Political Economy

Modern constitutions are relatively recent instruments of rule and are closely associated with the formation of national states from the eighteenth century onwards. So what is this term doing in respect to global business practices and corporate affairs? This question is the one the book sets out to explore. The argument is that with the advent of globalization — where corporate organizations and the commercial relations that accompany them are argued to have become increasingly transnational — the locus of powers, authorities, and responsibilities has shifted to the global level. The nation-state arena is losing its capacity to regulate and control commercial processes and practices as a transformational logic kicks-in, associated with new forms of global rule making and governance. And it is this new arena of global rule making can be considered as a surrogate form of global constitutionalization, or ‘quasi-constitutionalization’. But as might be expected, this surrogate process of constitutionalization is not a coherent program or a set of rounded outcomes but is full of contradictory half-finished currents and projects: an ‘assemblage’ of many disparate advances and often directionless moves — almost an accidental coming together of elements. Thus, the book is about governance, law, and constitutional matters. these are discussed in the context of international corporate constitutional governance. So, the emphasis is upon how and why the business world, commercial relations, and particularly company activities have increasingly become subject to legal and constitutional forms of regulation and governance at the international level. The questions asked is how to characterize the process that has seen the international corporate sphere increasingly subject to juridical and constitutional-like regulatory initiatives and interventions. Does this amount to a new attempt to subject international commercial relations to the ‘rule by law’ and, indeed, to rule the world through these very means?

This book examines the construction of capitalisms in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania after 1989, within a national business systems framework. Four elements of capitalism are analysed—property ownership, capital accumulation, production relations (specifically, international), and relations between the state and the economy. This book shows how the capitalisms constructed did not match the expectations of the early 1990s. Economic assets were privatized, but the exercise of shareholders’ rights was more limited in practice than in shareholder value theory. Blockholders dominated boards of directors in all four countries, often aligned with corporate management. Capital markets were developed, but played a greater role symbolically than as sources of finance. Enterprises in all four countries were incorporated into international production chains, with expansion in export and import of intermediate products, especially in motor vehicles. Despite the transition’s aim to reduce the role of politics in the economy, constructing capitalisms was heavily dependent upon political initiatives, nationally and internationally. Labour played only a supporting role in constructing capitalisms, through participation in tripartite forums; union membership declined, and industrial conflict primarily involved state sector workers. The capitalisms that developed were segmented, analysis of Hungary indicating four segments—state, privatized, de novo, and international—with different patterns of ownership, finance, product market relations, and links with the state. Capitalisms in the four countries thus never corresponded to liberal market models. The incentive to follow liberal market models declined further with the financial crisis of Western capitalisms in 2008, and growing investment in the region by sovereign wealth funds, Russian and Chinese.

This book brings together conceptual and empirical analyses of the evolving patterns of East Asian capitalism against the backdrop of global market integration and periodic economic crises since the 1980s. More specifically, it seeks to provide an interdisciplinary account of variations, continuities, or changes in institutional structures that govern financial systems, industrial relations, and product markets and shape the evolution of national political economies. The geographical focus of the volume is China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand. In line with this analytical focus, the volume has three different yet interrelated objectives. First, building on extant comparative institutional analyses, it develops a typology of East Asian capitalism that can identify key institutional domains to be included in cross-national comparisons and establish the guiding principles for categorizing political economies across the region. Second, it provides an analytical framework to elucidate the nature and mode of institutional changes in East Asian countries over the past two decades. Finally, the volume advances theoretical propositions concerning the potential causes of these institutional changes. While particular chapters emphasize different causal variables, collectively they constitute a coherent effort to theorize the changing varieties of East Asian capitalism.

Much has been said about the re-emergence of China to its historical position of eminence in the world economy, yet little is understood about the kind of economic system China is evolving. What are the rules of the game of business in today's China, and how are they likely to change over the next decades? This book sheds much-needed light on these questions. Building on recent conceptual and empirical advances, and rich in concrete examples, it offers a comprehensive and systematic exploration of present-day Chinese capitalism, its component parts, and their interdependencies. It suggests that Chinese capitalism, as practiced today, in many respects represents a development from traditional business practices, whose revival has been greatly aided by the influx of investments and managerial talent from the Regional Ethnic Chinese. On the basis of present trends in the Chinese economy as well as through comparison with five major types of capitalism — those of France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United States — the book derives a prediction of the probable development paths of Chinese capitalism and its likely competitive strengths and weaknesses.

The crisis in Asia has caused economic hardship and brought an end to the ‘economic miracle’ of fast economic growth in the region. This book asks whether the 1997/8 crisis marks a break with the past and signals an end to ‘Asian’ ways of running economies. During the period of rapid growth there were strong connections between governments and business in the region. ‘Cronyism’, or close connections between family, business, and government, was exposed when the stock markets and currencies dived. Pressure from overseas investors and international organisations has produced reforms in the region. The book examines the social, economic, and political modes of governance in the region. It finds that there is a shifting balance between rule by the market, rule by connections, and rule by force. In the sphere of economic management, it shows that the period of the ‘developmental state’ in Japan and Korea has come to an end, but that it has not yet been replaced by a liberal market. Elsewhere the close connections between governments and business have been weakened but not yet broken. There are still special ‘Asian’ characteristics in economic management and in politics. The forces of ‘globalisation’ are strong, but they are confronted with political and economic cultures that are not rooted in liberal market ethics.

This book studies the way that British, American, and German firms in the clothing industry (manufacturing and retail) co-ordinate and govern their global production networks/value chains. It offers a multi-level analysis, concerned with processes of economic interaction between international, regional, and national economic institutions and actors. This combines an analysis of international/regional regulatory systems, global markets, and conditions in the developing countries where suppliers are found with a focus on the recent development of the clothing industry in three western countries. The book's study of firms' global networks focuses on the power relationships between western producers and retailers on the one hand and between buyer firms in developed and supplier firms in developing countries on the other. The book additionally investigates their impact on labour. Utilizing over a hundred interviews in six countries on three continents, it follows the value chain from developed to developing countries and studies the many issues which confront students of globalization at the current time. The book combines theoretical perspectives from economic sociology, political economy, and management and seeks to utilise the complementary strengths of the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach and that of Global Production Networks/Value Chains.

This book addresses some of the key issues in the field of comparative political economy and institutional theory: the role of history in institutional analysis, the dynamics of slow institutional change, the limitations of rational design and economic-functionalist explanations of institutional stability, and the recurrent difficulties of restraining the effects of capitalism on social order. In the classification of the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ school, Germany has always been taken as the chief exemplar of a ‘European’, coordinated market economy. The book explores to what extent Germany actually conforms to this description. Its argument is supported by original empirical research on wage-setting and wage structure, the organization of business and labor in business associations and trade unions, social policy, public finance, and corporate governance. From this evidence, this book traces the current liberalization of the post-war economy of democratic capitalism by means of a historical approach to institutional change.