Internationalization and Economic Institutions: Comparing the European Experience

This book examines when, how and why internationalization affects national economic institutions. It confronts questions at the heart of debates in political economy and comparative politics: What does internationalization of markets mean? Who are its carriers in domestic arenas? Through which mechanisms does it affect decisions about national institutional reform? What are institutional outcomes in the face of internationalization?

The book responds to its questions by looking at key economic institutions in five strategic sectors: securities trading, telecommunications, electricity, airlines, and postal services. It compares across four countries that represent different 'varieties of capitalism', namely Britain, France, Germany and Italy, over the period between 1965 and 2005. Thus it combines cross-national, historical and cross-sectoral comparisons.

The author distinguishes technological and economic forms of internationalization from policy forms, notably decisions in powerful overseas nations and supranational regulation. He argues that, contrary to expectations, the first was met with institutional inertia. In contrast, policy forms of internationalization, namely reforms in the US and European Union regulation, played significant roles in undermining long-standing national institutions. The book explores the mechanisms whereby policy forms of internationalization were influential by looking at the strategies, coalitions and resources of key actors in national arenas. It also shows that institutional outcomes were surprising: all four countries, albeit through different routes, adopted increasingly similar reforms of economic institutions--privatization, the ending of monopolies and delegation to independent regulatory agencies.

The book rejects the view that technological and economic forms of internationalization drive institutional change. It suggests that policy forms of internationalization are more important because they become part of domestic decision making and aid the reform of well-established national institutions.

View More In Comparative.

Or Browse Our Catalog.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is not generally regarded an ethical thinker. He is typically taken to be preoccupied with themes in the philosophy of language and mind that are presumed to be external to or independent of ethics. But there has, in recent years,...

We are now only few months away from the third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This collection of papers has been made in order to anticipate to the fundamental changes that will be brought about by this step in the making of the Euro...

This volume illuminates and critically assesses Paul A. Samuelson's voluminous and groundbreaking contributions to the field of economics. The volume includes contributions from eminent scholars, including 6 Nobel Laureates, covering the extraordinar...

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of academic interest in Adam Smith. As a consequence, a large number of PhD dissertations on Smith have been written by international scholars - in different languages, and in many diverse disciplines, inc...

This book is an exercise in applied economics that, for the first time, brings together and combines a historical and institutional approach to the development of oil and gas activities in the US Gulf of Mexico with the statistical and analytical mat...

This is a collection of 21 articles that deal with the frontiers in financial theory of economics. Most aspects of finance are covered - domestic corporate and investment issues as well as questions and problems of topical value in international fina...

Increase in life expectancy is arguably the most remarkable by-product of modern economic growth. In the last 30 years we have gained roughly 2.5 years of longevity every decade, both in Europe and the United States. Successfully managing aging and l...