Contemporary capitalism, globalization, regionalization and the persistence of national variation

Abstract

The literatures on globalization and regionalization on the one hand, and on the institutional distinctiveness of national capitalisms on the other, seem to pull in very different directions. Nonetheless, an increasing number of international and comparative political economists sensitive to the institutional and cultural variability of contemporary capitalism identify tendencies towards convergence—often towards an Anglo-US model of deregulated neoliberal capitalism. In this article I critically review the literature on convergence, difference and divergence in the global political economy, differentiating between neoclassical and institutionalist perspectives. Resisting arguments which posit a natural selection process initiated by untrammelled free market competition and free capital mobility, I identify the contingent, political and frequently coercive nature of the convergence process. This is illustrated through a discussion of regional selection mechanisms in the context of European Monetary Union and the East Asian financial crisis. In so far as evolutionary selection mechanisms can be identified in the European context, selecting for a more residual social model, these are more a product of the contingent process of European economic integration than they are a necessary consequence of globalization. Moreover, in so far as similarly convergent processes can be identified in contemporary East Asia, they are less a product of globalization than of the ‘predatory neoliberalism’ of a beleagured Washington Consensus.