Unions, Employers, and Central Banks: Macroeconomic Coordination and Institutional Change in Social Market Economies. Edited by Torben Iversen, Jonas Pontusson, and David Soskice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 339p. $64.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Abstract

Comparative political economy has been transformed since the end of the 1970s. The explanatory value of class conflict, the power resources of social classes, and the social base of particular national models of political economy have been replaced by an emphasis upon the role of institutions in explaining both how contemporary political economies func- tion and their capacity to manage international economic integration. The fruits of this institutional turn have now emerged into a fully fledged new approach, as evidenced by the volume under review, by Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (edited by Herbert Kitschelt, Peter Lange, Gary Marks, and John D. Stephens, 1999), and by a forthcoming volume, Varieties of Capitalism, edited by Peter Hall and David Soskice. These three books overlap to a great degree in both theoretical approach and list of contributors.