Comparing Capitalisms: Debates, Controversies and Future Directions

Various strands of the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature agree that the advanced economies have liberalized in recent years, bringing with it rising income and wealth inequality and job insecurity; although these perspectives differ in important ways, there is much common ground between them t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology (Oxford) 2020-06, Vol.54 (3), p.482-500
Main Authors: Wood, Geoffrey T, Allen, Matthew MC
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capitalism
Economic inequality
Income inequality
Inequality
Job insecurity
Labor market
Market economies
Markets
Political crises
Security
Social inequality
Wealth
Wealth distribution
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Summary:Various strands of the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature agree that the advanced economies have liberalized in recent years, bringing with it rising income and wealth inequality and job insecurity; although these perspectives differ in important ways, there is much common ground between them to explain this heightened level of inequality and insecurity. Through reviewing contributions to three key CC perspectives since 2007/2008, we argue that they have tended to focus on developments in co-ordinated market economies, leading to a neglect of growing structural crises in liberal market economies, which have contributed to the UK and the USA entering uncharted socio-political waters. We extend recent work that emphasizes how variation between countries in labour-market institutions, different corporate forms and states’ fiscal policies help to explain income and wealth inequality to highlight future research agendas that seek to combine more systematically these institutional areas to explain social inequalities, workers’ experiences and socio-political crises within capitalist systems.
ISSN:0038-0385
1469-8684
DOI:10.1177/0038038519895937