[Review] Uwe Becker (2009) Open varieties of capitalism: continuity, change and performance

The ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature has become very popular in social sciences, transcending the territory of several disciplinary fields. Indeed, these theoretical frameworks have been especially appealing to scholars from comparative social policy, industrial relations, comparative politics, sociology and even business studies. Some of the themes that this literature has touched upon include the direction of institutional change across countries and the prospect of convergence to a single model of capitalism; the institutional components that contribute to countries’ high performance in the global economy; and how different countries respond to pressures and changes stemming from large-scale processes such as globalization and the ascendance of neo-liberalism. This book offers a critical survey of the literature and a theoretical contribution by elaborating on a new typology of capitalism. The author joins the group of scholars who criticized earlier typologies for being static and unable to account for change. Becker instead conceptualizes varieties of capitalism in a novel way, as ‘open systemlike configurations’.