Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen (eds.) Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies     Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 290 pages ISBN 978-0-19-928045-2 | £71.00 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-19-928046-9 | £22.50 (paperback) Order directly from Oxford University Press.

 

 

Abstract | Contents | Editors | Contributors

 

 

Abstract

 
Debates surrounding institutional change have become increasingly central to Political Science, Management Studies, and Sociology, opposing the role of globalization in bringing about a convergence of national economies and institutions on one model to theories about 'Varieties of Capitalism'.
 
This book brings together a distinguished set of contributors from a variety of disciplines to examine current theories of institutional change. The chapters highlight the limitations of these theories, finding them lacking in the analytic tools necessary to identify the changes occurring at a national level, and therefore tend to explain many changes and innovation as simply another version of previous situations.
 
Instead a model emerges of contemporary political economies developing in incremental but cumulatively transformative processes. The contributors show that a wide, but not infinite, variety of models of institutional change exist which can meaningfully distinguished and analytically compared. They offer an empirically grounded typology of modes of institutional change that offer important insights on mechanisms of social and political stability, and evolution generally.
 
Beyond Continuity provides a more complex and fundamental understanding of institutional change, and will be important reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Political Science, Management Studies, Sociology, and Economics.
 
Readership: Academics, researchers, and advanced students of Political Science, Management Studies, Sociology, and Economics.

 

 

Contents

 
Introduction: Convergence or Diversity? Stability and Change
in German and Japanese Capitalism
Wolfgang Streeck and Kozo Yamamura

 
Preface
Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen
 
1   Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies
Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen
 
2   Policy Drift: The Hidden Politics of US Welfare State Retrenchment
Jacob S. Hacker
 
3   Changing Dominant Practice: Making Use of Institutional Diversity
in Hungary and the UK
Colin Crouch and Maarten Keune
 
4   Redeploying the State: Liberalization and Social Policy in France
Jonah D. Levy
 
5   Ambiguous Agreement, Cumulative Change: French Social Policy in the 1990s
Bruno Palier
 
6   Routine Adjustment and Bounded Innovation:
The Changing Political Economy of Japan
Steven K. Vogel
 
7   Change from Within: German and Italian Finance in the 1990s
Richard Deeg
 
8   Institutional Resettlement: The Case of Early Retirement in Germany
Christine Trampusch
 
9   Contested Boundaries: Ambiguity and Creativity in the Evolution
of German Codetermination
Gregory Jackson
 
10   Adaptation, Recombination, and Reinforcement: The Story of Antitrust and Competition Law in Germany and Europe
Sigrid Quack and Marie-Laure Djelic

 

 

Editors

 
Katheen Thelen is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.
Wolfgang Streeck is Professor of Sociology and Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.

 

 

Contributors

 
Colin Crouch, Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute, Florence
 
Richard Deeg, Temple University
 
Marie-Laure Djelic, ESSEC Busines School, Paris
 
Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University
 
Gregory Jackson, Kings College, University of London
 
Maarten Keune, European University Insitute, Florence
 
Jonah D. Levy, University of California, Berkeley
 
Bruno Palier, Centre D'Études de la Vie Politique Française (CEVIPOF), Paris
 
Sigrid Quack, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Germany
 
Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
 
Kathleen Thelen, Northwestern University
 
Christine Trampusch, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
 
Steven K. Vogel, University of California, Berkeley