Regulation Theory

The State of the Art

Robert Boyer, Yves Saillard

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134559961
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Negocios y empresa
• Categoría: Negocios en general

Robert Boyer and Yves Sailard's Theorie de la Regulation introduces the Francophone public to one of the most important new currents in social science of the past half-century. This long-awaited translation will help broaden its impact still further.
Regulation Theory focuses on the structural features of a given model and has helped enliven the examination of core economic concepts.

1 Introduction

Robert Boyer

Régulation theory has encountered two main obstacles to achieving widespread international recognition. The first is a purely semantic difficulty: in British and American texts, written in English, the French term régulation is confused with ‘regulation’ (réglementation in French); furthermore, as a result of conservative deregulation strategies, English usage of the term ‘regulation’ has experienced a revival. However, régulation theory is not concerned with this area of investigation at all. While régulation theory originated in France, it was subsequently enriched by studies of many other countries, and was then faced with a major difficulty in the translation of its founding concept. In the words of Michel Aglietta, one of the founding fathers of régulation theory, it involves ‘the analysis of the way in which transformations of social relations create new economic and non-economic forms, organised in structures that reproduce a determining structure, the mode of production’. In short, régulation theory offers an analysis of capitalism and its transformations, which is entirely the opposite of the purely microeconomic approach of regulation (in the English sense), concerned with the optimum type of control for natural monopolies and collective services by public authorities. After reading this collection of essays the reader will undoubtedly understand this major difference.

But this linguistic obstacle is not the only impediment to the dissemination of régulation theory. The second difficulty is that in practice English language readers have had access to only a few texts, which were already outdated, on the basis of which they made their critiques, which were often apt, but which did not take into account subsequent developments in research. To put it in the simplest terms, régulation theory proposed an interpretation of growth in the post-Second World War period which was based on the instituting of an unprecedented regime: Fordism. A series of misunderstandings and ill-founded critiques have subsequently arisen which this book seeks to clarify and refute.

An oft-cited theory, based on an unfamiliar body of work

Régulation theory is commonly criticised on account of its functionalism, its exclusive reference to Fordism, its limited capacity to analyse crises, inadequate treatment of politics and inability to specify what exactly post- Fordism entails. All these criticisms arise from a purely partial access to the large body of research that has been carried out internationally following the first generation of research. While this collection of essays offers a response to these objections, it is nevertheless important to address these sources of misunderstanding in the context of this introduction.

Is régulation theory a functionalist theory? This is to misconstrue the central question for regulationist research, which, in fact, is constantly involved in an examination of geographical and historical variations in the institutional arrangements that define capitalist economies. The central issue for régulation theory is the viability of a set of institutionalised compromises when there is no a priori reason why they should define a stable accumulation regime.

Is Fordism the only issue for the theory? This question confuses an important theoretical result with founding concepts, methods or ability to explain and interpret a range of phenomena far wider than economic growth during the 1960s. The breadth of the conceptual and methodological research presented in this book should convince readers of the need to modify this opinion. This is particularly the case given that many more results have been produced over a long period by a second and even third generation of research.

Is régulation theory a conciliatory analysis of perpetual capitalism, since it would be without contradiction? Not at all, given that the concept of Fordism emerges from observation of the limits of the post-war growth regime at the time when it entered a structural crisis. In more general terms, all accumulation regimes and modes of régulation are affected by a series of disequilibria and conflicts that eventually destabilise them. The theory’s relevance does not derive from an analysis of stabilised regimes, but rather from its capacity to detect and anticipate probable sources of crisis: régulation and crises are linked as intimately as two sides of a coin.

It is claimed that régulation studies provide mere descriptions, which although interesting, have no theoretical consequences. This is to forget the starting point of this approach, namely extended critical consideration of Marxist and macroeconomic theories (Kaleckian rather than Keynesian) in the light of the lessons of economic history in the long term as well as in the context of contemporary transformations. It also underestimates its contributions to institutional and historical macroeconomics, presented in Part III. The results obtained are worthy of comparison with the results of most contemporary major research programmes.

‘But no post-Fordism has emerged!’. . . and the theory is therefore false, claim other critics. This grants this approach the same normative status as neoclassical theory. Yet the interest of régulation theory is precisely its ability to determine many different accumulation regimes and potential modes of development in response to political conflicts and compromises with regard to results which are difficult to anticipate from the perspective of pure economic theory. The variety of national trajectories, discussed in Part V, confirms this general hypothesis, while changes in relevant levels of régulation (sector, region, zones of economic integration, the global system) have become the increasingly frequent object of research studies, the most important of which are presented in Part IV.

But there remains a criticism that is still more devastating and to which this book aims to respond, namely that régulation theory does not contribute anything new in regard to contemporary developments in neoclassical theory, particularly in the area of research into the role of institutions.

An antidote to the abstraction of contemporary neoclassical research

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed unprecedented developments in methodological individualism, starting in the field of economics and then propagated throughout most related disciplines, including sociology, political science and even social and economic history (cliometrics). Analysis of the institutions of capitalism attracted the attention, for example, of transaction cost theory. It should, however, be recognised that methodological individualism is better suited to defining local organisations and institutions than to analysing the founding institutions structuring contemporary society. It is not easy to grasp the dynamics of an economic system on the basis of bilateral interactions between individuals divested of all social and political substance. Yet this was the somewhat Promethean project adopted by many in the social sciences. In contrast, régulation theory adopts a well-tempered ‘hol-individualism’, on the basis of which it considers collective actors and institutions, which are viewed as preexistent – in other words, formed by a historical past. It is thereby able to define the result of interactions between individuals who are always socialised through a complex network of norms, customs, rules, beliefs and membership of many different groups.

A second striking tendency is that of basing economic science solely on axioms: studies in this field must always remain connected with the three important founding hypotheses of pure economics, an area of research which prides itself on its self-defined boundary and its complete separation from related social sciences.

The first axiom is that all human actions obey a universal principle of rationality. In the field of economics the fiction of a homo economicus guarantees the universality of this type of behaviour. Thus fundamentally, all economies subscribe to the same model as a result of the invariability in the basic unit of the homo economicus. No wonder empirical analyses, such as international comparisons, run up against difficulties of interpretation! But the concept of irrationality due to a cultural residue, a sort of archaism, rapidly removes this lacuna from neoclassical theory. In doing so the theory loses much of its explanatory power, since it turns out that it is a general theory but that it can never be applied precisely nor falsified.

The conjunction of a series of individual behaviour patterns is rendered compatible through recourse to a second axiom – the concept of equilibrium – which describes the viability of a society, or, rather, an economy, composed of units that are moved only by individual interests, understood in the strict sense. Here we find an ex post compatibility in a series of rational calculations that constantly measure the costs and benefits of each decision. In contemporary economic research, the hypothesis of rationality is extended to the calculation of projection over a distant long term, sometimes as far as to descendants. From this point on, the intertemporal equilibrium thus obtained eliminates all historicity or event, since in every period individuals merely fulfil the optimum plan determined in the initial moment, give or take a few random perturbations. It is ironic that this theory, which assumes a complete knowledge of interactions and thus of economic mechanisms, reached its apogee in the 1970s, just when leading economists and the best informed experts proved incapable of making the slightest forecast without it being immediately belied. The kinematics of the rational economic mechanism replaced the density of historical time to the point where its dependence on axioms became an additional obstacle to understanding those highly troubled times marking the entry of the Fordist regime of growth into crisis.

Finally, in these theories economic agents interact through the sole intermediary of a group of interdependent markets. It is as if contemporary neoclassical economists take an ideal, proposed by Walras and Pareto in a context of pure economics, at face value. In this theory, the law, organisations, the state, trade associations, unions and collective conventions are merely dross signalling various imperfections that are responsible for most of the ills from which economies suffer, for example, unemployment, inflation or the public budget deficit. It is no surprise that the common recommendation is to dissolve these institutions so as to reduce them to markets or contracts based on a principal/agent model. The Anglo-Saxon theory of optimum regulation (as opposed to régulation) is not so very different from this. However, it is the exact opposite of French and European régulation theory, which deals with the dynamics of an economy with a wealth of institutions and organisations that do indeed interact through markets, but which are by no means limited to this type of interaction.

If we consider any theory holding the three preceding axioms a neoclassical theory,* it would be quite wrong to claim that régulation theory contributes nothing new to an understanding of contemporary economies. (Asterisks refer to the glossary on pp. 334–45.)

The four pillars of régulation theory

The intellectual dominance of neoclassical theory is not inevitable. It is possible to construct alternative theories that are more respectful of the limits of rationality and the embedded nature of economic phenomena in societies endowed with different social relations from the structural transformations that have permanently influenced the periods of expansion and crisis in capitalism. Régulation theory is one such alternative. It has sought to develop a set of concepts and methods that permit the analysis of structural change as well as periods of rapid and regular growth.

This research programme has been gradually established on the basis of four founding hypotheses.

1. The field of analysis must be reconstructed so as to constitute relevant units integrating economic logic, the preservation of the social bond and the importance of politics in the transitory solutions to the conflicts that emerge constantly in all socio-economic orders. Régulation theory seeks to benefit from the contributions of related disciplines such as history, sociology and political science, from which it is willing to draw some conclusions as working hypotheses.
2. Régulation theory offers precise definitions of the times and places where it is legitimate to postulate the adequacy of these basic concepts for the phenomena for which they account. The general relevance of the theory is not derived from an axiomatic source, it comes instead from the gradual generalisation of its basic concepts, tools and results over long historical periods and in increasingly diverse geographical areas. This book presents the state of régulation theory after almost three decades of research based on progressively wider times, places and issues.
3. A third founding hypothesis is the fundamental historicity of the process of development in capitalist economies. In the capitalist mode of production, organisational, social and technological innovation become a permanent feature, creating a process whereby socioeconomic relations experience transformations that are sometimes slow and controlled but at other times brutal, beyond the analysis and control of contemporaries. While the hypothesis of rational expectations makes the consequences of decisions to be taken tomorrow present in the here and now, a historical approach sees the future as depending on largely unintentional strategies in the present. The desire of pure economic theory is to be founded on a break with the dross of history, but as a process, history sifts through the relevance of economic theories . . . and very few pass the test. The challenge offered by régulation theory is thus to historicise economic theories, for theories are the daughters of history and not vice versa.
4. 4 Neoclassical theory makes use of many ad hoc hypotheses to account for unemployment at one moment, at another for technical change, uncertainties in the construction of Europe, or reform difficulties in Soviet-type economies. On the other hand, régulation theory tries to explain as many of the stylised facts that emerged from the 1950s to the early twenty first century as possible using the same set of hypotheses. A paradox then arises: régulation theory is more unified and comprehensive in its construction and results than neoclassical theory; by contrast, while it is methodologically homogeneous, the conclusions of neoclassical theory are thoroughly contradictory.

A theory for troubled times

What are the main questions that must...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: A Review of Régulation Theory
• Part II: The Five Institutional Forms Revisited
• Part III: Macroeconomic Dynamics and Structural Change
• Part IV: New Spaces of Régulation
• Part V: National Trajectories
• Part VI: Future Prospects for Régulation Theory
• Glossary
• Bibliography