Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century
Cambridge University Press, 10/31/2002
EAN 9780521010528, ISBN10: 0521010527
Paperback, 298 pages, 22.8 x 15.3 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
This book picks up where Karl Polanyi's study of economic and political change left off. Building upon Polanyi's conception of the double movement, Blyth analyzes the two periods of deep seated institutional change that characterized the twentieth century: the 1930s and the 1970s. Blyth views both sets of changes as part of the same dynamic. In the 1930s labor reacted against the exigencies of the market and demanded state action to mitigate the market's effects by 'embedding liberalism.' In the 1970s, those who benefited least from such 'embedding' institutions, namely business, reacted against these constraints and sought to overturn that institutional order. Blyth demonstrates the critical role economic ideas played in making institutional change possible. Great Transformations rethinks the relationship between uncertainty, ideas, and interests, achieving profound new insights on how, and under what conditions, institutional change takes place.
Part I. Theory
1. Karl Polanyi and institutional change
2. A theory of institutional change
Part II. Cases
3. Building American embedded liberalism
4. Building Swedish embedded liberalism
5. Disembedding liberalism
ideas to break a bargain
6. Disembedding liberalism in the United States
7. Disembedding liberalism in Sweden
Part III
8. Conclusions.