Adjustment Trajectories in Comparative Perspective

This paper assesses whether there are distinctive growth strategies associated with liberal market economies (US, UK), Nordic economies (Sweden, Denmark), continental coordinated economies (Germany, Netherlands) and mixed market economies (Spain, Portugal) and considers whether they are associated with distinctive adjustment trajectories over time, with special attention to the movement from a post-war Keynesian era to a neo-liberal era characteristic of the 1980s and 1990s.  It focuses on developments in key institutional spheres of the political economy, including the production regime, the industrial relations regime, the social policy regime and the macroeconomic regime and on how they underpin one another.  This approach yields a descriptive account of change over time in the developed political economies and a preliminary theoretical account designed to explain the political dynamics of change.