Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity, by Kathleen Thelen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014, 264 pp., ISBN: 978 1 10767 956 6, £16.99, paperback.
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12105 |
| Author | Nathan Lillie |
perspective? Has Slovenia’s stability been overestimated, given how badly it has been
hit by the crisis? Why, exactly, are Romania and Bulgaria failed states? But this
merely means that the book has the potential to inspire the design of new waves of
comparative research in the region, and in this sense it will remain a core reference for
many years, in European industrial relations as much as in European political
economy.
The book by Sommers and Woolfson has the narrower, but not less important,
ambition of demystifying the Baltic model. Its openly critical approach will not
convince everybody — yet it is a much-needed counterbalance to the instrumental and
one-sided mainstream accounts of three countries whose unique realization of pure
neoliberalism makes them punch above the weight of their mere 1% share of the EU
population.
GUGLIELMO MEARDI
University of Warwick
Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity, by Kathleen
Thelen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014, 264 pp., ISBN:
978 1 10767 956 6, £16.99, paperback.
Varieties of capitalism (VoC) analysis has always been a taxonomic exercise, and in
this book Thelen makes the case for adding yet another category. She draws on
detailed historical research into the institutional development of wage bargaining,
labour market, education and training policy in advanced capitalist countries, with
a focus on The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the United States.
Her goal is to highlight and explain differences between Nordic varieties of
co-ordinated market economies (CMEs) and continental ones, while setting these in
the broader context of institutional political economy debates through comparison
with the United States and through quantitative data. Her core hypothesis is that,
despite similarities as CMEs, Nordic varieties of ‘egalitarian capitalism’ produce
more equal and inclusive labour market outcomes than do continental varieties
dominated by manufacturing interests, such as Germany, which are prone to
‘dualism’. It is essentially an argument against the notion allegedly held by VoC
proponents that differences between national political economies can be reduced to
a position on a single axis according to the degree of co-ordination versus market in
economic governance.
While situating herself outside the VoC tradition in order to criticize its taxonomy,
her categories, choice of variables and case definitions follow clearly from the VoC
tradition. She focuses on labour market-related policy areas, analysed in historical
perspective in different chapters comparing her case study countries. The
generalizability of her findings becomes evident through quantitative data from a
broad selection of advanced capitalist democracies, which she presents in tables and
charts. The national case studies are carefully and rigorously done. Not all cases are
given equal treatment: she provides detailed case studies of Germany, United States
and Denmark side by side in each of her policy chapters, but for Sweden and The
Netherlands she analyses all the policy areas together in one chapter featuring the two
countries.
The book’s strength is that of historical institutionalism generally: it puts policy
responses into historical context, revealing how and why national political economies
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162 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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