Markets, institutions, and politics under globalization - Industrial adjustments in the United States and in Germany in the 1990s

Abstract

By investigating U.S. and German industrial adjustments, in particular, the dynamic process of transformation in the U.S. and German automotive industries, this article seeks to reconceptualize the market and politics. Although the U.S. and German automotive industries showed a strikingly similar pattern of industrial adjustments, such as deintegration of in-house production, lean production, and closely interactive market relations, these seemingly converging markets differ from the neoliberal paradigm. Although the U.S. and German markets diverge in solving conflicts emerging in the newly established markets, their differences are not predetermined by particular cultures or institutions found in each country. This article claims that market rationality and market governance are not predetermined by an abstract, universally relevant market rationality or by cultural and institutional heritages, rather that the market rationality and its governance are continuously constituted by agents' discursive politics.