Varieties of Regulatory Capitalism: Beyond Institutional Complementarities?

The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literature posits that national economic institutions should reflect the mode of coordination of a country’s market actors. Despite the importance of this claim and a rich literature on the emergence of regulatory capitalism, few studies systematically test such prediction. Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) are nowadays the standard tool for economic regulation, and they are established to guarantee the consistency of policy implementation through time. On the one hand, it would seem obvious that to a certain extent they integrate the economic coordination of a given country. On the other, the literature on regulatory capitalism has shown that there has been a general convergence towards the use of IRAs. Both qualitative and quantitative research shows that the degree of economic coordination matters to the design of IRAs. However, these studies represent only preliminary evidence, and the whole scholarly field is under-researched. More importantly, updated empirical evidence is needed to assess whether convergence has taken place and to what extent. This workshop welcomes contributions from scholars dealing with VoC and regulation who want to explore the relationship between types of economic coordination, delegation to agencies, modes of regulation in general. We are interested in at least three prospective research topics. First, the notion that IRAs are a constituent part of the VoC architecture: is “agencification” compatible with regimes based on tight coordination between capital and labour? Do agencies serve the same purposes in liberal and coordinated economies? What is the role of economic actors in these choices? Second, the relationship between coordination and de facto independence: does interference in day-to-day activity depend on types of economic coordination? Finally, the relationship between coordination and IRAs in diachronic perspective: do politicians update their preferences? Are there learning effects? Have changes in IRAs’ design reflected discernible patterns?