Institutionalism’s Declining Returns: Wolfgang Streeck and the Literature on Contemporary Capitalism

• In Event: 3555 - Section on the Political Economy of the World-System Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Uneven Development, Revolutions, and Global South

Abstract

In recent decades, comparative research on postwar capitalism after its “Golden Age” has been dominated by a variety of institutionalist approaches. Underlying these accounts is an assumption that the trajectory of different “national regimes” is determined primarily by the structure of existing institutional arrangements. Wolfgang Streeck’s post-2008 writings represent a challenge to this literature. In what follows I trace the evolution of Streeck’s thinking on stability and change in postwar capitalism, and explore his influence on both “historical-institutionalist” literature and the employer-centered accounts associated with the “Varieties of Capitalism” school. It was Streeck’s increasing pessimism about the prospects for “containing” business, I show, that underpinned his growing divergence from institutionalist scholarship. At the same time, Streeck’s valuable contributions on the growing disjuncture between capitalism and democracy are undermined by a number of ambiguities.” These can be corrected by adding a more developed theoretical understanding of how “disorganization” can exacerbate structural inequalities in class power even if it is not engendered by particular class interests.

Author

• Jonah M Birch, Appalachian State University