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Variegated capitalism

Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA, japeck{at}wisc.edu

Nik Theodore

Urban Planning and Policy Program and Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, USA, theodore{at}uic.edu

The article critically engages with the `varieties of capitalism' school, which since its origins in the early 1990s has been consolidated into one of the most influential strands in comparative and heterodox political economy. While the `varieties' approach can be credited with the development of several of the most evocative stylized facts in heterodox political economy, having served as a potent foil against the orthodox globalization thesis, its alternative vision of a bipolar global economy comprising two competing capitalisms is found to be wanting. The approach is limited by its methodological nationalism, a tendency towards static analysis and latent institutional functionalism, and by an inability to adequately balance national specificity and path-dependency on the one hand with common underlying tendencies in capitalist restructuring on the other. Nevertheless, the varieties approach has spawned an influential account of the spatiality of advanced capitalism from which economic geography can certainly learn, and to which it has much to contribute.

Key Words: comparative political economy • economic geography • economic sociology • institutions • neoliberalism • path-dependency • varieties of capitalism.

Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 31, No. 6, 731-772 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0309132507083505


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