著者

北川 亘太

出版者

経済理論学会

雑誌

季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.3, pp.69-74, 2011

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A basic framework of the varieties of capitalism (VOC) approach was introduced in Japan when Hall and Soskices' (2001) work was translated into Japanese. In the last 10 years, the study of the VOC approach for institutional change in advanced political economies has gained momentum, but it has not yet been introduced in Japan. Through this paper, we aim to get an overview of the study of the VOC approach from 2001 to 2009, particularly with regard to the treatment of institutional change. We focus on four studies on institutional change, all of which have the common theme of theoretical development. Streeck and Thelen (2005) and Deeg (2005) highlighted the limitations of the VOC approach, specifically, with the concepts of institution and institutional complementarity, in the treatment of institutional change. Hall and Thelen (2009) and Becker (2007) modified the two concepts and tried to address the problems: Hall and Thelen came up with a new concept of "institution as resource." Becker, on the other hand, amended the concept of institutional complementarity fundamentally and focused on the functional relationship between each part of political economy and reference frames. By analyzing these studies, we confirmed a research trend observed in recent years with regard to the theoretical development of the VOC approach. First, in the course of addressing the issue of treating institutional change, the problems with the basic concepts of the VOC approach-institution and institutional complementarity-were pointed out. Second, an attempt was made to modify these basic concepts in order to address the problems.