Diminishing Returns

Book excerpt: A set of state of the art empirical analyses at the country, regional, and global level that work from a new theoretical framework that analyzes the politics of growth and stagnation. As highlighted by the recent debate on 'secular stagnation,' economic growth has slowed down considerably, and this has given rise to a host of new problems, from financial instability to the collapse of mainstream parties. What happens when growththe main mechanism of capitalist legitimationis harder to come by and less broadly shared? And how should we think about capitalist diversity in the context of global stagnation? In Diminishing Returns, Lucio Baccaro, Mark Blyth, and Jonas Pontusson address these questions by bringing together a number of comparative and international political economists with expertise across many different countries and regions. Going beyond the methodological nationalism common in most comparative research, each author departs from a common theoretical framework, the Growth Model Perspective, and contributes to develop it further. The outcome is a new theoretical framework to help social scientists, policymakers, and opinion makers, understand the politics of growth and stagnation, which offers state of the art empirical analyses at the country, regional, and global level.