Comparative Political Economy

This new and comprehensive volume covering the subfield of comparative political economy provides a detailed overview over its intellectual roots, clarifies its contents, and introduces the readers to key debates while identifying new and exciting avenues for future research. Ideas, interests, and institutions have traditionally been the main focus points of this field, but the volume argues that culture provides an additional and often neglected area, providing the'glue' that keeps national models of capitalism hanging together.The volume also develops pathways beyond the varieties of capitalism paradigm. Building on a thorough and rigorous review of comparative capitalisms and a synthesis of the research strands that have built the bedrock of this subfield, Comparative Political Economy explores the individual components of national models of capitalism and argues that these elements deserve closer scrutiny. Their permutations have been considerable over the past thirty years, and their study permitsvaluable insights both empirically and theoretically. The empirical coverage of the book includes chapters covering industrial relations, labour markets, systems of education and training, finance, welfare state, and debt. In the conclusion, research pathways forward are identified and the impact of energysecurity issues and environmental factors on the study of comparative capitalisms will be assessed.

1 A Genealogy of the Field from Adam Smith to the Mid-Twentieth Century; 2 Contemporary CPE: The Turn towards Comparative Capitalisms and the Relationship with IPE; 3 Varieties of Capitalism and the Next Steps Beyond; 4 Labour Markets and their Regulation: Industrial Relations and the Organization of Business and Labour; 5 Models of Finance and Corporate Governance and their Implications; 6 The Political Economy of Debt; 7 Welfare State Models: Taming the Market?; 8 The State as an Actor: Not a Neutral Umpire; 9 Conclusion: Future Directions for Comparative Political Economy