Social Protection, Capitalist Production

The Bismarckian Welfare State in the German Political Economy, 1880-2015

Dados Bibliográficos

ID24150313
AutoresPhilip Manow (0000-0002-7154-7789, University of Bremen, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Data de publicação2020-06-18
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoSocial Protection, Capitalist Production (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198842538.001.0001
OpenAlexW4252161924
ISBN9780198842538
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas160

The book provides a thorough analysis of the genealogy and the functional logic of German capitalism over the last 130 years. It addresses several puzzles of the existing literature, in particular how economic coordination proved possible and remained stable in a (big) country without prominent traits of neo-corporatism, without long government participation of social democratic parties, without centralized wage bargaining, without active economic steering by the government, under a “monetarist” regime, and under an allegedly liberal, namely “ordoliberal” economic policy. The central claim of the book is that the functional equivalent for all that was a “conservative-continental” welfare state which provided labor and capital with the organizational resources and the infrastructure to establish and maintain long-term economic coordination (of which we know that it is not-self-enforcing, i.e. that it needs institutional support). A better understanding of the German case, which can be seen as prototypical for other continental political economies as well, thus provides us also with a much better understanding of the different variants of coordinated market economies in northern, continental, and southern Europe, i.e. it provides us with a more profound Comparative Political Economy framework. This has important implications for contemporary debates on Germany’s role within international trade, and especially on its role within Europe and especially within the eurozone and its crisis. Much of the current debate, so the book claims, is based on an incomplete account of the functional logic of Modell Deutschland.

Business · Economic system · Economics · Microeconomics · Production (economics) · Social production · Social science · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies