Creative Reconstructions

The role of multilateral institutions in the shaping of global capitalism.

Orfeo Fioretos is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University.

Comparing developments in industrial relations, and innovation, financial, and corporate governance systems in the UK, Germany, and France across six decades, Fioretos demonstrates how multilateral cooperation was initially designed to buttress existing economic practices, while changes in multilateral governance in the l970s and l980s were accomplished by reserving some exemptions for key national economic actors. Most recently, there has been a convergence in financial systems and corporate governance that was embraced by domestic firms most implicated by such reforms. With a clear, complex argument grounded in formal analysis, this nuanced examination will best serve those with some theoretical facility in political economy.... Summing up: Highly recommended.

David Soskice, Duke University and University of Oxford:

Orfeo Fioretos's book is path-breaking and highly ambitious. It is the first serious, coherent analysis of how governments in Europe’s largest economies build coalitions within the business community to reconfigure effective models of growth and competitiveness in the context of greater multilateral cooperation. Spanning six decades, this is the most impressive book I have read that integrates the heavily nationally biased comparative political economy literature and the international political economy literature devoted to economic multilateralism.

Steven Weber, University of California, Berkeley:

Creative Reconstructions is a masterful work of disciplined theoretical imagination and historical rigor. In the second half of the twentieth century, Western Europe experimented boldly with new institutional models to integrate domestic, global, and supranational forces of change. Orfeo Fioretos captures the deep politics that drove these experiments and helped shape their outcomes in Britain, France, and Germany. Creative Reconstructions sheds critical light on some of the most important political-economy choices that advanced and emerging economies will face in the coming decade.