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This article argues that social scientists should reconsider the analytic value of the term “capitalism.” The paper argues that the two most coherent definitions of capitalism are those derived from classical Marxism and from the World System theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Marx and Engels’ formulation was basically a genetic theory in which the structure of a mode of production is determined by the mode of surplus extraction. During the course of the 20th century, however, Marxist theorists had to modify this framework and the result has been an uncomfortable hybrid. Wallerstein resolved these tensions by redefining capitalism in terms of the logic of a world system. However, his argument has difficulty in explaining the consequential variations over time in the specific rules and institutional structures that operate at the global level. The article goes on to argue in favor of Karl Polanyi's concept of market society because it focuses attention on the political governance of market societies at both the national and the global levels.

There is little doubt that in terms of speed and scale, China's economic transformation is without parallel in the past. Never has the world seen a major economic power emerge in such a short time span and attain such a weight in the total world economy. Intriguingly, few social scientific analyses have explicitly interpreted the massive socio-economic changes taking place within China as associated with the emergence of a capitalist political economy.

The paper argues that the form, structure and ideologies of elites are embedded in particular forms of capitalism. Whilst elites in these different societies are engaged in a common task of ensuring that their position is sustained and protected in the light of economic and political uncertainties, the way in which they are able to do this is shaped by the particular forms of legitimation, coordination and cohesion that are embedded in particular institutional trajectories, path dependencies and complementarities. However, the paper emphasizes that these institutional structures are dependent on particular international economic orders and when these change either over the short or the long term, elites often find themselves struggling to maintain their position without significant changes. The paper examines firstly how the long-term change from Keynesianism to neo-liberalism in the international economic order led to changes in the terrain on which elites in different countries formed and exercised power and secondly how the immediate and drastic short-term changes in the global economy arising from the financial crisis has impacted on elites.

Choosing Varieties of Capitalism as the title of their 2001 edited volume, Peter Hall and David Soskice monopolized a label that was much too broad for the project they were actually reporting. Their project was in line with a style of research, which may be called “bringing yet another factor back in”. That term stems from another pioneering edited volume emerging – like Hall and Soskice's volume – from the Harvard circuit: Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol's (1985) Bringing the State Back In. Following that volume, a number of other factors were “brought back in”: classes, geopolitics, finance and so on.

This chapter responds to Fred Block's article about the weaknesses of the concept of capitalism because of its close association with Marxism, and his proposal for a Polanyian analysis of political economy. In this chapter, I interrogate what may be the commonalities as opposed to divergences between Marx and Polanyi, and I question whether the concept of capitalism is really so wedded to Marxism so as to loose its analytic value, and be better replaced by notions such as market society, or political economy, as used by Polanyi. I agree with Block that a Polanyian analysis importantly widens our view beyond economic reductionism to an understanding of economy and society as co-constitutive. However, I see utility in adding the qualifier “capitalist” to “political economy” to differentiate between socialist and capitalist political economies, for instance, and to properly characterize a system based on private property rights, guided by pursuit of material gain, which advantages some strata in society more than others, leading to endemic social inequality. I propose that a Polanyian focus on society and economy as co-constitutive is more effectively coupled with an analysis that considers capitalism not as a self-driven system of surplus extraction and accumulation, but as an institutional order dependent on political choices. Such a perspective would advance a Polanyian analysis of capitalism.

This chapter sheds light on how the internationalization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is jointly influenced by the ownership involvement of the state and other relational investors and by the home country’s institutional setting. It integrates international business literature and insights from the theory of corporate governance into a varieties of capitalism framework. Taking a configurational perspective, the interdependencies that link the SOE internationalization to the joint effects of particular combinations of actors and institutions are analyzed. As a result, it is argued that only a few home country–SOE governance configurations favor the expansion of SOEs abroad: (i) a configuration in which the state is a dominant owner capable of aligning the interests of any other private shareholder and the government is embedded in a proactive institutional context, so as to effectively orchestrate the internationalization process, (ii) a configuration in which, assuming the home country institutions markedly deficient in supporting interventions, relational co-owners are involved in SOE ownership and governance and have commitment, influential power, and competencies to equip the company with an effective strategy and competitive advantages to be exploited abroad. In all other configurations, the international performance of SOEs is worse, being undermined by institutional contexts that favor an inward-looking approach of the state and government, and/or by principal–principal agency problems.

This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which is characterized by worker control without ownership, and the United States, which is marked by worker ownership without control. Section three explores three pathways through which broad-based worker ownership and control might be deepened and more strongly coupled in the future.

Recurrent “methodological disputes” have haunted the social sciences, again and again polarizing the case-oriented quest for specification against the natural science inspired quest for general, high-level theory. As a consequence, too much social science research is captured in either one of two vicious circles: ever more highly specified monographic case studies or preoccupation with periodically shifting general theories. The interaction of these two circles increases the risk of widespread amnesia: as social scientists are either bogged down in a stream of cases or flying high with the most recent grand (meta-)theories, social science forgets the actual empirical knowledge that is being meticulously created, maintained and revised in the daily handicraft carried out by a growing mass of researchers.

There are good reasons for preferring the concept of capitalism over that of “market economy.” A capitalist economy is one that depends on the commercialization-through-monetarization of ever more social relations. The result is disequilibrium as the normal condition of a society placed under pressure by its “economy” for continuous reorganization in line with a need for ongoing capital accumulation. A capitalist society enlists the possessive individualism of its members as its principal vehicle of social progress, measured as an increase in wealth-as-money. While Polanyian theory has pointed out important features of advanced capitalist societies, there is no need to sacrifice core Marxian concepts for it. Marxian theory helps avoid the trap of political voluntarism, which stipulates a priority of politics in the capitalist political economy or a fundamental difference between “varieties” of capitalism. Moreover, rather than regarding the capitalist economy as by definition “always embedded,” political-economic theory must allow for a self-destructive, and indeed socially destructive, tendency of capitalist political economies to “disembed” themselves by struggling free from social controls and dictating to social life the imperatives of market efficiency and a market-conforming distribution of life chances.

In this paper we show that the neo-transitional economies are less neoliberal than could be expected given their 25-years long transition towards building market environment, supporting entrepreneurship and restoring capitalism in general. According to factor analysis results based on a cross-sectional sample of 134 countries during the period of 2010–2012 we find that the neo-transitional economies are characterised by relatively restrictive trade and capital regulations, average level of labour protection and low activity of state in terms of tax-based redistribution and social cohesion support. We briefly review several theoretical frameworks, such as the World System Theory, Commodity Chain and Global Capital theory, and Varieties of Capitalism framework, and point towards their limitations in explaining these transitional outcomes. We conclude that these frameworks are not capable of providing the explanations mainly because of their limited or no concern for labour and capital, and their interactions with the national institutions. We conclude that the history of industrialisation and path dependence provides a more plausible framework for explaining the neo-transitional outcomes. Furthermore, the consideration of the ‘resource curse’ and authoritarian regimes in many CIS countries can explain their neglect for tax-based redistribution and the high degree of government interventions in trade and capital regulations.