Thinking about Thinking about Comparative Political Economy: From Macro to Micro and Back

Herman Mark Schwartz and Bent Sofus Tranøy
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Herman Mark Schwartz: University of Virginia
Bent Sofus Tranøy: Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences and Kristiania University College

Politics & Society, 2019, vol. 47, issue 1, 23-54

Abstract: How and why did comparative political economy (CPE) lose sight of the sources of growing macroeconomic and political instability, a problem that encompassed a growing financial bubble and then a crash in the housing market, a period of sluggish growth that plausibly constitutes secular stagnation, and a crisis of political legitimacy manifesting itself in the rise of antisystem “populist†parties? A gradual shift in CPE’s research agenda from macroeconomic to microeconomic concerns, and from demand-side to supply-side explanations, diminished its ability to analyze adequately the central economic and political problems of the past twenty years. This article traces CPE’s evolution through successive “supermodels†that constituted its core research foci. To understand the current crisis, CPE needs to revisit and update its original roots in Keynes, macroeconomics, and the demand side. This shift is already happening at the margins, as CPE scholars struggle to understand the current crisis.

Keywords: comparative political economy; inflation; corporatism; developmental state; capitalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:47:y:2019:i:1:p:23-54

DOI: 10.1177/0032329218796197

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