Page 162 - Global Political Economy_Understanding The International Economic Order

SYS TEMS O F POLI TICAL ECONO MY
ferences. As economic interdependence has progressed, national dif-
ferences have more frequently become the subject of international ne-
gotiations and a factor in the growing movement toward economic
regionalism.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there was some convergence among na-
tional economies, and the differences among them diminished in a
number of important respects. Nevertheless, in the early years of the
twenty-first century, fundamental differences among national econo-
mies remain important. This point is especially applicable to the
American, German, and Japanese economies. These dominant econo-
mies not only influence the world economy, but they are also arche-
types for many other economies. Whereas the American, British, and
other “Anglo-Saxon” economies have much in common, the German
economy shares many features with the corporatist-type economies
of continental Europe, and the Japanese economy has, in certain re-
spects, provided a model for the “developmental capitalist” econo-
mies of Pacific Asia. 2

Differences among National Economies
While national systems of political economy differ from one another
in many important respects, differences in the following areas are
worthy of particular attention: (1) the primary purposes of the eco-
nomic activity of the nation, (2) the role of the state in the economy,
and (3) the structure of the corporate sector and private business
practices. Although every modern economy must promote the welfare
of its citizens, different societies vary in the emphasis given to particu-
lar objectives; those objectives, which range from promoting con-
sumer welfare to pursuit of national power, strongly influence and
are influenced by such other features of a national economy as the
role of the state in the economy and the structure of that economy.
As for the role of the state in the economy, market economies in-
clude the generally laissez-faire, noninterventionist stance of the
United States as well as the Japanese state’s central role in the over-
all management of the economy. And the mechanisms of corporate
governance and private business practices also differ; the relative-
ly fragmented American business structure and the Japanese system
of tightly integrated industrial groupings (the keiretsu) contrast dra-
matically with one another. Very different national systems of politi-

2
Peter Katzenstein, Corporatism and Change: Austria, Switzerland, and the Politics
of Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
149