James Mahoney

Kathleen Thelen

This book contributes to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change. Its introductory essay proposes a new framework for analyzing incremental change that is grounded in a power-distributional view of institutions and that emphasizes ongoing struggles within but also over prevailing institutional arrangements. Five empirical essays then bring the general theory to life by evaluating its causal propositions in the context of sustained analyses of specific instances of incremental change. These essays range widely across substantive topics and across times and places, including cases from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The book closes with a chapter reflecting on the possibilities for productive exchange in the analysis of change among scholars associated with different theoretical approaches to institutions.

Ambiguity, Agency, and Power

Explaining Institutional Change

This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, focusing on developments in three arenas - industrial relations, vocational education and training, and labor market policy. While confirming a broad, shared liberalizing trend, it finds that there are in fact distinct varieties of liberalization associated with very different distributive outcomes. Most scholarship equates liberal capitalism with inequality and coordinated capitalism with higher levels of social solidarity. However, this study explains why the institutions of coordinated capitalism and egalitarian capitalism coincided and complemented one another in the "Golden Era" of postwar development in the 1950s and 1960s, and why they no longer do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study reveals that the successful defense of the institutions traditionally associated with coordinated capitalism has often been a recipe for increased inequality due to declining coverage and dualization. Conversely, it argues that some forms of labor market liberalization are perfectly compatible with continued high levels of social solidarity and indeed may be necessary to sustain it.

Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity

Jacob S. Hacker

Paul Pierson

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

Politics, Markets, and Power

The American Political Economy

Situates comparative-historical analysis within contemporary debates in political science and explores the latest theoretical and conceptual advances.

Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis

Sven Steinmo

Frank Longstreth

These essays demonstrate how the 'historical institutional' approach to the study of politics reveals the nature of institutional change and its effect on policy making.

Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis

Structuring Politics

The essays in this book contribute to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change, providing a theoretical framework and empirical applications.

Kathleen Thelen

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