Neo-pluralist political science, economic sociology and the conceptual foundations of the comparative capitalisms literatures

In this paper, we critically assess two of the key conceptual foundations for the comparative capitalisms (CC) literatures, neo-pluralist political science and economic sociology, in order to identify more clearly the deep intellectual roots of these literatures. Principally, we focus on how the strengths of neo-pluralism and economic sociology – their attention to detail in considering the huge range of ‘types’ of capitalism that exist across the world – come at a high price. Put briefly, the redefinition of ‘capitalism’ as ‘the economy’ concentrates research agendas on the specific political and social conditions found across the world, leaving ‘the economy’ relatively untouched. In consequence, ‘capitalist diversity’ is quickly, and often silently, equated to ‘political diversity’ or ‘social diversity’. As such, a key weakness of CC scholarship, identified by various authors in this Capital & Class special issue – that it does not provide a satisfactory theoretical understanding of capitalist societies – is a problem that runs deeper than the limitations that can be observed in contemporary debates. The implications of our argument are discussed in the conclusion.