Crisis and Complementarities: A Comparative Political Economy of Economic Policies after COVID-19

Abstract

We examine economic policy responses to the COVID-19 induced economic collapse in Germany (a coordinated market economy) and the UK (a liberal market economy). The two countries responded to the symmetric economic shock with very similar furlough and business credit schemes to stabilize the demand and supply sides of the economy. However, since these policies fed into very different political-economic structures in both countries, they produced very different results. We attribute this divergence to the effect of “institutional complementarities,” the notion in Varieties of Capitalism that different elements of a system are mutually articulated and, therefore, mutually reinforcing beyond their initial contribution, or vice versa. Our results serve as a cautionary tale to policymakers that introducing policy elements developed in other institutional contexts is complex and challenge us to consider systematically the way in which institutional frameworks actively shape policy outcomes.

The Political Economy of Health: Bringing Political Science In

“…New pandemic-related work by political scientists, including special issues published by Perspectives on Politics, International Organization, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, has touched on many of the policy, political, and structural forces affecting health discussed in the preceding sections. This stands to reason: While some researchers continue to characterize the pandemic as an shock or natural experiment and to use its onset to gain causal leverage, variation in the management and impact of the pandemic has important links to earlier political and economic choices and longstanding policy orientations (Bailey & Moon 2020, Bambra et al 2021, Drezner 2020, Hancké et al 2022, Jones & Hameiri 2022, McNamara & Newman 2020, Rovny et al 2022.…”

Public cultural institutions in Mexico and precarisation of creative labour

“… 1. To investigate different schemes in the European Union (EU) and Latin America, see Hancké et al (2022) and Beccaria et al (2022).…”