The French Regulation School established itself with the analysis of the era of Fordism, the post-Second World War period of mass production and mass consumption, and its crises. Regulation theory has developed a set of concepts, methods and models in conjunction with the long-term lessons of history and systematic comparative studies. It explains that the historically and geographically variable structure of each economy gives rise to its own economic and social cycles and crises. The modes of regulation vary in different countries and time periods because the economies are embedded in a dense network of social and political relations and institutions. Updated and translated from the bestselling Theorie de la Regulation: L'etat des savoirs , this book provides an exhaustive overview of the subject. It traces the theory and empirical developments, making them available to English language readers for the first time.
Since regulation was created in the 1970s, it has been continued to evolve in new directions including theories of state and money, macroeconomic formalisations of various growth regimes, sector-based analysis, future alternatives to Fordism and contribution to a general theory of institutions. This volume seeks to show that it is an active research programme adapted specifically to an analysis of a period with extensive structural transformations, political changes and dramatic crises. It proposes an ambitious programme about a fully-fledged, institutionally grounded and historically embedded economic theory. Almost forty specialists from a variety of disciplines and of European, American, Latin American and Japanese origin come together to provide concise chapters on each topic, including the basic concepts, principle results and current research areas.