Abstract

This paper takes a view of the history of "Stato e Mercato" as a journal, reconstructing how different topics and issues have been studied over time. What has been specific to "Stato e Mercato" is a sociological and political science approach to political economy that considers the role of both political institutions and socio-cultural factors in explaining the economic action and phenomena. Over time "Stato e Mercato" has focused on different issues: from the autonomous impact of the system of interest representation on public policies to local development, varieties of capitalism, the functioning of the welfare state and the social foundations of economic innovation. In the early 1980s the approach of "Stato e Mercato" was innovative because it used a comparative method and, in relation to the Italian debate, tried to influence the scientific debate in economic sociology and political science, as well as the internal debate in the political culture, in particular in that of the left-wing.