Wolfgang Streeck is a leading figure in comparative political economy and institutional theory. In this book he addresses some of the key arguments in these fields: the role of history in institutional analysis, the dynamics of slow institutional change, and the recurrent difficulties of restraining the effects of capitalism on social order.

Wolfgang Streeck is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. From 1988 to 1995 he was Professor of Sociology and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1998/99 he was President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. He has held visiting positions at the European University Institute in Florence, at the University of Warwick, the Instituto Juan March in Madrid, and the Sciences Po in Paris; he was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and the Russell Sage Foundation in New York; and he is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europea.

• Introduction: Institutional Change, Capitalist Development


• Part I: Gradual Change: Five Sectoral Trajectories


• 1: Five Sectors


• 2: Industry-wide Collective Bargaining: Shrinking Core, Expanding Fringes


• 3: Intermediary Organization: Declining Membership, Rising Tensions


• 4: Social Policy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare Corporatism


• 5: Public Finance: The Fiscal Crisis of the Postwar State


• 6: Corporate Governance: The Decline of Germany Inc.


• Part II: Systemic Change: Patterns and Causes


• 7: Systemic Change: Five Parallel Trajectories


• 8: From System to Process


• 9: Endogenous Change: Time, Age, and the Self-Undermining of Institutions


• 10: Time's Up: Positive Externalities Turning Negative


• Part III: Disorganization: Bringing Capitalism Back in


• 11: Disorganization as Liberalization


• 12: Convergence, Non-convergence, Divergence


• 13: 'Economizing' and the Evolution of Political-Economic Institutions


• 14: Internationalization


• 15: German Unification


• 16: History


• 17: Bringing Capitalism Back In