Towards Networked Varieties of Capitalism: Embracing Supply-side Complexity As a Post-pandemic Research Agenda

Abstract

Globalization suggests the convergence of national markets into a single capitalist system. Yet, evidence highlights the distinctiveness of different capitalisms based on firm, industry, and government-business relations. Do these varieties remain distinct or converge? I conceptually connect the rich descriptions of Varieties of Capitalism literature to social network analysis, proposing a new research agenda to explore contemporary economies’ breadth and complexity, examining their structural transformations. An empirical section applies this approach to 76 shareholder networks at the country level from 2007 to 2019, using network density, finding conditional divergence and increased variance in behavioral outcomes beyond Western-centric categories.