B6169 - COMPARATIVE CAPITALISM IN EUROPE

Academic Year 2024/2025

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Politics Administration and Organization (cod. 9085)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to provide students with the theoretical and analytical tools to understand the socio-economic and institutional diversity of European capitalist political economies; how such diversity has evolved over the last decades; and how different models of capitalism in Europe face and deal with key social and economic policy and governance issues. By the end of the course, students know how to: analyse European models of capitalism on the basis of different theoretical dimensions; interpret the determinants and consequences of socio-economic and institutional diversity across European capitalisms with regard to a range of key socio-economic issues and contemporary public policy challenges; apply the tools of comparative institutional and socio-economic analysis to empirical case studies and real-world scenarios.

Course contents

In this course, students will be introduced to the key conceptual and theoretical tools and debates in the discipline of Comparative Political Economy. These will provide the key analytical lenses through which the diversity of European capitalisms, their institutional and socio-economic transformations and adaptations over the last half century and their responses to current policy challenges (such as technological change, decarbonisation and geopolitical instability) will be analysed and interrogated. Country case studies (primarily, but not limited to, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Poland) will be used throughout the course to provide empirical examples and illustrate theoretical concepts and the impacts of macro-phenomena of interest. A specific emphasis will be dedicated to analysing core-periphery relations within the enlarged European economic space and its implications.

The course contents will include the following topics:

  • Theoretical approaches to the study of capitalist diversity: ideas, interest, institutions… and beyond
    • Welfare capitalism and power resource theory
    • Varieties of Capitalism
    • Regulation School and the growth models approach
    • Beyond methodological nationalism: variegated capitalism and core-periphery dynamics in Europe
    • Social reproduction theory and theories of racialized capitalism
  • Ideal typical models of European capitalism and their (in)stability
  • The impact of European integration on European capitalisms: convergence or divergence?
    • Labour market and industrial relations institutions: between de-regulation and re-regulation
    • Crises and their legacies: from the 2008-2010 sovereign debt crisis to Covid-19
    • The changing balance between state and markets in European capitalism: the retreat and return of industrial policy
    • Mobility of people vs mobility of capital
  • Current socio-economic policy challenges
    • The transition to the knowledge economy
    • Climate change and decarbonization
    • European capitalisms in an unstable and multipolar world order

Readings/Bibliography

Some general reference text used for the course will be:

Baccaro, L., Blyth, M., Pontusson, J. (2022) Diminishing Returns. The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hassel, A. and Palier, B. (2021) Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Regini, M. (forthcoming) Handbook of Comparative Political Economy. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Menz, G. (2017), Comparative Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clift, B. (2021) Comparatve Political Economy: States, Markets and Global Capitalism. London: Bloomsbury.

Specific readings and journal articles will be assigned for each week. The detailed course guide will be published on Virtuale ahead of the start of the course; students are requested to always refer to the detailed course guide uploaded on Virtual for the exact schedule of topics covered in each lesson and the assigned readings.

Teaching methods

The course includes 40 hours of teaching; classes will take a seminar format where students will be requested to participate through in-class presentations and discussions of the assigned readings. The teaching method is therefore interactive, focusing on collective discussion of questions, texts and concepts and group activities in class. Students are requested to always refer to the detailed course guide uploaded on Virtual for the exact schedule of topics covered in each lesson. For the course to run smoothly, it is essential that students complete the assigned readings ahead of each lesson.

Assessment methods

Attending students (frequentanti)

In-class presentation / participation (10%)

Mid-term essay (2,000 parole) (40% of final grade)

Final essay (3,000 parole) (50% of final grade)

Non-attending students (non frequentanti)

During the examination session, non-attending students are required to submit two essays of roughly 2,500 words each on a topic covered in the course. A list of possible essay questions from which to choose will be published by the lecturer in advance of each exam session. The content of the essay and related topics will then be the subject of an oral discussion via Teams, following which the final grade will be awarded.

Office hours

See the website of Arianna Tassinari