COHERENCE, DIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION OF CAPITALISMS: The Institutional Complementarity Hypothesis

What are the forces that make relatively and transitorily coherent the institutional configurations of capitalism? In response to the literature on the variety of capitalisms, the article investigates the relative explanatory power of various hypotheses: institutional complementarity, institutional hierarchy, coevolution, simple compatibility or isomorphism. Compatibility is too often confused with complementarity and complementarity is frequently an ex post recognition, rarely an ex ante design. Both hybridization and endometabolism are the driving forces in the transformation of institutional configurations. Uncertainty and the existence of some slack in the coupling of various institutions are key features that call for the mixing of various methodologies in order to detect complementarities. This framework is then used in order to analyse the degree of transformation of German industrial relations under the pressure of shareholder value. A second case study shows that three distinct institutional complementarities are at the origin of the more successful national economies since the 90s. Thus institutional diversity is being recreated and the existence of complementarities play a role in this process.