1. For English works on these topics, see, respectively, Vroey, Michel De, “Inflation: A Non-Monetarist Monetary Interpretation,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 8 (12 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aglietta, Michel, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience (London: NLB, 1979)Google Scholar; Delorme, Robert, “A New View on the Economic Theory of the State: A Case Study of France,” Journal of Economic Issues 18 (09 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyer, Robert, “Wage Formation in Historical Perspective: The French Experience,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (06 1979)Google Scholar; Aglietta, Michel, “World Capitalism in the Eighties,” New Left Review 136 (11–12 1982)Google Scholar; Lipietz, Alain, “Towards Global Fordism?” New Left Review 132 (03–04 1982), and his “Imperialism or the Beast of Apocalypse,” Capital & Class 22 (Spring 1984)Google Scholar.

2. With the exception of Davis's, Mike excellent book, Prisoners of the American Dream (London: Verso, 1986)Google Scholar.

3. Aglietta, Michel, Régulation et crises du capitalisme: L'expérience des Etats-Unis (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1976Google Scholar) (translated as A Theory of Capitalist Regulation). The ideas circulated in Paris a few years earlier, since the book is a revised version of Agliettaapos;s “thése de doctoral,” completed in 1974. See Lipietz, Alain, Crise et inflation, pourquoi? (Paris: Maspero, 1979), p. 12Google Scholar.

4. The idea of state monopoly capitalism, for instance. See Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, pp. 381–87. For a good review, see Mike Davis, “ ‘Fordism’ in Crisis: A Review of Michel Aglietta's Regulation et crises: L'expérience des Etats-Unis,” Review 2 (Fall 1978).

5. Michel De Vroey, “A Regulation Approach Interpretation of the Contemporary Crisis,” Capital & Class 23 (Summer 1984).

6. Capitalist accumulation is the process by which capitalism is reproduced and expanded over time. Contrary to the concept of economic growth, which focuses on the progression of wealth, the idea of accumulation encompasses social relations: “Capitalist production … under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.” Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p. 578Google Scholar.

Major crises are understood as the results of the deterioration of “the specific institutions and social processes forming a given regime of accumulation.” They must be distinguished from small cyclical crises, which are linked to a regular downturn in the business cycle. They can also be contrasted with the mainstream notion of crises as temporary accidents caused by exogenous shocks, as well as with the picture of crises as the ultimate “expression of the death throes of capitalism.” The best example of a major crisis is of course the Great Depression of the 1930s. Michel De Vroey, “A Regulation Approach Interpretation,” pp. 53 and 64.

7. Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1942), pp. 81–84Google Scholar.

8. Benjamin Coriat and Robert Boyer, “De la crise comme ‘destruction créatrice’ … ou le retour de Schumpeter,” Le Monde diplomatique (September 1984).

9. North, Douglass C., “Structure and Performance: The Task of Economic History,” Journal of Economic Literature 16 (09 1978)Google Scholar.

10. Gordon, Robert A., “Rigor and Relevance in a Changing Institutional Setting,” American Economic Review 16 (03 1976), p. 11Google Scholar.

11. Rosier, Bernard, Croissance et crise capitalistes, 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1984), p. 59Google Scholar; Attali, Jacques, Les trois mondes: Pour une théorie de l'apres-crise (Paris: Fayard, 1981), p. 67Google Scholar.

12. With a shifting equilibrium model, “one may simply look at the actual world in a number of stages with different orderings of that actual world, so as to analyse particular effects within it.” The changes in “orderings” are unexplained, usually accounted for by changes in exogenous institutional variables. See Kregel, J. A., “Economic Methodology in the Face of Uncertainty: The Modelling Methods of Keynes and the Post-Keynesians,” Economic Journal 86 (06 1976), p. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Attali, , Les trois mondes, pp. 77–78Google Scholar; Diesing, Paul, Science & Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Adline, 1982), pp. 314Google Scholar–22; Davidson, Paul, “Post Keynesian Economics: Solving the Crisis in Economic Theory,” in Bell, Daniel and Kristol, Irving, eds. The Crisis in Economic Theory (New York: Basic, 1981), p. 162Google Scholar.

13. Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 85–87Google Scholar.

14. Marx does talk about the passage from the production of absolute surplus value (e.g., a longer work day) to the production of relative surplus value (e.g., increased productivity). These concepts are in fact at the root of the distinction between extensive (absolute surplus value) and intensive accumulation (relative surplus value), central to the regulation approach. But in Marx, the distinction remains abstract, and the types are not associated with historical periods. With the regulation approach, both types of production are also seen as coexistent, but each one is dominant at a specific period, for specific theoretical reasons. See Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, p. 71; Lipietz, Crise el inflation, pourquoi?, p. 322.

15. For a good survey, see Wolfe, David A., “Capitalist Crisis and Marxist Theory,” Labour/Le Travail 17 (Spring 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Davis, “‘Fordism’ in Crisis,” p. 248; Foster, John Bellamy, “The Political Economy of Joseph Schumpeter: A Theory of Capitalist Development and Decline,” Studies in Political Economy 15 (Fall 1984), p. 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Granou, AndréBarou, Yves, and Billaudot, Bernard, Croissance et crise, 2d ed. (Paris: La Découverte/Maspero, 1983), pp. 126–32Google Scholar.

17. Its adequacy is not obvious. See Mansfield, Edwin, “Long Waves and Technological Innovation,” American Economic Review 73 (05 1983); Alain Lipietz, “Trois crises: crise du régime d'accumulation, crise du mode de régulation, crise mixte, et mouvement ouvrier” (Paper presented at the Fernand Braudel Center, State University of New York, Binghamton, New York, 7–9 November 1985), p. 16Google Scholar.

18. Lorenzi, Jean-Hervé, Pastré, Olivier, and Toledano, Joëlle, La crise du XXe siècle (Paris: Economica, 1980), p. 31Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Nathan and Frischtak, Claudio R., “Long Waves and Economic Growth: A Critical Appraisal,” American Economic Review 73 (05 1983)Google Scholar. Some authors however are beginning to recast long wave theories in terms of changing social structures. See Gordon, David M., “Stages of Accumulation and Long Economic Cycles,” in Hopkins, Terence K. and Wallerstein, Immanuel, eds., Processes of the World-System (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980)Google Scholar.

19. Keohane, Robert O., “Economics, Inflation and the Role of the State: Political Implications of the McCracken Report,” World Politics 31 (10 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldthorpe, John H., “Introduction,” in Goldthorpe, , ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 1–3Google Scholar.

20. Hollist, W. Ladd and Caporaso, James A., “International Political Economy Research: What Is It and Where Do We Turn for Concepts and Theory?” in Hollist, and Tullist, F. Lamond, eds., An International Political Economy, International Political Economy Yearbook, vol. 1 (Boulder: Westview, 1985), p. 46Google Scholar.

21. Ibid., pp. 35–39; Susan Strange, “International Political Economy: The Story So Far and the Way Ahead,” in Hollist and Tullist, eds., An International Political Economy, p. 24.

22. James A. Caporaso, “Pathways between Economics and Politics: Possible Foundations for the Study of Global Political Economy” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 1–4 September 1983), p. 5.

23. Difficult does not mean impossible. The Coase Theorem shows that under certain conditions a market solution can be obtained. But Coase's conditions are very restrictive. See Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 85–88Google Scholar.

24. Keohane, Robert O., “The Demand for International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Ruggie, John G., “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Snidal, Duncan, “The Game Theory of International Politics,” World Politics 38 (10 1985), p. 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Snidal, , “Coordination versus Prisoner's Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes,” American Political Science Review 79 (12 1985), p. 930CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. The ideas of “leadership lag” and of “sunk costs,” for instance, have been used quite oosely, “patched on in an ad hoc fashion.” Snidal, Duncan, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stabily Theory,” International Organization 39 (Autumn 1985), p. 584CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. There is nothing wrong per se with a static theory, as long as its proponents make no dynamic claims. As Alexander James Field notices: “In any social scientific model, defining what is not to be explained is an essential part of delineating what is to be explained.” Field, , “Microeconomics, Norms, and Rationality,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 32 (07 1984), p. 684. But of course, dynamic claims are often madeCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. See especially, North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981)Google Scholar, and his “Government and the Cost of Exchange in History,” Journal of Economic History 44 (06 1984)Google Scholar.

30. Robert Brenner shows how the differences between Western and Eastern Europe are not explained and uses an analysis of class conflicts to build a better empirical explanation. Brenner, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past & Present 70 (February 1976). On the problem of enforcement costs, see Field, Alexander J., “The Problem with Neoclassical Institutional Economics: A Critique with Special Reference to the North/Thomas Model of Pre-1500 Europe,” Explorations in Economic History 18 (04 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. North, Structure and Change; Rogowski, Ronald, “Structure, Growth, and Power: Three Rationalist Accounts,” International Organization 37 (Autumn 1983), pp. 725–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. A. J. Field, “Microeconomics, Norms, and Rationality,” pp. 703–4. Paul Diesing argues eloquently that it is the discovery of such systemic properties which marked the rupture between Keynes and neoclassical theory. Diesing, Science & Ideology in the Policy Sciences, pp. 75–119. The regulation approach often comes close to the Keynesian framework, as it existed before its unification with neoclassical theory.

33. Michael J. Piore, “Unemployment and Inflation: An Alternative View,” and Appelbaum, Eileen, “The Labor Market in Post-Keynesian Theory,” in Piore, , ed., Unemployment and Inflation: Institutionalist and Structuralist Views (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1979)Google Scholar. For critical surveys, see Cain, Glen C., “The Challenge of Segmented Labor Market Theories to Orthodox Theory: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature 14 (12 1976)Google Scholar; Constance Lever-Tracy, , “The Paradigm Crisis of Dualism: Decay or Regeneration,” Politics & Society 13 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Piore, Michael J. and Sabel, Charles F., The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York: Basic, 1984), p. 4Google Scholar; Gordon, David M., Edwards, Richard, and Reich, Michael, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., pp. 9, 19, and 27; Lever-Tracy, “The Paradigm Crisis of Dualism.”

36. Schatz, Ronald W., “Labor Historians, Labor Economics, and the Question of Synthesis,” Journal of American History 71 (06 1984), p. 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Piore and Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide, p. 281.

38. Delorme and André refer explicitly to institutional economics, an approach proposed by the contributors to the Journal of Economic Issues. Like the approaches discussed here, this version of institutionalism focuses on conflicts and on qualitative changes within capitalism. But it is much weaker at explaining what is described, that is, politics and structural changes. Delorme, Robert and André, Christine, L'Etat et l'économie: Un essai d'explication de l'évolution des dépenses publiques en France (1870–1980) (Paris: Seuil, 1983), pp. 198–99Google Scholar; Gruchy, Allan G., “Law, Politics, and Institutional Economics,” Journal of Economic Issues 7 (12 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diesing, , Science & Ideology in the Policy Sciences, pp. 239–42Google Scholar.

39. Alain Lipietz, “Accumulation, crises et sorties de crise: Quelques réflexions méthodologiques autour de la notion de ‘régulation’,” Research Paper No. 8409, CEPREMAP (Paris, 1984), p. 18.

40. Mazier, Jacques, Basle, Maurice, and Vidal, Jean-François, Quand les crises durent… (Paris: Economica, 1984), p. 10Google Scholar.

41. Lipietz, “Accumulation, crises et sorties de crise,” p. 20.

42. Ibid.

43. The causal links are not always well established. As De Vroey notes, the development of productivity is “the key to the whole structure” but productivity is also an endogenous variable. See his “A Regulation Approach Interpretation,” p. 60. It is therefore difficult to link all the aspects together, and the authors are often satisfied with describing how the elements interrelate.

44. Although this is not the case with neoclassical institutionalist works, these works have, as we have seen, other limits.

45. Mazier, Basle, and Vidal, Quand les crises durent …, p. 11.

46. It is interesting to note that Alvin Hansen talked about the passage from “extensive” to “intensive expansion” in 1941. The former existed in the 19th century, when sheer expansion and a “widening of capital” were still possible; the latter came after 1900, when investments began to rest on shifts in demand, and “involved a much more radical transformation in consumption habits and ways of living.” To this evolution corresponded a shift from a market economy, where the price mechanism guided small individual units, to an arrangement where institutions interfered significantly with this mechanism. Hansen, Alvin H., Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (New York: Norton, 1941), pp. 45–47 and 349–65Google Scholar. Descriptively, this is almost exactly the same picture as that drawn by the regulation approach. It is unclear whether or not the French authors borrowed consciously from the first Keynesians. What is clear however is that the approach originated in a rediscovery by French Marxists of many of the ideas first developed by Keynes and Kalecki.

47. Aglietta, , A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, p. 15Google Scholar. The translator has reduced the strength of the statement, using “should” (devrait) for “doit,” which is more correctly translated by “must.” A more adequate translation would read: “…this analysis must produce general laws that are socially determinate and for which historical conditions of validity are precisely identified.” Aglietta, Régulation et crises du capitalisme, p. 13.

48. Lipietz, , “Accumulation, crises et sorties de crise”, pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Lipietz, “Imperialism or the Beast of Apocalypse.”

49. Michalet, Charles-Albert, Delapierre, Michel, Madeuf, Bernadette, and Carlos Ominami, Nationalisations et internationalisation: Stratégies des multinationales françaises dans la crise (Paris: La Découverte/Maspero, 1983), p. 13Google Scholar.

50. Lipietz also presents these questions as central for the regulation approach but insists that the third one is not an explicit part of the regulationists' research program. The question is, however, raised by all the authors and can be discussed from a regulation perspective. Lipietz, Alain, Mirages et miracles: Problèmes de l'industrialisation dans le tiers monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1985), p. 14 (forthcoming in English, London: Verso)Google Scholar.

51. Mazier, , Basle, , and Vidal, , Quand les crises durent …, p. 8Google Scholar.

52. What is appraised is not so much the presence of interruptions in given trends but, rather, the occurrence of changes in the way variables correlate. The rate of progression of one factor is less significant than how this factor is articulated to other economic variables. Lipietz, “Trois crises,” p. 17.

53. Mazier, , Basle, , and Vidal, , Quand les crises durent…, p. 52–53Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., pp. 70–71.

55. Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation.

56. Mazier, , Basle, , and Vidal, , Quand les crises durent …, pp. 113–114Google Scholar; Mazier, Jacques, Picaud, Yves, Podevin, Gérard, and Bertrand, Hughes, “Les deux crises des années 1930 et des années 1970: Une analyse en sections productives dans le cas de l'économie françhise,” Revue èconomique 33 (03 1982)Google Scholar; Bertrand, Hughes, “Accumulation, régulation, crise: Un modèle sectionnel théorique et appliqué,” Revue économique 34 (03 1983)Google Scholar.

57. Although as a whole, in relation to total production, the export sector became less important. Only in the 1960s, in France, did S₃ become central.

58. The status of the transition period of the 1920s and 1930s is not so clear. Most regulationists think intensive accumulation, without monopolist regulation, began in the 1920s. Mazier, Basle, and Vidal consider the period to be still one of extensive accumulation, but the evidence they provide does not establish their claim without doubt since the data compared are for 1921–29 and 1949–73; they do not study the 1930–48 period directly.

59. Ibid., p. 256. See also, Boyer, Robert and Petit, Pascal, “Progrès technique, croissance et emploi: Un modèle d'inspiration kaldorienne pour 6 industries européennes,” Revue économique 32 (11 1981)Google Scholar.

60. Harvey Leibenstein's X-efficiency theory explores the idea that “for a variety of reasons people and organizations normally work neither as hard nor as effectively as they could.” Hence, for given units of inputs, performance will vary significantly, because of “non-market production activities within the firm, the impact of sheltered environments on motivation, and the significance of differential motivation.” The problem, as Olivier Pastré notes, is that the theory does not address directly the question of the organization of the labor process. Furthermore, the theory ignores recent works in economic theory, is vaguely specified, and has been casually tested. See Pastré, , “Organisation du travail et croissance économique: Un vieux débat anglo-saxon,” Revue économique 36 (03 1985)Google Scholar; Leibenstein, , “Allocative Efficiency vs. ‘X-Efficiency’,” American Economic Review 56 (06 1966), p. 413Google Scholar, and his “Microeconomics and X-Efficiency Theory: If There is No Crisis, There Ought to Be,” in Bell, and Kristol, , eds., The Crisis in Economic Theory, p. 105Google Scholar; De Alessi, Louis, “Property Rights, Transaction Costs, and X-Efficiency: An Essay in Economic Theory,” American Economic Review 73 (03 1983)Google Scholar.

61. Pastré, Olivier, “Taylorisme, productivité et crise du travail,” Travail et Emploi 18 (10–12 1983)Google Scholar.

62. Bowles, Samuel, Gordon, David M., and Thomas, E. Weisskopf, , Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1983)Google Scholar.

63. Aglietta, Michel and Brender, Anton, Les métamorphoses de la société salariale (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1984), p. 8Google Scholar. Of course, Adam Smith poses the question of harmony and introduces the invisible hand of the market as an answer. But the answer rests on an assumption of fundamental identity between the agents, of equality by definition. This perspective, which denies the existence of hierarchies, cleavages, or significant differences, is pervasive in economic theory. Even in Marx the particularization of capital into specific firms is ignored. See Dumont, Louis, From Mandeyille to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Levine, David P., Economic Theory, vol. 2, The System of Economic Relations as a Whole (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 27 and 45–46Google Scholar.

64. Brender, Anton, Socialisme et cybernétique (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1977)Google Scholar.

65. Aglietta, and Brender, , Les métamorphoses, pp. 32–34Google Scholar. John Stuart Mill understood the importance of this phenomenon, noting that custom can be more meaningful than competition in determining prices. Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, 5th London ed., vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1894), pp. 306Google Scholar–13, (bk. 2, chap. 4). Although this is often overlooked, the idea that changes in sales are more important than price signals is also central in Keynes. See Howitt, Peter, “The Keynesian Recovery,” Canadian Journal of Economics 19 (11 1986), p. 630CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Aglietta, and Brender, , Les métamorphoses, pp. 62–65, 191, and 209Google Scholar. Such clusters of innovations are significant not so much because of their technological content but rather because of their social meaning. It is when innovations challenge the hierarchies within the firm, the routines that guide investment decisions, or the shape of social demand, that they may lead to the breakdown of the existing regulation.

67. Krasner, Stephen, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Like Aglietta and Brender, the authors of regime studies stress the fact that structures are bound to decay. The puzzle is not in the presence of conflicts but rather in the development of cooperation and institutions. Axelrod, Robert and Keohane, Robert O., “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” World Politics 38 (10 1985), p. 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes.”

69. They do suggest that, in the current period, potential social demand has failed to rise as fast as potential productivity gains. But the explanation goes against the stress on productivity slowdown generally accepted by the regulationists, an explanation that Aglietta and Brender do not even reject (pp. 139–41). This lack of consistency is not a totally unfamiliar feature in French scholarship, which is often as evasive as it is elegant. Commenting the work of Althusser, G. A. Cohen writes: “It is perhaps a matter for regret that logical positivism, with its insistence on precision of intellectual commitment, never caught on in Paris. Anglophone philosophy left logical positivism behind long ago, but it is lastingly the better for having engaged with it.” Cohen, , Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, p. xGoogle Scholar. See also, Galtung, Johan, “Structure, Culture, and Intellectual Style: An Essay Comparing Saxonic, Teutonic, Gallic and Nipponic Approaches,” Social Science Information 20 (12 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70. Aglietta, ATheory of Capitalist Regulation, p. 10Google Scholar.

71. For a good summary see Davis, , “ ‘Fordism’ in Crisis,” pp. 222–26Google Scholar.

72. Aglietta, and Brender, , Les métamorphoses, p. 209Google Scholar; Aglietta, , Régulation et crises du capitalisme, p. 309Google Scholar.

73. Kaplan, Abraham, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for the Behavioral Sciences (San Francisco: Chandler, 1964), pp. 346–56Google Scholar.

74. Alain Lipietz, Crise el inflation, pourquoi?; Lipietz, , Le Monde enchanté: De la valeur à l'envol inflationniste (Paris: Le Découverte, 1983) (forthcoming as The Enchanted World, London: Verso)Google Scholar.

75. Lipietz, Alain, L'audace ou Venlisement: Sur les politiques économiques de la gauche (Paris: La Découverte, 1984), pp. 316–18 and 267–70Google Scholar.

76. Indeed, if the crisis is one of productivity, the problem will remain for the Socialists.

77. Lipietz notes that the famous Japanese quality circles are neither a method nor a mere “mystification” to integrate the workers. They constitute a real social movement, with journals, intercompany clubs, etc. Through this movement, workers can progress within the hierarchy of the firm, and the firm “can transform into productivity the ingeniousness of the producers, manual and intellectual” (my translation). Ibid., p. 228, and Lipietz, , Mirages el miracles, p. 124Google Scholar. The same argument, with empirical evidence, is made in Friedman, David, “Beyond the Age of Ford: The Strategic Basis of the Japanese Success in Automobiles,” in Zysman, John and Tyson, Laura, eds., American Industry in International Competition: Government Policies and Corporate Strategies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 375–79Google Scholar.

78. Lipietz, , L'audace ou I'enlisement, p. 151Google Scholar.

79. Lipietz, , Mirages et miracles, p. 35Google Scholar.

80. Snidal, , “The Game Theory of International Politics,” p. 48Google Scholar.

81. Robert O. Keohane, “The World Political Economy and the Crisis of Embedded Liberalism,” in Goldthorpe, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism; Maier, Charles S., “The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy After World War II,” International Organization 31 (Autumn 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Maier, Charles S., “Nineteen Forty-Five: Continuity or Rupture?, Europa 5 (1982), pp. 119–20Google Scholar.

83. At the most, we could talk of changes of scale and of “apparently new institutional forms”! Chase-Dunn, Christopher K., “The World-System Since 1950: What Has Really Changed?” in Bergquist, Charles, ed., Labor in the Capitalist World-Economy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984), p. 75Google Scholar; Chase-Dunn, , “Historical Development of the International Political Economy,” in Hollist, and Tullist, , eds., An International Political Economy, pp. 53–54Google Scholar.

84. Lipietz, Alain, Mirages et miracles, p. 53Google Scholar.

85. “Whereas exports still accounted for 26% of goods manufactured in France in 1913, the corresponding figure for 1959 was 18%. The fall was even more spectacular in the case of Japan (from 40 to 23%), and truly gigantic in the case of Britain (from 45 to 19%). It is true of all industrial countries, in fact, that the share of exports in GNP reached its historical bottom in the mid-sixties.” Lipietz, , “Towards Global Fordism?” pp. 36–37Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that Karl Deutsch and Alexander Eckstein documented the same phenomenon in an article published in 1961, early enough not to be misled by the subsequent progression of international trade. Charles Lipson quarrels with their methodology and insists on the progression of trade, but the evidence he presents is limited to the period from 1960 to 1979, undeniably a period when trade increased. John Ruggie comes closer to the truth when he shows how different—intracontinental and intraindustry—international trade became after the 1950s. But then again, his focus on the data for 1955–73 keeps him from seeing the trough that preceded the increase. Deutsch, and Eckstein, , “National Industrialization and the Declining Share of the International Economic Sector, 1890–1959,” World Politics 13 (01 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lipson, , “The Transformation of Trade: The Sources and Effects of Regime Change,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 422–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ruggie, , “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change,” pp. 400–404Google Scholar. It may be added that Deutsch and Eckstein had a fairly crude theory—based on the ideas of take-off and stages of industrialization—to explain the patterns they found. They had, for instance, difficulties understanding the increase in trade observed in the Soviet bloc countries, and referred to a possibly delayed take-off. In fact, these countries were still in the 1950s, characterized by extensive accumulation. Only in the 1960s did they try to develop the consumer goods sector, with little success. Real incomes and consumption did increase, but innovation and productivity did not follow, impeding the transition to intensive accumulation. Original forms of regulation appeared, with “shortage” as the key regulatory mechanism. See Bernard Chavance, “Les formes actuelles de crise dans les économies de type soviétique,” Critiques de l'économie poliiique 26/27 (January–June 1984).

86. Mistral, Jacques, “Compétitivitd et formation du capital en longue période,” Economie et statistique 97 (02 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Boyer, Robert and Mistral, Jacques, Accumulation, inflation, crises, 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1983)Google Scholar.

87. Lipietz, “Towards Global Fordism?” In the cases of Chile and Argentina, ruined by inept dictatorships, we can even talk of “newly deindustrializing countries.” In these two countries, the share of manufacturing in the GDP in 1982 was equal or below what it was in 1960. Lipietz, , Mirages et miracles, p. 164Google Scholar.

88. For a similar argument about the neglect of effective demand from a Keynesian perspective, see James Tobin, “Unemployment in the 1980s: Macroeconomic Diagnosis and Prescription,” in Pierre, Andrew J., ed., Unemployment and Growth in the Western Economies (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1984). Tobin however tends to overlook the other side of the coin, the need to restore productivity gains. For this problem, structural policies can be useful, if combined with adequate fiscal and monetary policies. Structural policies can also be used to attack structural unemployment, which does not affect individuals randomly. Shirley Williams, “Unemployment and Economic Strains in the Western Alliance,” in Pierre, ed., Unemployment and GrowthGoogle Scholar.

89. The private banking system is now invested with a tremendous regulating task. So far, the banks have succeeded in keeping most of their assets, even though cooperating with each other was nothing but obvious. See Lipietz, , Mirages et miracles, pp. 99 and 164–165Google Scholar; Lipson, Charles, “Banker's Dilemmas: Private Cooperation in Rescheduling Debts,” World Politics 38 (10 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90. Lipietz, , Mirages et miracles, p. 165Google Scholar.

91. On that topic, see Lipietz, , “Derrière la crise: la tendance a la baisse du taux de profit,” Revue economique 33 (03 1982)Google Scholar.

92. Keohane, “Economics, Inflation and the Role of the State.”

93. Schumpeter expresses a similar idea when he suggests that capitalism is undermined by its very success in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 61.

94. Increases in real wages as a result of lower prices did not keep up with the new regime of accumulation, which was characterized by rapid productivity gains in concentrated industries. Institutional mechanisms for wage-formation had become necessary. Lipietz, “Derrière la crise,” p. 210; Boyer, Robert, “La crise actuelle: une mise en perspective historique,” Critiques de l'économie politique 7–8 (04–09 1979), pp. 29–34Google Scholar.

95. Ibid., and Pastré “Taylorisme, productivité et crise du travail.”

96. Pastré, “Taylorisme, productivité et crise du travail”; Bowles, Gordon, and Weisskopf, Beyond the Waste Land.

97. David Hounshell, for instance, shows how manufacturing improvements at the firm level increased productivity and ended up changing the context, by making sales difficult. See his From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For the current period, detailed studies on the limits of old production methods and the potential of new ones have been done by Coriat, Benjamin, L'atelier et le chronomètre, 2d ed. (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1982)Google Scholar, and “Crise et électronisation de la production: Robotisation d'atelier et modèle fordien d'accumulation du capital,” Critiques de l' économie politique 26/21 (01–06 1984). On these topics, precision should not eliminate the macro dimension underlined by Pastré Indeed, the examples of the Japanese “just-in-time” system of inputs supply or of the close collaboration between firms in the “Third Italy” show that productivity cannot be reduced to the level of the firm. See Piore and Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide, p. 201, and their “Italian Small Business Development: Lessons for U.S. Industrial Policy,” in Zysman and Tyson, eds., American Industry in International Competition, p. 404Google Scholar.

98. Except through the use of Gramsci's notion of hegemony. This neglect has led some authors to conclude, unfairly, that the approach was “functionalist,” and omitted the contradictions of capitalism. See Barrère, Christian, Kebabdjian, Gérard, and Weinstein, Olivier, Lire la crise (Paris: PUF, 1983), pp. 72–74Google Scholar, and their “L'accumulation intensive, norme de lecture du capitalisme?” Revue économique 35 (05 1984)Google Scholar.

99. It is because they have conflictual interests that actors cooperate. Without discord, there would simply be harmony. Purely zero-sum conflicts could not however generate cooperation. Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic, 1984)Google Scholar; Keohane, After Hegemony. The capital-labor conflict, central in capitalism, is not zero sum. See Przeworski, Adam and Wallerstein, Michael, “The Structure of Class Conflicts in Democratic Capitalist Societies,” American Political Science Review 76 (06 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100. In a recent article, Jacques Mistral briefly comments the literature on international regimes from a regulation perspective. See Mistral, , “Régime international et trajectoires nationales,” in Boyer, Robert, ed., Capitalismes fin de siecle (Paris: PUF, 1986)Google Scholar.

101. On a national level, the equivalent of the international regimes literature is the body of works on interest representation and corporatism. While early works have been criticized for neglecting the enduring contradictions that remain within any social arrangement, recent studies present the two dimensions, order and conflict, in a way that is similar to what is done in international political economy. See Panitch, Leo, “The Development of Corporatism in Liberal Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 10 (04 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldthorpe, “Introduction.” As for the firm level, Michael Burawoy has just published an excellent study of what he calls “factory regimes.” Again, the stress is on the way fairly stable “rules of the game” arise out of class struggle. Burawoy's work offers many insights that could contribute to improve the regulation approach, but a thorough discussion is beyond the scope of this article. See Burawoy, , The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism (London: Verso, 1985)Google Scholar.

102. Lipietz, “Trois crises”; Boyer, Robert, “L'introduction du taylorisme en France à la lumiére de recherches récentes,” Travail et Emploi 18 (10–12 1983)Google Scholar.

103. The importance of such concrete institutional forms has been widely neglected by pluralist, functionalist, and Marxist authors alike: Orloff, Ann Shola and Skocpol, Theda, “Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900–1911, and the United States, 1880–1920,” American Sociological Review 49 (12 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. See Pizzorno, Alessandro, “Political Exchange and Collective Identity in Industrial Conflict,” in Crouch, Colin and Pizzorno, , eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe Since 1968, vol. 2, Comparative Analyses (London: Macmillan, 1978)Google Scholar.

105. See, for instance, Tilly, Charles, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978)Google Scholar; DeNardo, James, Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy of Protest and Rebellion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Offe, Claus and Wiesenthal, Helmut show, in an important article, how each class has specific collective action imperatives; “Two Logic of Collective Action: Theoretical Notes on Social and Organisational Form,” Political Power and Social Theory 1 (1980)Google Scholar.