ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, authored by Juliusz Gardawski and Ryszard Rapacki, outlines the conceptual framework and a general theoretical background of the research on comparative capitalism. The authors emphasize close links of this line of research with the tradition of new institutional economics (NIE) and new economic sociology (NES), and explain the key concepts inherent to these core components of the new institutionalism (such as institutions, institutional change, institutional complementarity and institutional comparative advantage) which are instrumental for the present research. They also make a distinction between an “ideal-typical” and “empirical” or “average-typical” definition of the core concept in this book that is the model of capitalism. In the historical part of this chapter, they highlight the intellectual inspirations of Max Weber and the early pioneers of comparative capitalism studies and provide an overview of the contributions of the contemporary antecedents of this research current in the second half of 20th century, such as Andrew Shonfield, Michel Albert, Vivian Schmidt and Gøsta Esping-Andersen.
