Colin Crouch

• University of Warwick

The discipline of economics has long dominated the role of the social sciences in public policy. While this can partly be explained by the superior sophistication of economic theory, this is in itself partly the result of the tendency of economists to ignore complex variables that stand outside its own sphere. A number of policy examples are discus...

We are on the way to post-democracy – but where are we today? This article discusses the post-democracy thesis against the background of recent social problems such as the Corona pandemic, the rise of right-wing populism and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. On the one hand, these problems indicate that Western democracies have taken a furt...

Rising inflation and a wave of strikes during 2022 have aroused echoes of the 1970s. In this article, experts from the fields of economics, sociology and social policy consider what has changed, what remains the same, and what the lessons might be � with a notable degree of agreement. Raising wages, particularly for the lower-paid groups in the pub...

The conviction that has prevailed in the West for decades, that capitalism is the most efficient economic system and at the same time a natural ally of democracy, has been increasingly called into question since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008. The symptoms of secular stagnation and the worsening of social inequality are leading to grow...

The conviction that has prevailed in the West for decades, that capitalism is the most efficient economic system and at the same time a natural ally of democracy, has been increasingly called into question since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008. The symptoms of secular stagnation and the worsening of social inequality are leading to grow...

The conviction that has prevailed in the West for decades, that capitalism is the most efficient economic system and at the same time a natural ally of democracy, has been increasingly called into question since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008. The symptoms of secular stagnation and the worsening of social inequality are leading to grow...

The COVID pandemic has demonstrated the weakness of neoliberalism by showing the importance of public services, workers’ need for security, and a heightened awareness of collective interdependence. Economic theory recognises the deficiencies of depending on market forces by accepting certain grounds for public intervention, including public and col...

The discipline of economics has long dominated the role of the social sciences in public policy. While this can partly be explained by the superior sophistication of economic theory, this is in itself partly the result of the tendency of economists to ignore complex variables that stand outside its own sphere. A number of policy examples are discus...

Seit der 2008 ausgebrochenen Weltfinanzkrise wird die Frage nach der Zukunftsfähigkeit des Kapitalismus in wissenschaftlichen und öffentlichen Diskussionen gestellt. Der zunehmend ungehinderte Versuch, das soziale Leben, die natürliche Umwelt und die demokratische Politik an die Erfordernisse privater Kapitalakkumulation anzupassen, lässt lang pazi...

Governments worldwide have sought to introduce greater choice and competition as mechanisms to improve the quality of education provision and outcomes. However, there is considerable cross-national variation in education policy, particularly regarding the role of local government. To explain such differences, this article focuses on recent reforms...

The transition to post-industrial society has reduced some inequalities, especially those of gender and the classes divisions of industrial society, but is associated with its own characteristic inequalities, relating to financialization and globalization, the emergence of particular high- and low-income sectors and occupations, the decline of both...

Ridare respiro alla democrazia europea trasnazionale. Un dialogo fra Colin Crouch e Tommaso Vitale. Colin Crouch ha appena pubblicato un libro di straordinaria importanza: Identità perdute. Globalizzazione e nazionalismo (Laterza, 2019). Professore emerito all’Università di Warwick, Colin Crouch è uno dei nomi più importante della sociologia compar...

Ideas developed by the social democratic left have been brought together in Prosperity and Justice. Contributors from a wide spectrum of backgrounds have contributed to a new post neoliberal consensus. More attention needs to be paid to the global level of policy making. International capacity to act is declining just as the need for it grows. Poli...

Rethinking Society for the 21st Century - by International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) July 2018

In this chapter Colin Crouch pursues a social democratic approach to social order and equity in contrast to the relentless market nostrums of neoliberalism and the over-centralised solutions of state socialism. It addresses the vexed question of which social group, groups or movements, are best positioned to act as the key agent or agents to secure...

Social democracy is in danger of the fate once suffered by British liberalism: to represent the core consensus of much of public life, but to be seen as somehow increasingly marginal to it. Neoliberalism enjoys an ideological hegemony, but no government can ever long pursue its true strategy of unregulated market forces. At the other extreme, of th...

In this collection, innovative and eminent social and policy analysts, including Colin Crouch, Anna Coote, Jeremy Gilbert, Grahame Thompson and Ted Benton, challenge the failing but still dominant ideology and policies of neo-liberalism. The book suggests extending and deepening democracy and participation into economic and cultural institutions fo...

Union membership has declined in almost all European and other advanced economies, though in many cases the membership that remains reflects overall changes in the gender and occupational structure of the economy. Meanwhile, in most countries unions’ incorporation in governing institutions of the labour market has remained stable or risen. Union st...

The three great Western political traditions (conservatism, liberalism, social democracy) incorporate three of the four possible combinations of the core political axes: traditional, unchanging authority versus the challenge of change, and egalitarianism versus inegalitarianism. The fourth possibility—egalitarian conservatism—has appeared in variou...

Die öffentliche Diskussion über das Verhältnis von Demokratie und Kapitalismus vergisst häufig, dass es einen gesellschaftlichen Raum jenseits von Wirtschaft und politischem System gibt, obwohl eng mit diesen verbunden: den Raum der Zivilgesellschaft, in dem soziale Bewegungen und viele andere Institutionen existieren. Diese Institutionen sind ents...

Economic globalisation and its diverse effects are producing new social and political identities that depart sharply from those forged in the struggles of the past. Colin Crouch presents a guide to the shifting conflict axes within western societies, and their likely consequences.

Rising inequality constitutes a threat to democracy. It is beyond the role of economic theory itself to encompass this, as damage done to democracy by capitalist behaviour may seem to be an externality for economic theory, but it threatens to internalize itself in important ways. The relationship between capitalism and democracy is delicate and com...

Events since I published my book Post-democracy in 2004 suggest that democracy continues to decline in effectiveness in those parts of the world where it has been most strongly established. The global financial crisis, the consequent euro crisis, the likely shape of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and growing evidence of the...

Using case-study data, the article examines the contention that protective labour market policies and trade union action are responsible for growing divisions between labour market ‘insiders and outsiders’. Case studies are reported on developments in collective bargaining in the hospitals and engineering sectors from seven western and central Euro...

In this illuminating book Colin Crouch examines the diverse approaches presented by advanced societies in their attempts to resolve a central dilemma of a capitalist economy: the need to combine buoyant mass consumption with insecure workers, subject to, and responsive to, the fluctuations of an unregulated global economy. He demonstrates that the...

Colin Crouch, who first diagnosed and described our ‘post-democratic’ malaise a decade ago, assesses the strength of recent democratic interventions in the previously closed-shop TTIP negotiations as a reaction to deepening crises of popular mistrust and political capture in European and western democratic national polities.

The Debtor State - StreeckWolfgang, Gekaufte Zeit: Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus (Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2013) - Volume 54 Issue 3 - Colin Crouch

Neoliberalism is not as popular as its opponents seem so much to fear; in democratic politics it nearly always hides behind other ideologies and policy types, as its essential message that we should pursue no goals that cannot be achieved through the market is intrinsically unattractive to the majority of people. Its power lies in the wealth of its...

Modern capitalist economies usually require some kind of compromise between capital's twin needs for flexible employees but confident consumers. Engaged in this process are different forms of labour market governance, and the different levels of strength with which trade unions can challenge the unilateral power of employers. These patterns are ass...

In seinem Buch Jenseits des Neoliberalismus rechnete Colin Crouch unlängst mit der neoliberalen Wirtschaftspolitik ab und plädierte für mehr soziale Gerechtigkeit. In Markt und Moral spricht er sich nun klar für eine freie Marktwirtschaft aus, die durch staatliche und zivilgesellschaftliche Maßnahmen reguliert wird. Im Gespräch mit Peter Engelmann...

The author uses the theory of the 'Great Transformation' of the industrialisation of England developed by Karl Polanyi to describe the current situation in Europe. There is a strong marketisation of the economy and also of social life, but what is missing is the social policy that needs to accompany this process, if there are not to be major proble...

This chapter tests the utility of dominant typologies of modern capitalism in accounting for different patterns of relationship among characteristics of industrial relations systems, the regulation of conditions of employment, and labour-related social spending. It further relates these variables to indicators of economic 'success' in the provision...

The history of sociology can be likened to the history of the Habsburg Empire, which claimed to have legitimate sovereignty over the whole of Europe but eventually became a discontented jumble of margins. In the same way, Talcott Parsons tried to claim that sociology was the empress of the social sciences; economics, political science, and the othe...

Recent years have seen a decline in many aspects of collective industrial relations in advanced industrial societies. There has been a clear decline in tradeunion membership, and an even bigger decline of employers' associations. Changes in collective bargaining have been more subtle: a slight decline in the coverage of collective agreements and a...

Once just a slogan used by corporate PR departments, the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has now become a serious business for many firms and a major object of academic research. It is also a field replete with disagreement and diversity of opinion. Some corporations try to solve these dilemmas by projecting an image that is 'responsi...

This introduction provides a broad historical overview of how different institutions (religious, political, civil) have claimed responsibility for collective and public goals and how corporations are now increasingly seen as a social location for the assertion of value claims. The combination of the business case for CSR with this new interest in t...

Paradoxically, the rise of neoliberal economic thinking and its rejection of concepts of both state intervention in the economy and the pursuit of purposes by business that are not directly related to profit maximization, has been accompanied by intensified social criticism of business and concerns about sustainability. The article explores the imp...

A major symbol of German social democracy’s rejection of state-centred socialism during the 1950s was the slogan: So viel Markt wie möglich; so viel Staat wie nötig (‘As much market as possible; as much state as necessary’). Like all slogans, it begged important questions: what constitutes the possible, and what the necessary? And it is doubtful wh...

The eighteen scholars whose obituaries are published in this book were Fellows of the British Academy (FBA) and were outstanding in their fields. The Fellows remembered for their academic achievements and leadership are: Frank Barlow, John Arundel Barnes, Gerald Allen Cohen, Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Robert Arthur Donkin,...

Introduction. The historical achievement of twentieth-century social democracy was to represent the interests of the working classes of democratic industrial societies within a capitalist economy through a particular combination of social policy, redistributive taxation and business regulation. Social democrats remained suspicious of the inequaliti...

At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of prese...

At the 21st SASE Conference in Paris, in July 2009, a group of political economy and industrial relations scholars discussed whether the current legitimation crisis of financial capitalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally. Following are an introduction by the panel organizer, Lucio Baccaro, and revised versions of prese...

Jetzt haben wir die Lösung des großen Rätsels entdeckt, warum amerikanische bzw. britische Verbraucher so viel mehr Selbstvertrauen als die Deutschen bekundeten, wenn ihre Stellen weniger sicher waren und ihre Wohlfahrtsstaaten weniger Stültze gaben. Im amerikanischen Fall kam noch hinzu, dass der normale Arbeiter keine jährliche Lohnerhöhung erwar...

Les villes moyennes à la recherche de nouvelles sources de dynamisme font face à une tâche ardue. Il est difficile de susciter le genre d’évolution dynamique de la haute technologie à laquelle toute ville souhaiterait être associée. Par définition, les entreprises innovantes sont risquées et peuvent échouer. Par ailleurs, elles ne sont guère suscep...

THE ANTITHESIS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM which dominates political discussion of the welfare state and many other political issues confuses more than it illuminates. First, the individual of market liberal theory is a curious entity, existin solely as a disembodied unit in market transactions. Secondly, the ‘choice’ which is the means...

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Preface xiii CHAPTER ONE Problems of Institutional Analysis 1 CHAPTER TWO The Problem of Change 31 CHAPTER THREE The Problem of Mechanisms 62 CHAPTER FOUR The Problem of Ideas 90 CHAPTER FIVE The Problem of Globalization 124 CHAPTER SIX Where Do W Go from Here? 172 APPENDIX Analysis of Tax Levels and Structures...

Attempting to avoid the excessive embeddedness and path dependence considered to have been associated with many past forms of local economic development, authorities are increasingly likely to favour light and fragmented arrangements. Institutions are rarely allowed to have much power, and their structures are frequently subject of reorganisation,...

Debates surrounding institutional change have become increasingly central to Political Science, Management Studies, and Sociology, opposing the role of globalization in bringing about a convergence of national economies and institutions on one model to theories about ‘Varieties of Capitalism’. This book brings together a distinguished set of contri...

An important component of almost all neo-institutionalist analysis of national systems of economic organization-or any other identified level at which a system can be observed-is the construction of ensembles that link institutions in one area within a given social formation to those in another. However, as some other contributors to this volume de...