Search

Begin New Search Topic Capitalism Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Publication Year within 10 Years

1. The Instability of Preferences: Uncertain Futures and the Incommensurable and Intersubjective Nature of Value(s

Author:
Richard Bronk and Jens Beckert
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The default assumption of standard economics is to treat preferences as exogenously ‘given’, consistent with one another, ‘revealed’ by past choices, and context independent. There has been increased interest recently (within behavioural economics) in the impact of inconsis- tent or irrational preferences and (more broadly) in dynamic and endogenous preferences. This paper builds on these challenges to standard assumptions by analysing the pivotal role of three aspects of preference formation in explaining capitalist dynamics and market insta- bility. These are the constant creation of new preferences and the indeterminacy of choice sets in the context of widespread product innovation; the moral indeterminacy implied by conflicting and incommensurable social norms attaching to market goods where there is no single scale of value and hence no unique set of rational trade-offs; and, lastly, the con- tingent social and market construction of the product differentiation, quality attribution, and value assessments central to preference formation. The paper concludes by considering implications for economics as a discipline.
Topic:
Economics, Capitalism, Norms, and Social Order
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Private Insurance, Public Welfare, and Financial Markets: Alpine and Maritime Countries in Comparative-Historical Perspective

Author:
A. van der Heide and S. Kohl
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Contemporary capitalist societies use different institutions to manage economic risks. While different public welfare state and financial institutions (banks, capital markets) have been studied across coordinated and liberal market economies, this paper adds the private insurance sector to the study of countries’ security arrangements, following up on Michel Albert’s classical distinction between Alpine and Maritime insurance cultures. Building on extensive new insurance data collections (1880–2017) and institutional analysis, this paper corroborates the long-run historical existence of two worlds of private insurance. Maritime countries (USA, GBR, CAN) developed much bigger life and non-life insurance earlier, with no state-associated insurance enterprises and riskier investments steered towards financial markets. Alpine insurance (AUT, DEU, CHE), by contrast, was initially smaller, with strong state involvement, a significant reinsurance tradition and relatively heavy investments in mortgages and property, due to economic and financial backwardness. We argue that the larger and more “Maritime” the insurance sector, the more it made welfare states liberal and securities markets large. Insurance is thus a hidden factor for countries’ varieties of capitalism and world of welfare. The recent convergence on the Maritime model, however, implies that the riskier and risk-individualizing type of private insurance has added to privatization and securitization trends everywhere.
Topic:
Development, Capitalism, Finance, and Welfare
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. From the pandemic to a reorganization of time? Time sociological perspectives on the relationship between temporality, economy and state.

Author:
Lisa Suckert
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Does the pandemic foreshadow a more sustainable order of time? Can the crisis allow for a departure from the capitalist time regime? This article looks at the Covid-19 pandemic and respective state interventions from a perspective inspired by the sociology of time and eco- nomic sociology. It shows that the social and economic disruptions attributed to the pan- demic can be understood as the result of a collision of opposing temporal logics. In order to contain the pandemic, the state initially enforced ways of dealing with time that contradict the capitalist time regime and its major principles – commodification and rational use of time, acceleration, and appropriation of the future. This “return of the state” as a power governing its citizens’ time does not, however, in itself imply a “new temporal order” that goes beyond the current state of emergency. The article shows that those state interventions intended not to contain the virus but to mitigate its social and economic consequences can often be understood as attempts to mediate between different temporal logics and cushion their collision. They essentially facilitate a “return” to the capitalist time regime and thus perpetuate time-related inequalities.
Topic:
Capitalism, Inequality, Pandemic, COVID-19, and State Capitalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Transcending History’s Heavy Hand The Future in Economic Action

Author:
Jens Beckert and Timur Ergen
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper discusses sociological analyses of the formation and role of expectations in the economy. Recognition of the social constitution of expectations advances the understand- ing of economic action under conditions of uncertainty and helps to explain core features of modern capitalist societies. The range of applications of the analytical perspective is il- lustrated by closer examination of three core spheres of capitalist societies: consumption, investment, and innovation. To provide an idea of core challenges of the approach, three major research questions for the sociological analysis of expectations are presented.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Sociology, Capitalism, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Scaling Up Alternatives to Capitalism: A Social Movement Approach to Alternative Organizing (in) the Economy.

Author:
Simone Schiller-Merkens
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
In these times of crises, capitalism and the far-reaching marketization of our societies has again become a subject of contestation and critique. Alternative organizing is one response to the critique of capitalism. As an embodied and constructive form of critique it takes place in prefigurative organizations and communities on the ground that experiment with alternative forms of organizing economic exchanges and lives. These prefigurative initiatives are seen as central actors in a social transformation toward an alternative economy. However, they oftentimes remain autonomous and disconnected, questioning their potential to contribute to a broader social change. This paper sets out to explore how and when alternative organizing as practiced in communities and organizations can scale upwards to lead to a more profound social transformation of our societies. Building on insights from scholarship on social movement outcomes, I discuss the collective actions, contextual conditions, and social mechanisms that are likely to allow an upward scale shift of alternative organizing.
Topic:
Economics, Social Movement, Capitalism, and Community
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Uncertain Futures Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculative Technologies

Author:
Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Dynamic capitalist economies are characterised by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. How then do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this uncertainty? This pa­ per focuses on the role played by imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies, and argues that the market impact of shared calculation devices, social narratives, and contin­ gent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of ‘narrative economics’ and a the­ ory of fictional (rather than rational) expectations. When expectations cannot be anchored in objective probability functions, the future belongs to those with the market, political, or rhetorical power to make their models or stories count. The paper also explores the dangers of analytical monocultures and the discourse of best practice in conditions of uncertainty, and considers the link between uncertainty and some aspects of populism.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Capitalism, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Comparative Political Economy and Varieties of Macroeconomics

Author:
Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
This paper provides a historical overview of comparative political economy as an interdisci- plinary field of study anchored in political science and focused on advanced capitalist states. We argue that this field of inquiry has reached an impasse and that a more sustained engage- ment with macroeconomics provides a way forward. Against this backdrop, we review two distinct traditions of macroeconomics – New Keynesian and Post-Keynesian macroeco- nomics – and discuss their relative merits as vehicles for renewing the research agenda of comparative political economy.
Topic:
Capitalism, Macroeconomics, and Keynes
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. The Rise of the European Consolidation State

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The rise of the consolidation state follows the displacement of the classical tax state, or Steuerstaat, by what I have called the debt state, a process that began in the 1980s in all rich capitalist democracies. Consolidation is the contemporary response to the “fiscal crisis of the state” envisaged as early as the late 1960s, when postwar growth had come to an end. Both the long-term increase in public debt and the current global attempts to bring it under control were intertwined with the “financialization” of advanced capitalism and its complex functions and dysfunctions. The ongoing shift towards a consolidation state involves a deep rebuilding of the political institutions of postwar democratic capitalism and its international order. This is the case in particular in Europe where consolidation coincides with an unprecedented increase in the scale of political rule under European Monetary Union and with the transformation of the latter into an asymmetric fiscal stabilization regime. The paper focuses on the developing structure of the new consolidation regime and its consequences for the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
Topic:
Debt, Monetary Policy, Democracy, Capitalism, and Financial Markets
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Capitalist Dynamics: Fictional Expectations and the Openness of the Future.

Author:
Jens Beckert
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Capitalism is an economic and social order oriented toward the future. In this paper, I describe the unfolding of the temporal order of capitalism and relate it to the restless dynamism of capitalism we have observed since the Industrial Revolution. Since the future is open, actors are confronted with the uncertainty of the outcomes of their decisions. What can expectations be under conditions of uncertainty? To answer this question, I introduce the notion of fictional expectations which can be used to describe decisions made under conditions of an open and uncertain future. In the paper’s penultimate section, I apply the concept of fictional expectations to the analysis of four crucial processes of capitalism: money and credit, investments, innovation, and consumption. The main thrust of the paper is that in order to understand economic action in capitalism, actors’ perceptions of the future need to take center stage. Not only “history matters,” but also the “future matters.”
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Socialism/Marxism, Social Movement, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus