Berger and Dore: National Diversity and Global Capitalism

Berger, S, and RP Dore. 1996. National Diversity and Global Capitalism. Cornell University Press.

Suzanne Berger: Introduction:

Do advanced economies converge on a set of practices or not? In the positive: "...competition, imitation, diffusion of best practice, trade and capital mobility naturally operate to produce convergence across nations in the structures of production and in the relations among economy, society, and state. Variations may be found from country to country, because of different historical legacies" (1).

Neoclassical economic theory would predict that convergence of factor prices would generally take hold in countries that were involved within the system of globalization, however, not all are in agreement. Some argue (Boyer) that it depends on what is being looked at when; at times one can see convergence, and at other times, convergence is a bit more difficult to notice.

"The fundamental cleavage cuts between one group of the authors who conclude (with varying degrees of enthusiasm or regret) that national diversities are likely to disappear; and on the other side, the authors who (with varying degrees of enthusiasm or regret) predict the long-term persistence of fundamentally different national models" (11).

"In sum, those who see convergence on the horizon of advanced countries have very different conceptions of how this process is likely to operate. Among the contributors to the volume, three distinct notions emerge: convergence as the triumph of market forces, abetted by complicit or passive governments; convergence as the result of diffusion of best practice and competition among institutional forms; and convergence as the internationally negotiated or coerced choice of one set of rules and institutions" (16).

"A second cluster of contributions in this volume sharply opposes the convergence perspective. The common theme here is the long-term resilience and expansion of diverse national systems and models of capitalism. The arguments against convergence laid out in these essays build on different analyses of how markets work, ideas about institutional coherence and adaptation, and alternative understandings of how politics shapes the economy" (19).

These views argue that the diversity of institutions is not necessarily a problem, that the ideal-type global market to which people should converge is just that: not a reality; and that domestic political considerations and push-backs should not be discounted.

"The conclusion that emerges from the essays in this volume is that the space for political vision and choice--and for a diversity of choices--is open and wide. The biggest question left unanswered is not whether politics can seize and use this space, but which politics and for whom?" (25).