1

2 Introduction
3
4 The crisis and renewal of Amer­ican
5
6
capitalism: a civilizational approach to
7 modern Amer­ican political economy
8
9
10
Laurence Cossu-­Beaumont, Jacques-­Henri Coste and
11 Jean-­Baptiste Velut
12
13
14
15 The unrivaled success of the US economy in the 1990s until the turn of the century
16 long appeared as the uncontested victory of an unfettered free market-­driven
17 economy and the triumph of a vibrant neoliberal paradigm propagated worldwide.
18 However, the Great Recession strongly affected perceptions of the US economy’s
19 performance and transformed the understanding and place of its economic model
20 among the existing varieties of capitalism (Hall & Soskice, 2001; Amable, 2003;
21 Baumol et al., 2007). Domestically, the impact of this traumatic experience was
22 devastating. Over seven million Amer­icans were deprived of their homes by fore-
23 closures; unemployment and poverty rates soared; and millions in the middle class
24 saw the value of their homes and/or net worth of their retirement plans plummet.
25 Internationally, the image of the United States was also tarnished. The contrast
26 between its critical economic condition and the healthy growth of China and other
27 emerging economies prompted both analysts and decision-­makers to question the
28 alleged superiority of the Amer­ican variety of capitalism. More importantly, the
29 Amer­ican brand of capitalism was severely discredited for damaging the economic
30 health of individual Amer­icans, reducing national wealth, and even possibly
31 leading the rest of the world down the wrong path. Thus, the Great Recession had
32 immediate strong domestic and global impacts on business systems, institutional
33 arrangements and political and cultural value systems (Streeck, 2011).
34 The persisting predicament of the Amer­ican economic regime first brought
35 about a renewed epistemological interest both in the diachronic and synchronic,
36 the historical and the systemic dimensions of capitalism. It also brought to the
37 fore the theoretical relevance of an all-­encompassing concept (capitalism) able
38 to embrace socioeconomic complexity and change. In the aftermath of the finan-
39 cial crisis, government interventionism signaled the visible return of the state in
40 the economy and highlighted the intimate relationship between Amer­ican capit-
41 alism and its political institutions. It also reflected the reassertion of the public
42 sphere and an emerging order of regulatory capitalism (Levi-­Faur, 2006; 2008).
43 More recently, the failure of capitalism to “naturally” curb the rising concentra-
44 tion of wealth has sparked a vigorous debate on the persistent failure of the state
45 to adequately address inequality (Piketty, 2014).

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 2   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
Yet, despite the reversal of America’s fortune from the triumphalism of the 1
“Roaring Nineties” to the gloom of the “lost decade,” theoretical conceptions of 2
US capitalism have remained surprisingly unchanged. In fact, if the crisis ques- 3
tioned the sustainability of the US capitalist paradigm, it did not fundamentally 4
challenge academic theorization of Amer­ican political economy. The laissez-­ 5
faire brand of US capitalism was interpreted as a Faustian bargain whereby the 6
United States traded social equity and economic stability for an artificial growth 7
model inspired by supply-­side economics.1 In other words, many scholars con- 8
cluded that the roots of America’s demise lay in the intrinsic nature of its free 9
market political economy. In such analyses, scholars tend to underplay the socio- 10
political role of institutions in their interrelations with the market sphere and 11
economic agents. 12
The idea of the Amer­ican state as a cautious umpire of market actors has a 13
long academic tradition. Early comparative political economy (CPE) studies 14
described the United States as a “weak state” unable to implement coherent eco- 15
nomic policy-­making, as a result of its fragmented and decentralized political 16
system vulnerable to the pressure of particularistic interests (Katzenstein, 1976; 17
Krasner, 1978). In the 1980s, the rise of Japan as a major competitor to Amer­ 18
ican firms contributed to sharpening the contrast between statist and liberal 19
models of development. Many scholars deplored the conflicts, redundancies and 20
lacunae of US economic policy in an increasingly competitive international 21
economy and called for a more active and coherent trade and industrial policy 22
(Reich & Magaziner, 1982; Zysman & Tyson, 1983; Hart, 1992). 23
This form of alarmism gradually faded in the 1990s, when America regained 24
its economic leadership. Yet, this resurgence was rarely interpreted as a con- 25
sequence of federal intervention. Amid scholarly debates on globalization and 26
the decline of national sovereignty, America’s success was too often seen as the 27
payoff of its entrepreneurial model. Whether celebrated as engines of growth or 28
denounced as harbingers of Amer­icanization, US multinational corporations 29
were often perceived as the central force behind America’s economic resur- 30
gence, while the contribution of the Amer­ican state was often downplayed or 31
ignored, a phenomenon that Weiss defined as “state denial” (Weiss, 1998). Some 32
proclaimed the “end of the nation state” in the event of rising regional, trans- 33
national and supranational actors (Ohmae, 1995; Mathews, 1997; see also Haass, 34
2008). Often convinced that the economic logic of globalization had supplanted 35
the political and social spheres, they underscored government incapacity to regu- 36
late global supply chains, transnational trade and financial flows. In a much-­ 37
hyped globalized economy, states were reduced to powerless entities dismantling 38
welfare states and lowering their tax rates to win the favors of transnational 39
capital in a so-­called “race to the bottom” (Strange, 1996; Greider, 1997; Gray, 40
1998). 41
The next wave of political economy studies perpetuated traditional precon- 42
ceptions about state–market relations. Placing firms at the center of their ana- 43
lysis, Hall and Soskice (2001) described the Amer­ican “variety” of capitalism as 44
a “liberal market economy” (LME), a capitalist system in which firm behavior 45

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 Introduction   3
1 was primarily driven by demand and supply conditions in competitive markets.
2 This free market ideal type was distinguished from coordinated market eco-
3 nomies (CMEs) where non-­market modes of coordination prevail. Hall and Sos-
4 kice’s seminal contribution to institutional economics seemed to further entrench
5 the well-­established but largely mythic conception of the Amer­ican state as a
6 “weak” state (Novak, 2008).
7 The authors of the variety of capitalism school (VOC) shared a common
8 focus on the concept of capitalism with the French regulation theory school (RT)
9 pioneered by Michel Aglietta (1979) and Robert Boyer (1990). Both research
10 programs converged in using international comparisons, questioning the primacy
11 of liberal market economies and challenging the role of markets as the sole
12 coordinating mechanism. VOC and RT stressed the search for an alternative
13 form of capitalism after the crumbling of the “Fordist” regime (Boyer, 2000).
14 They advanced the idea of “institutional complementarities” to explain the diver-
15 sity, co-­evolutions and pattern of interactions between subsystems within
16 national models of capitalism. Internationalization and globalization deepened
17 rather than diluted the competitive advantage associated with each institutional
18 architecture.
19 RT first emerged as a major theorization of post-­war Fordism, then developed
20 into an analysis of the root causes of the transformations of capitalism. The
21 dynamics of long-­term cycles of socioeconomic stability and change resulted
22 from unresolved contradictions within existing institutional arrangements and a
23 lack of systemic and macroeconomic coherence. Regulation theory has gener-
24 ated multidisciplinary research for the past 40 years on how a wide range of eco-
25 nomic, institutional, political and social factors interplay in the process of capital
26 accumulation, produce singular growth regimes over time and legitimize various
27 modes of institutional regulation. Laws, norms, forms of states, policies, para-
28 digms, beliefs and representations were instrumental in the sustainability of what
29 appeared as a predominantly endogenous model of capitalism (Orlean, 2004;
30 2014). While VOC highlighted private firm governance and external shocks, RT
31 integrated its analysis of political economy with a study of civil society and the
32 infrastructural power of the state. Modern capitalist economies differed interna-
33 tionally and produced several brands of capitalism (market-­led, meso-­corporatist,
34 social democrat, state-­led) that were the outcome of distinctive political economy
35 compromises (Amable, 2004). Each capitalist type was characterized by specific
36 institutional complementarities that first brought stability but nonetheless ended
37 with a structural but largely endogenous crisis. Since it crossed economy
38 and polity, agency and institutions, culture and values, the Amer­ican model of
39 capitalism had to be contextualized and examined from a multidimensional and
40 multiscalar perspective including a more discursive stratum (Schmidt, 2008) and
41 a “cultural turn” (Jessop et al., 2012; Senett 2006).
42 As a consequence, it is the authors’ contention that the interstructuration of
43 the social, political and economic spheres has not been fully studied nor linked
44 to framework conditions or to a wider “cultural political economy” (Jessop &
45 Ngai-­Ling Sum, 2012) specifically grounded, embedded in Amer­ican civilization

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 4   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
(Granovetter, 1985). Hence, the need for a more integrated approach studying 1
Amer­ican capitalism with a “civilizational-­economic analysis” (Swedberg, 2010) 2
first re-­embedding the economy in the Amer­ican polity and society, then focus- 3
ing on the centrality of the state–market nexus, and finally considering the dia- 4
lectics and dynamics of US capitalism as an “economic civilization” marked off 5
by more symbolic boundaries (Durkheim & Mauss, 1913; Eisenstadt, 2000) and 6
shaped by sociocultural configurations and imaginaries (Taylor, 2007). 7
In short, for all the valuable insights of comparative case studies, many per- 8
spectives on Amer­ican capitalism suffer from three major shortcomings: (1) their 9
disregard for cultural and societal factors; (2) their reductive conception of state 10
capacities; (3) their static interpretation of capitalism. 11
12
13
Re-­embedding the economy
14
The first limitation of the comparative political economy literature has to do with 15
its narrow focus on markets and political institutions, a “culture-­blind” approach 16
from which we strongly depart. Beyond the technicalities of flawed financial 17
practices, how is Amer­ican society to be appraised to enrich our understanding 18
of the crisis and the transformations it may entail? Mainstream economists, 19
central bankers and policy-­makers have reconsidered both theory and practice to 20
account for the Great Recession and search for policy prescriptions. Yet, they 21
have often analyzed the economy as an object disembedded from its historical 22
and cultural milieu. In doing so, they broke away from an older political 23
economy tradition, best exemplified by the work of Polanyi and Braudel, which 24
contended that the economy cannot be conceived of in a vacuum and needs to be 25
reconnected with its territory, its historical and cultural background, as well as 26
the constellation of stakeholders directly or indirectly engaged in the dynamics 27
of capitalism. This is what Braudel describes as “civilization,” a disfavored term 28
that has the merits of encompassing the historical, cultural, institutional reality 29
outside “which nothing can have full meaning” (Braudel, 1982, p. 23). 30
From institutional economics, we learnt that much was to be understood from 31
considering the complex web of institutions when studying market mechanisms 32
or the economy at large. But though institutions may have been a centerpiece for 33
economic theory, they rather served as items to stage a static comparative frame- 34
work (Hall & Soskice, 2001) or to discuss best practices and policies (North, 35
2005). And while comparative political economy did allow a useful focus on 36
formal institutions, it often broke its promise to examine informal structures such 37
as culture and beliefs. 38
At the Sorbonne Nouvelle University of Paris, the French research center on 39
Anglo-­Saxon economies (CERVEPAS) has been focusing on Anglo-­Saxon vari- 40
eties of capitalism since 1991 (Azuelos, 2012, 2015). Adopting an interdiscipli- 41
nary approach, CERVEPAS scholars share the idea that economic reality cannot 42
be understood but in close correlation with social, political and cultural life, and 43
are committed to studying the locus of economic life (Azuelos, 2012; 2015). 44
CERVEPAS has explored such themes as entrepreneurship in Anglo-­Saxon 45

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 Introduction   5
1 dynamics, innovation in Anglo-­Saxon economies and the Anglo-­Saxon model of
2 capitalism, with the postulate that capitalism is a relevant object of study, if not
3 a model, whose appraisal can contribute to the study of US civilization. If the
4 special brand of Amer­ican capitalism lies at the heart of what makes US culture,
5 politics and history, our intention as observers of contemporary America is to
6 invite economists, historians and social scientists to offer a discussion on how
7 the crisis may foster a shift in Amer­ican civilization.
8 While CERVEPAS’s interdisciplinary approach to economics clearly
9 departed from the conventional disciplinary segmentation in French and Western
10 academia, we are aware that other intellectual schools have also called for altern-
11 ative approaches to the study of capitalism. To begin with, the study of capit-
12 alism as an institutionalized system – as opposed to a superposition of economic
13 mechanisms – is at the heart of the work of many economists such as Marx,
14 Keynes or Schumpeter, who have long recognized the interdependence between
15 the economic, political and social spheres. Furthermore, the regulation school
16 has long argued that capitalism cannot be reduced to an abstract, autonomous
17 and functional market economy device resulting from fierce price competition
18 and an asymmetric capital–labor nexus (Boyer, 2007). Instead, political eco-
19 nomies should be understood as dynamic socioeconomic regimes that are consti-
20 tutive of a complex web of political, cultural, social and institutional relations
21 and the dynamics of these relations (Aglietta, 1979; Boyer, 2000, 2007; Aglietta
22 & Bai, 2013). Finally, while Polanyi first argued that the market was to be re-­
23 embedded into the broader society, his claim has found new interest recently
24 (Stiglitz, 2001; 2003). For instance, cultural political economists have defined
25 their field as the confluence of culture, politics and clout (Best & Patterson,
26 2010).
27 In this book, we invited contributors to look at capitalism from the viewpoint
28 not of standard monetary macroeconomics or classic business cycle literature,
29 nor of the micro-­economics of shareholders or corporate governance, but from
30 the viewpoint of America’s historical, cultural and social foundations. Indeed,
31 the dynamics of capitalism cannot be distilled solely through the math of free
32 capital flows and interest rates, but must be examined as a comprehensive and
33 intricate system under the lens of social sciences.
34 Like CERVEPAS’ series of publications on the dynamics of Amer­ican capit-
35 alism and the emergence of an “entrepreneurial society” (Coste, 2013), the
36 various schools aforementioned have shown that despite the useful insights that
37 institutional economics may provide to the study of capitalism, the study of insti-
38 tutions needs to be supplemented with the analysis of ideologies, cultural values,
39 power dynamics and the idiosyncratic politics of a given time. We depart from
40 the initial notion that the economy rules supreme over society and that “eco-
41 nomic capitalism” defines Amer­ican civilization as its sole “driving force”
42 (Braudel, 1995) to wonder about the political, societal and cultural forces at play
43 in Amer­ican capitalism (Neem, 2008; Eisner, 2011). Much in the same way as
44 Aglietta and Bai (2013) accounted for China’s particular experience of capit-
45 alism through its history, social fabric and collective memory, so we define our

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 6   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
approach of America’s recent experience of the crisis with an evolutionary per- 1
spective and a civilizational focus. 2
3
4
Subnational and shadow processes
5
The civilizational approach sheds light on one problem associated with CPE 6
studies, namely their conventional focus on the national level of analysis, a 7
prism ill-­adapted to the multilevel power centers of decision-­making under US 8
federalism. Indeed, the crisis of Amer­ican capitalism and the politics of austerity 9
that emerged in its aftermath can only be fully captured by analyzing the dra- 10
matic economic losses undertaken by cities and states.2 Similarly, while the 11
federal government may seem at a loss to overcome institutional obstacles and 12
pursue a coherent recovery policy, “entrepreneurial states” (Eisinger, 1988) 13
“regional clusters” (Porter, 1990; Etzkowitz, 1998) and “global cities” or 14
“metros” (Sassen, 2001; Katz & Bradley, 2013) serve as many examples that the 15
subnational level is an important locus of decision-­making power. 16
The analysis of subnational actors is all the more justified if one considers 17
that the size of Amer­ican states is comparable to that of other national economies 18
in the world – one example being California’s ranking as the ninth largest 19
economy in the world. While the confinement of economic activism to regional 20
or local government actors has often been interpreted as a weakness of the 21
Amer­ican state, the powers reserved to the states have in fact played a structur- 22
ing force in the creative destruction of Amer­ican capitalism. First, states serve as 23
“laboratories” conducting experimentation in various policy spheres ranging 24
from innovation policies to tax, social or regulatory reforms. Their behavior can 25
have emulating effects on both state and federal actors – whether their policies 26
are perceived as virtuous models (with best practices or “sunshine” effects) or 27
negative examples (race-­to-the-­bottom scenario). This mimetic process is central 28
to the political dynamics of Amer­ican capitalism. Indeed, when federal decision-­ 29
making is blocked by historical-­institutional bottlenecks – as during the Gilded 30
Age or in the contemporary era – cities and states become the loci of policy 31
innovations and ventures in new issue areas. 32
Additionally, transnational processes have expanded the potentialities of local 33
stakeholders by allowing them to confront, bypass or instrumentalize nation-­states, 34
thereby disrupting conventional hierarchies (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Sassen, 2003, 35
2004; Wallerstein, 2000). Thus, while globalization has admittedly transformed 36
the functions performed by national governments, global pressures have by no 37
means made local avenues irrelevant. Following Sassen (2004), we call for a mul- 38
tiscalar analysis of Amer­ican capitalism that takes stock of the impact of globaliza- 39
tion on state capacities while acknowledging the importance of subnational actors. 40
The second lacuna of the variety of capitalism literature lies in its reductive 41
conception of state capacities. At first sight, Hall and Soskice offer a sophistic- 42
ated model to understand the intricacies of state–market relations in different 43
national economies. But for all their meticulous efforts to avoid parsimony, the 44
authors’ focus on the contrast between LMEs and CMEs renews with a 45

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 Introduction   7
1 dichotomous vision of the state as interventionist or noninterventionist. Yet, as
2 Evans shows, the question political economists should ask is not “how much”
3 states intervene in the economy but “what kind” of involvement they undertake
4 and what effects these measures have on the rest of society (Evans, 1995, p. 10).
5 By focusing on conventional modes of market intervention, political econo-
6 mists have often left aside hidden or submerged forms of economic activism that
7 we describe here as shadow institutional processes. Scholars within and outside
8 the Amer­ican political development (APD) literature have long shed light on the
9 economic guidance provided directly and indirectly by the US federal govern-
10 ment.3 Some scholars have documented the multiple functions operated by the
11 military–industrial complex in the development of America’s manufacturing and
12 information technology sectors (Hooks, 1991; Fong, 2000; Block, 2008). Chang
13 (2002) and Gindin and Panitch (2012) have analyzed the close relationship
14 between state and market actors that led Washington to embrace protectionist
15 policies before lecturing developing countries to open their markets to US
16 exports in the interest of America’s “informal empire.” Scholars of financializa-
17 tion have also shed new light on the state–market nexus by revealing that state
18 intervention was instrumental in the emergence of the modern financial capit-
19 alism – whether in relation to home mortgages (e.g., with the creation of
20 government-­sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) or consumer
21 credit (Aalbers, 2008; Trumbull, 2012).4
22 Weiss (2010) and Block (2008) delineated the contours of the Amer­ican
23 “hidden developmental state” by analyzing the recurrent pattern of economic
24 activism through a wide array of technology, security and procurement policies.
25 In a similar vein, Mettler (2011) unveiled the democratic dysfunctions of the
26 “submerged state,” defined as the intricate conglomeration of federal tax policies
27 that benefit private organizations or households beneath the surface of US
28 market institutions.
29 Our objective is to build upon this revisionist literature to show that the US
30 federal government never took a backseat in the development of Amer­ican capit-
31 alism. Instead, it resorted to subnational and shadow institutional processes that
32 were mistaken as inaction. An avatar of the state–market nexus, this arsenal of
33 policy tools is constantly reinvented by government actors at both national and
34 subnational levels, which are neither systematically captured by business inter-
35 ests nor fully autonomous (Laffont & Tirole, 1991; Levine & Forrence 1990).
36 They operate under the principles of “embedded autonomy.” In Evans’ words,
37 they are “embedded in a concrete set of social ties that binds the state to society
38 and provides institutionalized channels for the continual negotiation and renego-
39 tiation of goals and policies” (Evans, 1995, p. 12). In this sense, America has
40 never really been a “weak state” nor a “liberal market economy.” As Polanyi
41 (2001) famously wrote, “laissez faire was planned” – an aphorism that remains
42 as potent today as it was for the nineteenth century. Thus, while we recognize
43 that business interests may dominate many policy spheres, we do not view power
44 as a perpetual monopoly but rather as a historically contingent nexus that may be
45 partly or radically altered by state, business and civil society actors.

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 8   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
The dynamics of agency, institutions and culture 1
2
The third shortcoming of conventional political economy models lies in their
3
synchronic approach to capitalism and their tendency to minimize the trans-
4
formative functions that crises perform to sustain or renew, destroy and create
5
varieties of capitalism and their legitimate models.5 This is partly due to the fact 6
that institutionalist analyses of political economy have always been better 7
equipped to explain continuity – e.g., through feedback loops, path dependency 8
or policy legacies – than change. The old tradition of Amer­ican institutionalism 9
had first focused on the genesis and evolution of social institutions but soon 10
envisaged political economy as incorporated in a broader societal and cultural 11
process (Veblen, 1898). Institutions appeared as persistent social facts resulting 12
from interaction and association. Maintaining socioeconomic equilibrium 13
required striking political compromises that had to be enacted into law 14
(Commons, 1924, 1934; Commons et al., 1950). Mapping the formal institutions 15
of the modern state and understanding system and power dynamics helped 16
channel and control the disruptive forces of conflict into collective action. Pol- 17
itics regulated and stabilized social life by providing persistent rules and norms 18
that had to be legitimized to become efficient. Shaping rules and norms con- 19
strained and modeled individual behaviors, warded off discontinuities in institu- 20
tional architectures and fostered more linear trajectories. The focus was no 21
longer on change but rather on social cohesion, collective consent and smooth 22
institutional interdependencies between public and private institutions. Con- 23
sequently, the new form of economic institutionalism that emerged with Coase 24
(1937), developed with Williamson (1975, 2000) and North (1990, 2005), 25
watered down the early political form of collective regulation and the public 26
“turn” of the theories produced by the first generation of Amer­ican institutional- 27
ists. The new approach was less concerned with social order, conflicts and hege- 28
mony, and more with transaction costs and the dialectic of markets and 29
organizational hierarchies. It highlighted the relationship between externaliza- 30
tion and internalization but also the impact on behaviors of socioeconomic con- 31
straints nested in institutional systems and societal values. “Rules of the games” 32
and the notion of “adaptive efficiency” (North, 1990, 2005) became the prevail- 33
ing characteristic and drivers of “productive,” “maximizing” and resilient insti- 34
tutions. These powerful “governance structures” (Williamson, 2002) whose 35
forms also extended to private and not-­for profit organizations seemed to suc- 36
cessfully regulate externalities and remedy market failures while compensating 37
for weak state capacities. The dynamic role of other coordination mechanisms 38
such as politics, actors’ volition and agency was, however, ignored in such a 39
framework, as also were the potential bifurcations of institutional trajectories 40
resulting from endogenous contradictions and exogenous shocks. 41
The Great Recession has both highlighted the destructive power of finance when 42
disequilibrium and instability become the rule and, paradoxically enough, evid- 43
enced the transformative power of crises and the hidden resistance force of existing 44
models and implicit cultural patterns. The ensuing market and state failures have 45

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 Introduction   9
1 notably exposed the unresolved structural contradictions and tensions in the
2 complex organization of a globalized capitalist economy (Hollingsworth, 1997,
3 2011) and the need to regulate and coordinate economic relations through norms
4 and rules (North, 2005) that are also context- and culture-­dependent. The constrain-
5 ing power of context and institutions and the central significance of politics and
6 arenas that legitimize and implement sweeping institutional changes at critical junc-
7 tures have become more salient, particularly when compromise must be reached to
8 avoid, for example, congressional gridlock. The re-­embedding of a partly de-­
9 territorialized US political economy has also become paramount since economic,
10 social, political and cultural variables are jointly involved in the process of eco-
11 nomic adjustment and institutional change (Hall & Thelen, 2009). These worlds are
12 strongly intertwined and need to co-­evolve into institutional complementarities so
13 as to facilitate the emergence of a new compromise weaving the economic, political
14 and societal spheres together both at the local and global levels. When faced with
15 systemic risk, many US political and economic leaders have been forced to recon-
16 sider their guiding principles based on the self-­instituted and self-­regulated market
17 dogma and the Lockean free will of the individual. The resistance force of existing
18 economic models (free enterprise, proprietary rights, etc.) and imprinted cultural
19 patterns that foster disruptive responses and conservative counter-­reactions have
20 been particularly strong in a newly polarized America. However, the destabilizing
21 financial type of capitalism is no longer seen as the sole growth and value appropri-
22 ation alternative, nor as the one best way toward a more “general welfare.” In the
23 face of strong opposition to state intervention, “re-­forming” and “trans-­forming” the
24 existing economic model into a more sustainable and more mixed and coordinated
25 socioeconomic system (Nelson, 2010) has become a much debated issue for liberals
26 and post-­Keynesians like Paul Krugman (2008), Robert Reich and other opinion
27 leaders. This rejuvenated progressive stance jointly inscribes public policy, toler-
28 able forms of state interventions, private forms of governance – in the business and
29 non-­profit sectors – but also acceptable value change at the core of a more domest-
30 icated economic dynamic and a less partisan polity.
31 Such paradigm shift, however, raises conceptual and normative questions
32 on the intrinsic characteristics and dynamics of the US capitalist system, its
33 boundaries, its destructive dimension but also its long-­term institutional resili-
34 ence and future adaptive capacity. We depart from conventional synchronic
35 political economic models or dyadic approaches whereby Amer­ican capitalism
36 is only the logical product of structural forces or the fortuitous outcome of
37 rational agents. Our objective is to demonstrate that the US political economy
38 is rather a complex interaction and ever-­changing dynamic system of agency,
39 institutions and cultures. It is powered by contradictory forces, interacting
40 actors, institutions, conflicting cultural values that drive its long-­term develop-
41 ment and produce a regime of growth and various modes and levels of regula-
42 tion that are time- and space-­specific (Aglietta, 1979). As a configuration of
43 forces and institutions (Boyer & Hollingsworth, 1997) but also an interconnec-
44 tion between asymmetric spheres and spaces, Amer­ican capitalism is intrinsic-
45 ally varied, multidimensional, changing and also transcultural. It is a locus, a

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 10   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
focus and a transaction space whose boundaries extend to a wider globalized 1
space of influence. 2
Admittedly, orthodox economists have never been fully blind to the power of 3
agency or structure. However, for many Amer­ican theoreticians of capitalism 4
(public choice school), “free markets” remain the most rational and democratic 5
economic system. The General Equilibrium model is said to coordinate actors 6
via a competitive pricing mechanism that must be disconnected from society and 7
polity since regulation is often appropriated by in-­group elites that distort pure 8
competition. Another dynamic pattern is also ascribed by agency theorists and 9
particularly Schumpeter to the entrepreneur, a heroic figure of economic change 10
that may develop his innovations into a firm and even an enduring institution 11
(Schumpeter, 1934, 1942; Baumol et al., 2007). In both cases, agency or actor- 12
hood predominates over hierarchical organizations and institutional structures in 13
theoretical and ideological discourse, in the name of a long-­standing Amer­ican 14
tradition of free enterprise and self-­reliant initiative supposed to constantly reju- 15
venate civil society and democracy under the banner of a “Nation of Joiners” 16
with highly valued entrepreneurship (Neem, 2008). 17
We posit that “the laws of motion” of capitalism (Boyer, 2010) are rather 18
activated by a dynamic interplay between agency and structures, actors and insti- 19
tutions, a system of structured as well as structuring interactions that produces 20
relevant socioeconomic forms able to tackle contradictions and produce change 21
(Giddens, 1984; Nelson, 2010). Such a pluralistic form of regulation and con- 22
structivist function has always been a necessary condition for the dynamism and 23
mutability of a multi-­level governance structure. It is the way Amer­ican capit- 24
alism acquired economic efficiency and discursive legitimacy (Schmidt, 2008) 25
and produced a coherent narrative explaining crises and booms (Hodgson, 2009; 26
Lipset, 1996) and also envisaged the possibility of the emergence of a new para- 27
digm (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). 28
We define this rationalizing narrative process as “focale,” a cultural prism 29
that spotlights specific ideological representations while obscuring other idea- 30
tional elements to make sense of the past, the present and the future of Amer­ 31
ican capitalism (Beckert, 2013). This concept differs from the Gramscian 32
notion of “cultural hegemony” to the extent that it is time- and space-­specific 33
and does not necessarily serve the interests of the ruling class. One of our 34
objectives lies in identifying the processes under which this focale changes 35
across history, i.e., how ideas, interests and institutions interact to catalyze 36
paradigm shifts. To do so, we must take a second look at the developmental 37
path of Amer­ican capitalism that evidences far more intrinsic variety than is 38
usually perceived. Shifting configurations are, indeed, correlated to economic 39
and ideological cycles and highly dependent on social imaginaries (Taylor, 40
2007), actors’ governing philosophies and institutional doctrines (Lichtenstein, 41
2006). This is, for example, the historical and cultural path Eisner (2011) has 42
explored to describe the variegated process of change. He identifies three dif- 43
ferent regimes for the past century as the Amer­ican political economy evolved: 44
the Progressive regime and the regulatory state; the rise and consolidation of 45

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 Introduction   11
1 the New Deal and welfare state regimes; and a neoliberal market regime that is
2 currently in turmoil.
3 To understand the development logic of Amer­ican capitalism, it is necessary
4 to first theorize capitalism as autonomization and prevalence of the economic
5 sphere over the political and social spheres, but also as a flux of societal and cul-
6 tural processes – counter-­movements regulating the state–market nexus. The
7 renewal dynamics of the US brand of capitalism may rely on this constant tug of
8 war between a dual disembedding and re-­embedding process, between an
9 “agentic” and a more structural and institutional vision of the economic system.
10 The dominant positivist economic framework explains the rise of capitalism as
11 an open self-­organizing process not guided by a central agent but reduced to
12 rational economic relations and aggregated data. Another tradition emphasizes
13 the role of political actors as originators of institutions, individual entrepreneurs,
14 business firms or sovereign entity actors as the driving forces of societal change.
15 A renewed regulatory tradition also underlines a shift of regulation in which the
16 state is restructuring itself in cooperation with civil society and cultural values.
17 We believe that a transdisciplinary approach that we term “civilizational
18 approach” is needed to define US capitalism as a socioeconomic and cultural
19 system in movement, a changing but resilient multi-­level mode of coordination
20 rather than a mere economic equilibrium.
21 To capture the complex societal dynamics of the Amer­ican variety of capit-
22 alism, the present volume is divided into three main parts. Part I casts light on the
23 transformation and resilience of the state–market nexus during the Great Reces-
24 sion. The purpose of this part is dual: (1) to go beyond dichotomous explanations
25 of the crisis as market or regulatory failure to delineate its cultural, figurative and
26 societal contours; (2) to de-­construct the notion of crisis and understand its func-
27 tions in the renewal and legitimation of the Amer­ican political economy.
28 James McBride begins by examining the deep historical and cultural roots of
29 the notion of “lawlessness” in the Amer­ican psyche and its contemporary ramifi-
30 cations in the reconstructed “Wild West of Wall Street.” At the crossroads
31 between cultural studies and economics, the author demonstrates how symbolic
32 factors can have very tangible – and destructive – effects on the social ecosystem
33 of Amer­ican capitalism. Nicholas Sowels’ study reasserts the importance of ide-
34 ational determinants by studying the long process of “ideological capture”
35 undergone by successive Federal Reserve chairmen under the neoliberal political
36 economic regime. Bradley Smith deconstructs the state–market dichotomy by
37 arguing that government intervention has performed key functions to support the
38 neoliberal regime over the past 30 years and is therefore unlikely to trigger a
39 paradigm shift in Amer­ican political economy. Finally, Pierre Arnaud seeks to
40 re-­embed the economy in its cultural and political milieu. The author demon-
41 strates that household debts, rising inequality and financialization have long been
42 constitutive elements of a coherent global equilibrium which the financial crisis
43 has severely – though maybe not definitively – disrupted.
44 Part II interrogates the legitimacy of methodological nationalism by bringing
45 into relief the imbroglio of subnational, national and global processes that drive,

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 12   L. Cossu-Beaumont et al.
transform and constrain US capitalism. Martine Azuelos challenges monolithic 1
representations of the Amer­ican political economy in a sharp analysis of the 2
heterogeneous impact of the financial crisis across cities, states and regions of 3
the United States. Drawing upon economic geography, political economy and 4
institutional economics, her study discusses the determinants of these regional 5
disparities before calling for a cross-­disciplinary approach to Amer­ican capit- 6
alism that does full justice to its internal diversity. Cécile Cormier’s chapter on 7
state and local tax and budgetary policies corroborates the significance of subna- 8
tional or “submerged” policies. Her quantitative analysis sheds light on the 9
hidden role played by local governments in creating social inequality, a phenom- 10
enon often interpreted as the primary result of federal policies. In a multiscalar 11
analysis of the housing market collapse, Cynthia Ghorra-­Gobin connects the dots 12
between local and global forces propelling US economic growth – and more spe- 13
cifically urbanization and financialization. The author goes beyond conventional 14
interpretations of the subprime mortgage crisis as a financial bubble to discuss 15
the societal and cultural underpinnings and implications of the housing collapse, 16
i.e., its meaning for America’s ownership society and the very essence of the 17
Amer­ican Dream. Finally, in his analysis of America’s competitiveness policy, 18
Jean-­Baptiste Velut examines the extent to which globalization has reconfigured 19
economic activism, giving birth to decentralized and hybrid forms of govern- 20
ment intervention that conventional dichotomies between the public/private and 21
local/global dichotomies can no longer capture. 22
Part III also focuses on the trajectory of Amer­ican capitalism and more specifi- 23
cally on the role of agency and structure in its renewal. Jacques-­Henri Coste 24
studies the US “National System of Innovation” as a complex socioeconomic para- 25
digm and a political economy construct at the core of the Amer­ican variety of 26
capitalism. He traces the development path and legacy of successive innovation 27
regimes and considers the extension of an open governance and collaborative 28
innovation model in the wake of previous transformations (closed/linear model, 29
interactive triple helix, regional clusters, and entrepreneurial ecosystems). The new 30
paradigm serves as a policy substitute and a pragmatic compromise underplaying 31
the developmental and catalyzing role of federal and subnational instances within 32
a decentralized and pluralist mode of innovation governance. His purpose is to 33
depart from market perspectives that only interpret America’s inventiveness as the 34
product of the Invisible Hand, so as to unveil the broader political and cultural eco- 35
system that has nurtured innovation in the United States. 36
Catherine Sauviat similarly examines the interplay between structure and con- 37
juncture under the prism of the idiosyncratic US labor market, revealing that the 38
Amer­ican crisis has exacerbated long-­term trends and undermined workers’ 39
rights under degrading employment conditions. The confluence of these short- 40
and long-­term factors is raising fundamental questions on the essence and the 41
capacity of renewal of the US employment model. Marie-­Christine Pauwels 42
explores the difficulties inherent to challenging the current political economic 43
regime through the experience of Occupy Wall Street. Not only do social move- 44
ments contesting capitalism face an uphill ideological battle in the United States, 45

600_00b_The Crisis and Renewal_intro.indd 12 6/10/15 10:54:28

 Introduction   13
1 but contentious power can also be co-­opted for commercial purposes. By under-
2 lining the limits of mobilization outside democratic channels, the author reaf-
3 firms the crucial importance of the state in shaping the trajectory of US
4 capitalism. If capitalism cannot be challenged from outside, it may be trans-
5 formed from inside. Laurence Cossu-­Beaumont draws a parallel between the
6 origins of philanthropy and the latest forms of “philanthro-­capitalism” in the
7 form of The Giving Pledge. The civilizational focus on the current discourse of
8 capitalists seeks to re-­embed the Amer­ican brand of capitalism in its essential
9 historical and cultural milieu. It allows consideration of whether innovative part-
10 nerships between individuals, corporations and the state may redefine the con-
11 tours of America’s cultural political economy or simply act to reproduce and
12 legitimize the US variety of capitalism.
13
14
Notes
15
16 1 For a discussion, see Pontusson (2005).
17 2 See the contributions of Azuelos and Cormier to this volume. See also Peck (2013).
3 For a discussion of the APD literature on the Amer­ican state, see Orren and Skowronek
18 (2002) and Novak (2008).
19 4 For an excellent review of the literature, see Van Der Zwan (2014).
20 5 A notable exception is Eisner (2011).
21
22
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