The Program for the Study of Germany and Europe Working Papers Series
Bringing the State Back Into the Varieties of Capitalism And Discourse Back Into the Explanation of Change
Vivien A. Schmidt
The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literature's difficulties in accounting for the full diversity of national capitalisms and in explaining institutional change result at least in part from its tendency to downplay state action and from its rather static, binary division of capitalism into two overall systems. This paper argues first of all that by taking state action-used as shorthand for government policy forged by the political interactions of public and private actors in given institutional contexts-as a significant factor, national capitalisms can be seen to come in at least three varieties: liberal, coordinated, and state-influenced market economies. But more importantly, by bringing the state back in, we also put the political back into political economy-in terms of policies, political institutional structures, and politics. Secondly, the paper shows that although recent revisions to VoC that account for change by invoking open systems or historical institutionalist in