Abstract

Comparative political economy research of the last three decades was based on the analysis of supply side institutions of advanced industrialized countries – the so-called Varieties of Capitalism perspective. A new edited volume by Baccaro et al. (2022) complements the approach by a new demand side perspective. It grows out of a fine-grained analysis of the deregulation of labour markets and loss of power of trade unions in the Western world. While conceptualizing the role of demand for economic growth enriches our understanding, only a research program that combines the demand and supply side will fulfil the expectations of explaining modern economies from a comparative political economy perspective.