ABSTRACT
Over the last several decades there has been a liberalization of global markets for the exchange of goods, services and labour, allowing for higher levels of global economic interaction. During the ‘Golden Age’ of post-war growth in the 1950s and 1960s, capitalism was conceptualized within a national framework, and governments were regarded as having the capacity to manage national economic outcomes to achieve particular social and economic goals, including full employment and social protection. Social scientists are now grappling to understand the implications of economic globalization for national political-institutional frameworks and varieties of capitalism (Axtmann 2004; Howell 2003; Putzell 2005; Radice 2000).
