This course examines the interplay of politics, institutions, and markets in the advanced industrial countries. The course will consider the political and social adjustments these countries make to the evolving economy, and the political efforts to shape and control that evolution. A unifying perspective is that economic growth and political stability require political settlements that at once resolve the technical tasks of growth (assuring the appropriate allocation of resources and the sustained reorganization of economic activities) as well as the political problem of allocating the gains and costs of development. There is no single best way of insuring sustained economic development and political stability. Nonetheless, some countries have been able to manage sustained economic growth, while others have stumbled along the way.

How do we understand and explain the variety among national outcomes? What research enterprise is required? The analytic approach in the class will view actors, political groupings, and institutions as political creations that underlie the models of the several national political economies. Both political actors and political institutions must be understood as the outcomes and settlements of past political and economic crises. This has substantial methodological consequences. There is no irreducible nub of interests from which to read a political map. Making sense of the political interests of economic actors in the advanced countries also requires the understanding of the competitive dynamics of markets. Understanding market dynamics makes the political interplay of business, labor, and the state more transparent.

Several threads will guide the discussion. First, we use ideal types to analyze the dynamics of the advanced countries. By the late 1980s a conventional wisdom had formed about how the advanced countries differed and operated. As the countries have evolved and political settlements been remade, two questions press forward: Were those ideal types useful and were the national characterizations accurate in the first place? At least one new set of ideal types is now proposed. How do we select? Do national models still matter in a supposedly global economy?

As important, some would contend that we are living through a great transformation of the economy and society. Many generations believe that they are living through a historical transformation; such a belief adds moment to the meaning of one's own life. Most generations are wrong. But historical transformations do occur. How would we begin to decide whether this is such an historical transformation? What do we learn by asking this question.

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