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Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism, by Jim Stanford, is reviewed.
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The article reviews the book, "Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case," by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker.
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This article reviews the book, "Working through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective," edited by Teri L. Caraway, Maria Lorena Cook and Stephen Crowley.
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The articles reviews the book, "Technology and the Future of Work: The Impact on Labour Markets and Welfare States," by Bent Greve.
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The article reviews the book, "The Socialist Challenge Today," by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin.
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Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards, by Mark P. Thomas, is reviewed.
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The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy, edited by Luis L.M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod, is reviewed.
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The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) has become the dominant approach in comparative political economy and enjoys wide application and attention in disciplines outside of political science and sociology. Indeed the VoC approach has enjoyed much attention in comparative industrial/employment relations (IR). This article undertakes a critical evaluation of the importation of the VoC paradigm into comparative IR. Inter alia, it is argued that the VoC approach, as it is presently configured, may have little to teach IR scholars because its basic theoretical concepts and methodological priors militate against accounting for change. This article begins with a summary of the routine problems researchers in comparative political economy and comparative IR have encountered when attempting to account for change within the constraints of the VoC paradigm. Here the focus is on the limitations imposed when privileging the national scale and the problems engendered by a heavy reliance on comparative statics methodology infused with the concepts of equilibrium and exogenous shocks. The article then goes beyond these routinely recognized limitations and argues that the importation of terminology from neoclassical economic theory, of which the original VoC statement makes foundational reference, further serves to constrain and add confusion to the comparative enterprise; namely, comparative advantage, Oliver Williamson’s neoclassical theory of the firm, the use of the distinction made between (im)perfect market competition in neoclassical economics and the fuzzy distinction made between firms, markets and networks. In the concluding section we argue that the VoC’s narrow focus on the firm and its coordination problems serve to legitimate IRs traditional narrow focus on labour management relations and the pride of place that HRM now enjoys in the remaining IR departments. Ultimately, however, the embrace of the VoC paradigm by comparative IR is a net negative normative move.
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