Varieties of capitalist relations in foreign emerging market countries: The problems of typology and research methodology

Abstract

Until the end of the 20th century, studies on causes and consequences of the emergence of cross-country differences in the organization of capitalist society mainly relied on experiences of developed countries. The current trend in the evolution of theories of comparative capitalism is a shift in the research focus to states with emerging markets as characterized by a variety of types of institutional complementarity. One key issue is the validity of adapting the “varieties of capitalism” binary theory designed for developed countries (liberal and coordinated market economies in this framework) to analyze capitalist relations in states of the periphery and semi-periphery of world economy. This paper examines methodological problems of explaining processes of cross-country institutional divergence, with a focus on emerging market countries. The authors pay special attention to types of capitalism in post-socialist countries, distinguishing four directions of comparative analysis based on assumptions about the universality of the dichotomy of the VoC approach or on its “metamorphism,” “hybridization” of traditional capitalist models, and inconsistency with realities of development in former socialist states. Within each of the selected approaches to the typology of capitalist relations in European and Asian post-socialist countries, the characteristics of their respective basic models are compared (for example, “dependent” and “patrimonial capitalism,” “embedded neoliberalism,, “neocorporatism,” “neoliberal capitalism,” etc.). In addition, the authors conduct a comparative analysis of types of capitalism that are differentiated for developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (in particular, “hierarchical market economies”). It is noteworthy that the accumulation of theoretical and practical knowledge in comparative capitalism is increasingly dependent on the expansion of its geographical coverage on account of Asian countries. In this paper we distinguish several approaches to the formation of Asian capitalist societies: the spread of “state capitalism,” the emergence of an Asian “hybrid capitalism” (a combination of local and incorporated Western institutional norms), and the development of divergent forms of capitalism bounded by national borders. A promising research direction (which we call a multi-scale approach in comparative capitalism) is the differentiation of subnational models of capitalist relations, especially in countries characterized by significant spatial heterogeneity.