Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Streeck

 

Current Projects

• Social Conditions and Consequences of Flexible Labor Markets
   
  
• Commonalities of Capitalism
   
  
• The Fiscal Crisis of the State in Contemporary Capitalism
   
  
• Social Science and the Practice of Politics
   
  
• Theories of Institutional Change
   
  

Research Interests

 
My research is located at the intersection between political science and political economy, on the one hand, and sociology, especially economic sociology, on the other. My interest is and has always been the tension between a democratic polity and a capitalist economy, as reflected in the constitution of the modern welfare state and in the regulation of labor relations and the employment relationship through trade unions and employer associations. My very first publication (1972) was about the organization of collective labor relations in Germany. After my first stay in the United States (1972-74), I returned to this subject in my doctoral dissertation in sociology at the University of Frankfurt, entitled “Organizational Problems of Trade Unions in Democratic Welfare States” (1981a). In subsequent years I collaborated closely with Philippe Schmitter on theoretical and empirical research on corporatist interest associations and corporatist interest politics. The results have been published primarily in political science journals and anthologies (1982; 1983; Streeck and Schmitter 1985). My work has also contributed to the study of industrial relations (1981b; 1984a), especially after I was appointed professor in sociology and industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (see for example Hyman and Streeck 1988; Rogers and Streeck 1995).
 
Through my participation in the “corporatism debate,” I have learned that the themes that interest me are best explored in explicit or implicit comparison between different national systems. While the ambitious cross-national comparative research project on trade and employer associations that Schmitter and I started at the end of the 1970s was never completed, it did become highly influential and stimulated a wave of further investigations. Parallel to my work on associations and their role in the “governance” of economic sectors and national economies (Hollingsworth et al. 1994), I became interested in the relationship between national institutions and national modes of production, not least as a result of my participation in the first MIT automobile project (Katz and Streeck 1984; Streeck 1989). In collaboration with Arndt Sorge I developed the concept of “diversified quality production,” which designates a “style” of operation of the economy that might allow societies with high wages and a relatively egalitarian wage structure to survive in competitive world markets (Sorge and Streeck 1988; Streeck 1991). My research at the time and the resulting publications contributed to the emergence of a literature on “varieties of capitalism” (Crouch and Streeck 1997). In this regard, I was and continue to be interested primarily in the fate of the “German model” (1984b; 1997). This became the subject of my joint work with Kozo Yamamura on Germany and Japan and their adjustment problems in the process of the liberalization of the world economy (Streeck and Yamamura 2001; Yamamura and Streeck 2003).
 
I would also like to mention my longstanding interest in questions of European integration. The point of departure for this was again my collaboration with Philippe Schmitter, who was one of the first to work on the subject, as well as a seminar I co-taught at Madison with another pioneer of European integration research and theory, Leon Lindberg. Together with Schmitter I tried to understand the dynamics of European integration by studying the evolution of the European-level system of interest associations (Streeck and Schmitter 1991). From here I later worked on the development, or non-development, of a European social policy; on industrial relations at the European level; and on the so-called “European social model” (1995a; b; 2000; 2001; Streeck and Vitols 1995). Later I turned to more general questions of internationalization and “globalization” and their consequences for the social embedding of markets (1998).
 
Some of my work is of a more “applied” nature and was written to influence policy and the political discussion in Germany. This is true in particular of my publications during and shortly after my time as a member of the Arbeitsgruppe Benchmarking (the Benchmarking Working Group) of the Bündnis für Arbeit (Alliance for Jobs), following the change of government in 1998 (see “Publications,” “Contributions to Current Debates on German Politics and Industrial Relations”). When the Alliance fell apart (2003a; 2005a) I returned to more academic pursuits. This involved in particular a collaborative project with Kathleen Thelen, the first product of which is a collective volume on institutional change including a joint introduction (Streeck and Thelen 2005). In addition I began to explore various theoretical issues related to the complementarity of institutions, especially from the perspective of the systemic equilibrium and the partial changeability of national economic systems (Crouch at al. 2005; Streeck 2004).
 
In recent years I have paid renewed attention to my original discipline, sociology. This is related not least to my contribution to the second edition of the “Handbook of Economic Sociology” (ed. Smelser and Swedberg), in which I summarize the results of my longstanding preoccupation with the sociology of the employment relationship (2005b). Simultaneous work on a handbook article on “Theories and Practices of Neocorporatism” (Streeck and Kenworthy 2005) had a similar effect. I regard sociology as the one social science that commands the necessary (action-) theoretical toolkit to avoid the lacunae of the so-called “rational choice approach,” which has unfortunately been imported from microeconomics into political science in particular (2003b). At the same time, I remain unsatisfied with a “passive” sociological theory that allows no place for collective action and thus for politics, and in which social structures form only behind the backs of the individuals acting in them. In my theoretical perspective political institutions occupy a prominent place as indispensable tools for collective action and decision-making. This view dominates the Festschrift for Philippe Schmitter that I co-edited with Colin Crouch (Crouch and Streeck 2006), and it was particularly evident in my contribution to that volume, in which I reconstruct the history of the debate on neo-corporatism in the context of political developments since the end of the 1960s (Streeck 2006a). Together with my co-director at the MPIfG, Jens Beckert, I have drawn up a research program for the Institute under which political economy and economic sociology can learn from one another and in which my own reserach interests can further develop (Beckert and Streeck 2008).
 
From January to July, 2007, and then again from September, 2009, to January, 2010, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. During my first stay I started to work on a book manuscript that was to summarize and synthesize the results of my various research efforts since the mid-1990s (see in particular 1997; 2003a; 2005a; 2006b). In the meantime the book has appeared under the title, "Re-Forming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy" (Oxford University Press, 2009a). My current research follows up on the central themes of the book and builds on its conclusions. Especially when writing the final chapters I convinced myself that a historical-institutionalist theory of modern capitalism as a social and not just an economic system is not only urgently required but may also in fact be achievable (see my project, "The Commonalities of Capitalism"). Empirically I am particularly interested in the endemic financial problems of the modern interventionist state, which as recent events have suggested may be indispensable as lender as well as spender of last resort (2007a). Equally intriguing I find the tension between continuously increasing pressures for more flexibility in work and employment on the one hand and the needs for stability inherent in the social lifeworld (2008b, c). In this context belongs my recent foray in the political economy of fertility (2009b). I have also become involved in discussions on the relationship between theory and practice in the social sciences, including the limits and possibilities of social science giving advice to political decision-makers (2008a). Last but by no means least I am continuing my collaboration with Kathleen Thelen in a jointly organized international working group on institutional change, which will meet regularly to discuss current developments in theory and empirical research (2009c).

 

Diagram representing the development of my
research interests

 

References