Comparative Political Economy: Contours of a Subfield

This new and comprehensive volume covering the subfield of comparative political economy provides a detailed overview over its intellectual roots, clarifies its contents, and introduces the readers to key debates while identifying new and exciting avenues for future research. Ideas, interests, and institutions have traditionally been the main focus points of this field, but the volume argues that culture provides an additional and often neglected area, providing the 'glue' that keeps national models of capitalism hanging together.

The volume also develops pathways beyond the varieties of capitalism paradigm. Building on a thorough and rigorous review of comparative capitalisms and a synthesis of the research strands that have built the bedrock of this subfield, Comparative Political Economy explores the individual components of national models of capitalism and argues that these elements deserve closer scrutiny. Their permutations have been considerable over the past thirty years, and their study permits valuable insights both empirically and theoretically. The empirical coverage of the book includes chapters covering industrial relations, labour markets, systems of education and training, finance, welfare state, and debt. In the conclusion, research pathways forward are identified and the impact of energy security issues and environmental factors on the study of comparative capitalisms will be assessed.

Georg Menz, Dragas Chair in International Politics, Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA

Georg Menz is Dragas Chair in International Politics at Old Dominion University. He was previously Professor in Political Economy at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Varieties of Capitalism and Europeanization (OUP, 2005) which won the UACES Best Book prize. and The Political Economy of Managed Migration (OUP, 2009). He has also published widely on labour market, social, and immigration policy.