The Regulation Approach

The analysis of economic categories such as commodities, money, capital, accumulation, the state, and the world market and their corresponding social relationships suggests that societal coherence in capitalism cannot be taken for granted. On the contrary, major and minor crises and, in their wake, social disintegration are always a possibility. When approaching the dialectics of continuity, crisis, and change, the abstract features of what Marx called the capitalist mode of production appear to have remained remarkably constant, while significant changes seem to have taken place beneath this level. Despite considerable differences in their particular theoretical lines of argument, authors such as Polanyi, Schumpeter, Wallerstein or Kondratieff are united in the hypothesis of a non-continuous development of capitalism, one that proceeds in a series of qualitative breaks. This is also the starting point of the ‘regulation approach’. This chapter deals with the general features of this theoretical movement (2.1), before introducing the concept of Fordism as the predominant growth model of the post-war era (2.2). Using the regulation theoretical literature, we raise the issue of how both regime of accumulation and the mode of regulation were intertwined to enable such a long-lasting period of growth and prosperity. Thereafter, we consider the debate on the crisis of Fordism with special emphasis on the changing conditions for policy making and the articulation of growth strategies at the national level (2.3).