ABSTRACT
What has been the nature of Japanese capitalism of the 50 years of the post-war era, or the 25 years following the first oil shock, and how is it changing today? Régulation theory and its advocates seek to identify the Japanese system’s mode of development, and then to explain the nature of the crises it is encountering and the transformations it is undergoing. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to identify the major institutional forms that regulate the mode of development, determine the nature of the overarching mode régulation that they create, and, finally, identify the regimes of accumulation or growth that they generate. As a result it is possible to identify the nature of the crisis afflicting Japan, at the end of the 1990s, and determine the means by which it might be resolved.
