This article investigates, based on in-depth interviews and mail surveys, the different ways liberal market regimes are constituted by looking at two small market societies, the U.S. and German automotive parts markets. In a situation in which neoliberal paradigm is being challenged and prior norms about contracts and contractual relations do not work either, this article explores how different conceptions of fairness and divergent market regimes are constituted. This article claims that divergent market regimes result from different kinds of problem-solving practices in a novel context among reflexive agents-public deliberation versus isolated dyadic deliberation of conflicts.
By analyzing how Korea has upgraded its industrial capabilities in the course of corporate globalization, this article holds that some versions of developmental state work better in the globalization process. Globalizing national corporations, neoliberal optimism notwithstanding, does not necessarily result in upgrading domestic innovation capabilities. In the United States, free-market firms may benefit through offshoring, but they create holes in the industrial linkages or industrial commons at home, enfeebling US capability for innovation. By contrast, the Korean government successfully upgraded domestic firms’ innovation capabilities and reduced the possibility of deindustrialization in the course of globalization by moving from classical developmentalism to a new form of development based on inclusive and collaborative networks. Korea’s earlier classical developmentalism focused on mobilization of physical capital, funneling it exclusively to a few firms.
This paper investigates how and why the Japanese model has undergone changes in the context of its internationalization, during which foreign countries, particularly the U.S. and Germany, adopted Japanese methods, departing from their own traditional models at the turn of the twentieth century. By examining the dynamicprocesses of these transformations in national models, this paper critically reviews prevalent paradigms of neoliberalism and institutionalism, proposing an alternative of “mutual learning by reflexive agents.” By exploring the dynamic processes of the Japanese model’s internationalization and transformation, in which the Japanese model fell into crisis and underwent transformation in the changed context of international competition caused by the internationalization of the Japanese model, this paper proposes a new conception of “mutual learning by reflexive agents” in the context of international competition, in which agents, inspired by foreign competitors, critically reconsider their own institutions and, in turn, generate a new divergence in the process of creative learning.
In exploring why and to what extent the Japanese model of participatory employment relations has changed at the turn of the century, this article criticizes prevalent paradigms of political economy, specifically the paradigms of the neoliberals and the institutionalists, instead proposing a theoretical alternative, that of agents' reflexivity in international competition. Contrary to the institutionalist arguments for the path-dependent persistence of a national model, the concepts of lifetime employment and seniority in Japan have changed from being sources of competitiveness to objects and conditions for reform. Additionally, in contrast to the neoliberals' expectations based on the universal relevance of liberal markets, the Japanese adjustments do not converge towards the American liberal market model, but instead generate new divergences inspired but not determined by foreign competitors.
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