Institutions Revision Questions Flashcards
What is an institution?
How does John Campbell define institutions in ‘Institutional change and globalisation’ -2004
- Debatable
- Could cover anything
- “institutions are the foundation of social life. They consist of formal and informal rules, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and systems of meaning that define the context within which individuals, corporations, labor unions, nation states and other organisations operate and interact with each other”
- “settlements born from struggle and barganining”
How do Streeck and Thelen define institutions?
institutional change in advanced political economies 2005
- “modern economies are political economies”, that is governed by politics - they are mainly controlled by norms and sanctions that are formalised
Why are institutions important?
- They provide a basis for critique of free market economics
- A pure market economy is not possible! (both globally and nationally). No such thing as a free market
- institutions mediate and shape socio economic change
- Good economic performance can result from a range of institutional regimes
Exemplify economies being saved by institutions
- IMF bailouts!
- WTO
Exemplify with India and UK institutions difference
- higher minimum wages in the UK to India
Institutions and immigration UK?
- UK government filters and controls the global economy through immigration, such as the EU referendum
Exemplify institutions
- labour market legislation
- public employment services
- trade unions
- welfare state
- competition regulation
- parliaments
- lobbying
- Culture?
- Training regimes
- Investment patterns
- Ownership of companies
What could present change for instutitons, this is important to many authors on the issue.
- growing transnationalisation of national firms, evolving societal attitudes to women, crisis , conflicts
e. g. morgan
Institutions are central to?
- The analysis of a range of VoC and Welfare states perspectives
What does Martin Rhodes claim to be the key focus of the VoC school?
(“varieties of capitalism” and the political economy of European welfare states) (2005)
- Complementarities between social protection systems and production regimes are the key focus of the varieties of capitalism school
- they look at the ways in which they may compliment one another not thinking about the ways in which those relationships may become dysfunctional and shape institutional change.
What did Huber and Stephens argue?
- ‘Within each country, certain but not all, aspects of its welfare state and production regimes do not fit each other’
- for e.g. they say wage levels and benefit levels must fit and not act perversely against one another
- protection systems and production systems may combine in ways that enhance the performance of firms and general economic efficiency. Thus the links between protection systems and production regimes can constitute part of the comparative institutional advantage of a given economy.
Exemplify with a CME how the type of production in the world market must fit with the qualification of the labour force and wage benefit levels
- Government coordination in research and development, training and wage setting makes it possible to engage in high quality production and thus sustain high wages and a high social wage
Manow argues that generous welfare regimes may do what for international competitiveness?
How?
- Generous welfare regimes may enhance international competitiveness not diminish it (because of comparative cost advantage)
- How - A close linkage between production and protection regimes may diminish incentives for firms to exit a costly national welfare regime (to engage in location arbitrage (go elsewhere).
what do Manow and Ebbinghaus argue?
Status Quo
- because existing institutional complementarities provide institutional advantages under international competition , employers have an interest in adapting industrial relations and social protection in a way that does not undo the beneficial production regimes already in place.
Estevez-Abe et al, show what about levels of social protection?
under certain levels of social protection (generous unemployment benefits) employee investment in skills acquisition and diversified quality production system go hand in hand.
