Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies

The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe that the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive convergent forces such as tertiarization new technologies or globalization all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second more sociological and more institutional look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What as a result stands out is postindustrial diversity not convergence. Macroscopic global trends are undoubtedly powerful yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions by the kind of welfare regime that some generations ago was put in place. It is however especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that now are invalid. Hence to better grasp what drives today''s economy we must begin with its social foundations.