by introducing the concept of 'size' into neoliberal thinking about International Political...

The paper examines whether and how the increasing internationalisation of firms impacts on the operation of a co-ordinated market economy. Following the tenets of agency theory it assumes that an emerging market for corporate control changes the monitoring mechanisms that oversee management....

There is a tendency in the new institutionalist literature to equate institutional inertia with stasis and no-change. Using case studies from the international telecommunications regime and the German health care system, the paper tries to show that this equation is wrong. Inertia does not...

The paper presents a theoretical outline for a cross-national comparative study of business associations. It identifies two clusters of independent variables that are assumed to affect the structure of intermediary organizations: properties of the represented group (Logic of Membership) and...

Using aggregate analysis, this paper examines the core contentions of the "varieties of capitalism" 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...