ABSTRACT
We may summarise in three propositions the principal results of this book:
Japanese capitalism has profoundly changed since the beginning of the 1980s, to the point that it is possible, since the early 2000s, to discern a break with the earlier model. The chronology is important from the viewpoint of economic history: the turning point did not occur under Koizumi’s administration (2001–6) but before, as shown by the evolution of the diversity of firms and key components of institutional change. The changes concern the three main dimensions that we have distinguished as constitutive of a given form of capitalism and whose analysis should be articulated in order to understand the nature of institutional change: the organisation of firms, forms of co-ordination and the social compromise. They also concern other dimensions such as the education system, the innovation system, or the international regime.
These changes stem less from responses to challenges posed by globalisation, by a new wave of technical progress or by the crisis, but rather by the implementation, in a progressive and non-linear fashion, of neo-liberal reforms since the beginning of the 1980s.
This transformation of Japanese capitalism does not signify convergence towards American or European capitalisms. After an idiosyncratic trajectory, Japan still constitutes a pole of capitalist diversity.
