Contesting the ‘New Capitalism’

For some time now, students of comparative political economy have been preoccupied with interpreting the new phase of capitalism that has followed the post-war boom and been dominated by neoliberal ideas and policies. This has meant, on the one hand, a number of declarations of political endings: the end of corporatism, the end of the nation state, the end of Modell Deutschland, and so on. And, on the other hand, numerous forecasts of a ‘new capitalism’: post-Fordism, cosmopolitan democracy, diversified quality production, the borderless world, and so on. Behind these bold, if often misguided, formulations have been three fundamental research questions about the ‘new capitalism’. First, what is the character of the new processes and activities of adding and realizing value? Second, what has been the resulting transformations in the pattern of exchanges in the world market and in the relationship between its constituent states? Third, what mediating role has been played by the variety of institutionalized relations of capitalism in these developments, and are these relations tending towards convergence or divergence of national ‘models of capitalism’?