Models of capitalism and types of democracy

Carlo Trigilia

Chapter 28 in Handbook of Comparative Political Economy, 2025, pp 503-516 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Are current trends generating a convergence toward a single model of deregulated capitalism with a weakened democracy and increasing inequalities? Some scholars argue that democratic capitalism, capable of providing economic growth and contrasting social inequalities, is bound to disappear under the pressure of globalization and technological change. To the contrary, a recent comparative study of capitalisms and democracies discussed in this contribution questions this view, pointing out the significant and still persistent differences in the relations between democracy and capitalism. To explain the different patterns, it is necessary to go beyond the study of the policies and regulations of the economy and analyze the influence of polity and types of democracy. This approach sheds light on the more entrenched persistence of democratic capitalism where a ‘negotiation democracy’ prevails, such as in Central Europe and the Nordic countries. In these contexts, polity drives left-wing parties, through concertation and the proportional system, to pursue policies that support sustainable redistribution and innovation. To follow this path – as a recent strand of literature also suggests – it seems necessary to adjust the traditional perspective of political economy by maintaining and strengthening the comparative analysis. At the same time, it is useful to go beyond the comparative statics that prevailed in the past and take a more dynamic view. This means focusing not only on the impact of policies but also on the role of polity and the type of democracy to assess the evolution of democratic capitalism.

Keywords: Comparative capitalisms; Comparative democracies; Social inequalities; Left-wing parties; Sustainable redistribution; Inclusive growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035327775
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035327782.00042 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23093_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().