Regulation theory and post-socialist transformation
pp. 305-333
in: Agnes Labrousse, Jean-Daniel Weisz (eds), Institutional economics in France and Germany, Berlin, Springer, 2001Abstract
The Regulation approach, developed for two decades by a group of French scholars, can be defined as an institutional and evolutionary research programme focused on economic change in a historical, theoretical and comparative perspective. The main works have been devoted to capitalist economies, but in the 1980s a number of contributions addressed the problem of socialist systems. During the 1990s, in common with all economic and social theories, the Regulation approach has faced the challenge of understanding the unprecedented experience of post-socialist transformation. Its contributions in this field have shown interesting parallels with other theories or schools of thought that go beyond the traditional orthodoxy/heterodoxy split. Post-socialist transformation is a process of major discontinuous institutional and systemic change, to some extent similar to the historical precedents of war, revolution or major social crises. But it represents a radical new phenomenon, analysis of which should revitalize current theories of economic systems and of the evolution of capitalism.