Beyond varieties of capitalism: a growth model approach

Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson at UK in a Changing Europe:

The Liz Truss debacle has many interpretations. Was it an example of the ‘structural dependence of the state on capital’ as capital took flight and the pound crashed? Or was it an example of how short-term political thinking always runs aground on the rocks of fiscal reality? Perhaps it’s both. But perhaps it is also an example of something deeper. That the underlying ‘growth model’ (GM) of an economy can atrophy over time, and that such GM’s are very hard to change through purposive action.

In a recent volume published by Oxford University Press, called Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation, we develop a framework that employs the concept of national ‘growth models.’

Growth models refer, not just to how economies are organized, or what ‘type’ they look like, but to how they grow. That is, what bits of underlying gross value added are stimulated in a given economy to produce GDP? What sectors are involved? How is demand generated and from where? And perhaps most important, what is the dominant electoral coalition that supports and maintains such a model?

In our view the Truss debacle was the crisis of a particular growth model, and the dominant political coalition that supports it, coming into the open.

More here.