A Variety in Transition. An analysis of the evolution of the Japanese political and economic model through the Varieties of Capitalism Approach.

Both the economic and financial globalization and the evolution of the international system can be major drivers for domestic institutional change. In the proposed paper, I will analyzed the crisis and the reform of the Japanese model highlighting how external pressures (economic globalization and the evolving international environment) triggered a complex and multi-layered process of transition and transformation. Through the conceptual lenses of the Variety of Capitalism Approach (Hall, Soskice), I will highlight how the Japanese state reacted to the crisis of the its previous economic and political model, implementing a series of reforms that led to the creation of a institutional and political hybrid between a Liberal Market Economy and a Coordinated Market Economy. The Japanese case shows of the process of hybridization of the “institutional ecology” entails a diminished institutional coherence and affects considerably the political system. The hybridization of the CME model indeed favored the transition from a “one and a half party system” to a more competitive and substantially bipolar system.