STATE POWER AND CAPITAL: assessing Bob Jessop’s account of
the transition to the Schumpeterian workfare post-national
regime
Pedro Mendes Loureiro1
Abstract: We discuss the work of Bob Jessop, focusing on the transition he proposes to the contemporary state form – the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime (SWPR). After a brief presentation of the author’s account, we explore its main critiques and recent reformulations. We then consider
whether Jessop’s narrative resorts to economic determinism, structuralism or functionalism, as some
authors have indicated. We defend that while some traces of these might indeed be found, they can be
sidestepped by approaching the emergence of the SWPR as part of an ongoing research agenda. We
inally propose some changes to the latter, related to developing an explicitly evolutionary theoretical
framework, to the space that post-Fordism comprehends and to the articulation between diferent subtypes of post-Fordist social formations and accumulation strategies. A central point is not proposing
competing regimes of accumulation for a single space, but rather a single regime that articulates the
relevant forms of capital and is brought about by competing accumulation strategies.
Key words: Marxist state theory; contemporary political economy; strategic-relational approach; regulation approach; Bob Jessop.
Working Paper: please do not cite without permission.
1. Introduction
Bob Jessop, a well-known Marxist state theorist and political economist, has for long theorised
about post-Fordism and its state. Along over three decades of research, he has ofered a growingly
complex account of the emergence of contemporary political and economic forms, the fullest expression of which can be found in he future of the capitalist state ( Jessop, 2002) and its thesis of an ongoing
transition to what Jessop calls the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime (SWPR) and the
knowledge-based economy (KBE). We consider this to be a revealing and sophisticated account and a
much-welcome contribution to a contemporary critique of political economy, especially in its articulation of political and economic elements. With this in mind, we approach Jessop’s proposed transition
as part of an evolving research agenda and suggest some modiications to the latter. In order to do so,
after a very brief exposition of how the author explains the emergence of the SWPR we explore the
main critiques of his account. We then analyse his more recent output, particularly after the onset of
the global economic crisis, seeing how this has afected the matter at hand. Having done so, we assess
his contribution and argue that, in spite of passages that can otherwise be construed, it can be read in
a non-functionalist, non-structuralist and non-deterministic manner. We also suggest ive shifts to the
agenda, before ofering some inal remarks.
1 Economics Institute of the University of Campinas (IE/Unicamp). Email: lmpedro@gmail.com
2. Towards a Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime
Matters of space prohibit a fuller exposition of the transition to the SWPR, which will be presented very schematically so that we can deal at more lengths with its assessment2. Jessop’s argument
goes that Fordism and its state form, the Keynesian welfare national state (KWNS), enter a joint crisis
in the mid-seventies. Both economic and extra-economic factors, present in most spaces of Atlantic
Fordism, played a part in this. he overriding developments, however, are related to the internationalisation of the economy and the society, which disarticulated the coherence of the ‘integral state’ and
the ‘integral economy’. Particularly as wages came to be seen as international costs of production, instead of as domestic source of efective demand, and as money growingly functioned as international
currency, and not national money, the main crisis-management routines became inefective. Demandside interventions, operated through wages and national credit, became dysfunctional and led to a
prolonged staglation. here is thus a period of attempts at resolving the crisis by established means,
which, as they had become inefectual, but escalate the situation. he former congruence between
national societies, national states and national economies is no longer observed, which amounts to a
deconstruction of the national economy as an object of regularisation and governance by the national state. Jessop indicates this as the end of the national spatiotemporal ix, accompanied by a ‘crisis
of crisis-management’, employing Ofe’s (1984) expression. As a result, the wide-ranging economic
and social disorganisation that entails gradually favours the development of discourses and strategies
aiming at more profound transformations. here thus were, in the various spaces, processes that led
to a deep reorganisation of the state form and the accumulation regime, which were determined by
the hegemonic disputes and as the result of the conlict of diferent strategies. hese processes unfolded in conjunctures whose strategic selectivities were given by each concrete crisis, in turn marked by
more or less common factors – such as the internationalisation of the economy and the society – and
by particular elements dictated by the history of each social formation. he new accumulation regime
and state form jointly develop themselves, and are later indicated as the KBE and the SWPR. hese
political and economic forms, if they indeed come to be institutionalised, would be mutually complementary in the sense that their strategic selectivities reinforce each other’s, so that the accumulation
of capital tends to be regularised and governed.
In substantive terms, Jessop presents four main tendencies of the substitution of the KWNS by
the SWPR, represented by each term of the concepts. hey are related to the participation of the state
in the circuit of capital, in its more directly economic policies; to the state’s participation in the reproduction of labour power as a ictitious commodity, as regards its social policies; to the dominant scale
of the state, if any; and to the prevailing mechanism for coordinating social relations. Respectively, they
comprehend: i) a substitution of demand-side, Keynesian-oriented intervention to a supply-side, competitiveness-enhancing and innovation-fostering Schumpeterian action; ii) a subordination of social
2 We present this argument based on the following works ( Jessop, 1993, 2000, 2002, 2006b, 2006c, 2006e).
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to economic policy, with downwards pressure on the social wage and a change of focus from full employment to ‘full employability’, leading to more lexible labour relations and a transition from welfare
to workfare; iii) a relativization of scale that entails a clear loss of primacy of the national one (even if
it still important in many respects) without any other scale assuming dominance; and iv) a greater role
of governance as a mechanism of correcting for market and state failures, accompanied by the state’s
growing resort to metagovernance – which operates under the shadow of hierarchy.
3. Recent debates: critiques of the transition to the SWPR
We now turn to the critiques of the presented narrative. heir central claim is that Jessop provides
a narrative lacking in agency, which is either seen as a consequence of the author’s Marxist framework
or of conducting an excessively abstract analysis. Philip Cerny (2006) reviews three pieces by Jessop
and Neil Brenner (Brenner, 2004a; Brenner et al., 2003; Jessop, 2002) and, in spite of agreeing with
several substantive points the two authors advance, he provides a markedly diferent interpretation of
them. For him, Jessop is only able to formally distance himself from economic determinism, as he ultimately explains political and social phenomena through economic developments. It would purportedly
be the ‘adoption of accumulation strategies that determines the direction of structural development
and institutional change’ (Cerny, 2006, p. 688). his would in turn lead Jessop to consider that the
remodelling and rescaling of the state is centrally caused by the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism and the KBE – with Cerny seeing the latter, even if implicitly, as a purely economic change. It
would seem that the author understands that Jessop and Brenner present such a transition as a ‘cause
without cause’, and, against this, suggests two hypotheses (Cerny, 2006, p. 691-692). Firstly, postFordist production techniques and strategies could have become a more eicient set of routines due
to the expansion of markets that occurred during the Fordist period. And, secondly, it could further
be related to a political process that eventually led to the opening and internationalisation of inancial
markets, which decisively explains the emergence of post-Fordism3.
Cerny furthermore argues that the Marxist framework employed by Jessop and Brenner would,
besides inevitably leading to economic determinism, add no value to their analyses. It is the case that
all processes they study can be better approached by other traditions. Against the value-theoretical
claim that only productive labour generates value, markets should be considered as sources of wealth
in their own stead. And, even if they are not self-regulating, the Marxist endogenous market failure
theories are reductionist and fail to recognise that the dynamism of capitalist societies is precisely due
to competitive market behaviour(Cerny, 2006, p. 683-684). Moreover, when dealing in the extra-economic Jessop would deliver no theoretical or analytical novelties – metagovernance, for example, is seen
3 ‘these changes did not result spontaneously from processes of production but from political decisions […] Embedded
liberalism was originally a Fordist project that turned into a post-Fordist one because of the expansion of the scale of
markets, especially inancial markets. his process of market expansion did not take place by itself, but was the result of a
now well researched political process of trade and inancial market opening.’ (Cerny, 2006, p. 692, author’s emphasis).
3
as nothing more than the ‘longstanding adage in political philosophy that the main task of the state
is to provide the general conditions for the stabilization and continued existence of the endogenous
society itself ’ (Cerny, 2006, p. 686). As regards the spatiality of accumulation, notwithstanding his
remark that powerful insights have been ofered in this terrain, Cerny argues that spatiotemporal ixes
should not be seen as a structural imperative for regularising capital accumulation. A better view of the
subject could be produced with transaction cost theory, which indicates that in an economy of highly
mobile production factors and non-speciic assets geographical dimensions lose weight. For all that,
it might be preferable simply to downgrade the structural imperative of Marxist-style capital
accumulation and its relationship with spatio-temporal ixes in general and to upgrade the other
variables Jessop and Brenner continually discuss but insuiciently privilege in theoretical terms
(Cerny, 2006, p. 693).
the outcome [of the transformations of the state] will not be determined by the structural imperatives
of capital accumulation, however co-constituted and realized through struggles. It will be the product
of old-fashioned, more structurally open and politically luid processes of conlict, competition and
coalition-building (Cerny, 2006, p. 694).
Colin Hay (2004) also assesses Cerny’s and Jessop’s accounts of the current transformations of
the state. He organises his critique around three main issues. he overriding one is that the authors
have produced good descriptions of contemporary state forms, but their work reduces itself to merely
that – descriptions. Insofar as one tries to read them in search for explanations behind the emergence
of the SWPR or the Competition state (Cerny’s thesis), the end result would by force be a functionalist argument based on economic determinism. Which is to say, Hay considers that Cerny commits the errors of which he accuses Jessop. he second point, closely associated to the irst, is that the
highly abstract narrative employed entirely obscures social agency. Lastly, Hay raises the question of
the SWPR being an excessively encompassing category, suggesting that it is better to study transition
processes on a case-by-case basis.
According to Hay, it is not clear whether Jessop intends to merely ofer a stylised description
of the emergence of the SWPR, present the necessity or logic of such a transition or, yet, explain this
process in its temporal and spatial speciicity. his is in itself troublesome, as it may come to depict
contingent results as historical necessities and, thereby, naturalise the former. On top of that, when
Jessop efectively tries to explain how or why the SWPR came to be, his form-analysis would slip into
functionalism as it reveals the functional complementarity between the state form and the accumulation regime. he SWPR would assert itself, if it comes to do so, for being the state form most compatible with post-Fordism, for contributing towards the resolution of the crisis of Fordism. his can
be divided into two diferent claims – one regarding the necessity of the functional adequacy between
political and economic forms, another regarding the capacity of one sphere determining the other. On
the one hand, Hay considers that there are no reasons to expect the development of such adequacy, as
state regimes do not respond to economic crises themselves, but rather to dominant discourses of the
latter – which is to say, to narrated, not real crises (Hay, 2004, p. 43). here are thus no mechanisms
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capable of bringing about this compatibility, which therefore stands as an undemonstrated necessity.
his argument is indiferent to which sphere determines the other: there are no processes that mould
economic forms so that they adjust to political ones or vice-versa, nor are there any forces that co-constitute the state and the economy in a mutually compatible manner. But there is a second dimension to
his critique, for Jessop would purportedly suggest that the economic dimension holds constant while
dynamically shaping the state form so that it becomes functional to the accumulation of capital. Hay
thus argues that if the SWPR efectively institutionalises itself ‘one must presume this to be a triumph
of capitalism’s ability to conjure for itself optimal economic functionality out of the contingencies of
political conlict and contestation’ (Hay, 2004, p. 48). Hence his denunciation of functionalism implicitly includes one of economic determinism, with the political being reduced to an epiphenomenon of
the economic. Varró (2010, p. 1268) has a similar interpretation, as she concludes that Jessop gives in
the to the temptations of stretching a static analysis of the functional adequacy between systems to a
dynamic account in which such functionality becomes the explanatory principle of systemic evolution.
he author furthermore argues that the concept of ecological dominance leads to determinism, as it
allegedly establishes economic structures that inescapably deine political phenomena.
Another issue Hay raises regards the abstraction of Jessop’s analyses, which leads to an apolitical
account devoid of agency and insuiciently attentive to the diversity of the studied processes. Even if
political elements are mentioned, they would be operative in more concrete levels that are not approached. Consequently, the thesis would ofer nothing in the direction of contestation strategies, nor would
it be able to shed light on the speciic processes that brought about the SWPR – notwithstanding rich
descriptions of the strategic terrain in which such strategies are played out. For Hay, ‘this is a product
no doubt of the simple fact that the ethereal realms of abstraction at which the analysis is for the most
part conducted are not densely populated with clearly identiiable actors, strategic or otherwise’ (Hay,
2004, p. 47). he transition to the current state form could be better seen, on the other hand, as the
result of neoliberalisation processes occurring in response to supposed, fabricated or genuine crises of
political regimes. his would have the advantages of eschewing functionalism, reintroducing agency,
better dealing with the temporality of the various processes and being more consistent with the idea
that politics deals with the political construal of crises, and not directly with the latter. Varró (2010) leans
towards a similar direction, even if it is not clear whether she interprets the lack of agency in Jessop’s
narratives as a result of his general framework or of the level of abstraction employed. On the one hand,
Jessop would implicitly adopt an ontological distinction between the economic and the political, equating the former with the space of structures and the latter to the space of agency – to the result that
the political would be unavoidably determined by economic factors (Varró, 2010, p. 1268-1269). On
the other hand, however, she also suggests that more abstract analyses are not able to explain how and
why the phenomena at hand occur, nor can they identify the agents responsible for them.
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As far as the problems of abstraction go, it might also be the case that the schematic transition
would illuminate none of the concrete processes to which it refers. Which is to say, given the wide
variety of KWNSs and SWPRs, a single account of the transition from the ones to the others would,
in the end, not be related to any. In other words, Hay is not convinced that the factors behind such
transformations are indeed common to the various cases at hand, or even that they are all part of a
single phenomenon (Hay, 2004, p. 45). Even if many states can be described as KWNSs or SWPRs,
positing that they systematically evolved from the former to the latter, especially through a process
with shared causes, is not seen as a fruitful interpretation. Moreover, the argument behind that would
be circular. his is because, insofar as he presumes that there is a single transition occurring in the various KWNSs, Jessop postulates that it is thus caused by a common group of mechanisms. In the end,
the validity of the degree of abstraction employed, which depends on the processes sharing common
causes, remains a presupposition that is circularly justiied for it being easier to explain the various
transitions by means of a single account. In order to avoid this, it would be necessary to further research the varieties of KWNSs and SWPRs and examine the (dis)similarities of their transitions, so as to
identify how (allegedly) common mechanisms are overdetermined in concrete conjunctures and there
arises (or not) a genealogical tree of contemporary state forms.
Another result of this agent-free, functionalist narrative is that it cannot envision alternatives
to the SWPR. As it is posited as the ‘best political shell’ of post-Fordism, how is one to look beyond
it? here are no clear indications of which characteristics of the SWPR are necessary to avoid political and economic crises and which can be safely modiied in a post-Fordist context, which hinders
the practical struggle to transform the state. he same point is made by Bas van Heur (2010a, 2010b),
which he ascribes to the exaggerated importance attached to capital as a social force. his leads to an
understanding of state developments as sub-products of the needs of the economy. Open and political processes would thus be read according to a deeper imperative related to the necessity of guaranteeing the conditions of capital accumulation, pre-judging history in the direction of a pro-capitalist
resolution4. he abstract character of the analyses would also be unable to determine the causality of
the examined processes, for which one needs more empiric studies and historically precise approaches
(van Heur, 2010a, p. 433, 2010b, p. 453). Hence, Jessop’s theoretical corpus (more speciically, CPE)
would neither inform concrete practices nor subsidise empirical studies.
It is worth mentioning that Hay is criticising Jessop’s account of the transition to the SWPR
as presented in he future of the capitalist state ( Jessop, 2002), for in other works he considers that the
strategic-relational approach Jessop employs is able to escape structuralism, determinism and functionalism (Hay, 2006). Nevertheless, Hay does understand that the Jessop is pursuing a problematic research agenda that should be essential redirected, and not further developed via more concrete studies5.
4 It should be noted that Bonefeld (1987) had already issued a similar critique.
5 Marinetto (2004), on the other hand, considers that he future of the capitalist state initiates a productive research agenda,
even if should be essentially taken for a set of hypotheses to be tested against more concrete studies.
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4. Post-crisis post-Fordism: some of Jessop’s recent remarks on the SWPR, the KBE and
inance-dominated accumulation
Particularly after the onset of the ongoing economic crisis, Jessop has returned to the transition
to post-Fordism, the KBE and the SWPR in a rather diferent light. Even if he had stressed the heightened importance of inancial capital and its destabilising potential, the matter has acquired a more
prominent role in his recent output. Related to this, Jessop now reads back into the preceding decades
a conlict between two accumulation regimes, one centred on inancial accumulation and the other on
the KBE (the SPWR being compatible only to the latter). he role of the USA in the transition to
post-Fordism, an issue scarcely mentioned before, also receives some attention. Given the fairly recent
character of these contributions, many of which deal with an ever-changing crisis, the author’s arguments are not always very coherent or clear. It seems reasonable to suggest that they are more exploratory in nature, but as they – implicitly or not – review formerly held positions one might be able to
assess the development of the research agenda through them.
As previously shown, Jessop considered that the hegemonic post-Fordist accumulation regime
was the KBE, in and through which he also explored the articulation between inancial and productive forms of capital. In more recent texts, however, the author is less clear on this respect. In certain
moments he indicates that the KBE competed with a inance-dominated regime, either in the same
spaces or in closely interconnected ones ( Jessop, 2013c; Jessop et al., 2013). In others, he suggests that
the latter regime became hegemonic after the crisis of Fordism, or even that the two asserted themselves in diferent spaces6. Nevertheless, Jessop has deinitely redirected his thoughts towards considering
that somehow a inance-based regime coexisted with the KBE, instead of exploring the articulation
between the inancial and knowledge-based moments of capital in a single accumulation regime.
With this change, some of the strongest crisis tendencies that were associated to post-Fordist
social formations come to be rather circumscribed to the inance-dominated regime7. his may be seen
by the fact that when dealing with the KBE in his post-crisis contributions, Jessop rarely mentions
inancial capital, the dominance of which was behind most of the destabilising phenomena. In fact,
this form of capital comes into play when neoliberalising tendencies interact with the KBE8. In this
process, the SWPR is also reviewed. It is indicated as the complementary form only of the KBE, and is
described in a somewhat more stable and progressive light. Especially as regards its participation in the
reproduction of labour power, the workfarist elements of this state form are inlexed towards guarante6 See, for example, the following quotes: ‘the crisis of the post-war mode of growth […] created the conditions for a neoliberal regime shift and a transition to a inance-dominated mode of growth’ ( Jessop, 2013b, p. 241, excerpts in italics
indicate the author’s emphasis, those in bold our own) and ‘inance-dominated accumulation regimes […] emerged in a
few but important economic spaces’ ( Jessop, 2013b, p. 244).
7 hese were the exaggerated emphasis on the abstract moments of capital, the dominance of inancial capital and the
incapacity of developing a stable spatiotemporal ix ( Jessop, 2002, p. 104-113, 2006h, 2007, p. 178-197).
8 ‘While it [the KBE] tends to favour productive over money capital, it has sometimes been inlected in a neoliberal manner
that highlights the role of market forces as the driving force behind innovation’ ( Jessop, 2013c, p. 17). he contraposition
of money and productive capital suggests that market forces would implicitly contain a stronger role for inancial capital.
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eing social security, as it is seen as compatible with ‘an innovation-led, lexicurity oriented, multi-scalar
and governance-based mode of growth’ ( Jessop, 2013c, p. 18, our emphasis). Another important issue
is that the competition between the two regimes, instead of a clear dominance of either, increased the
overall systemic instability, as it hindered the development of the extra-economic supports adequate
to each one ( Jessop, 2013c, p. 20).
It is worth exploring why the neoliberalising, inance-dominated strategy became hegemonic and
continues to be so as the crisis unfolds ( Jessop, 2010a, 2013c, 2013a, 2013b). One argument is that
neoliberalising reforms were carried out in most spaces, and even after a change of course they continue to exert strong inluence in a path-dependent manner. Besides this, the weight of neoliberal USA
and the position of the dollar as the international reserve currency, associated to the greater ecological
dominance of the world market, indirectly allow the USA to export its problems and contradictions
to other spaces, regimes and social formations ( Jessop, 2010a, p. 33). his should not be understood,
however, as there being a unilateral imposition of forces organised around the USA on the rest of the
world. However much inance-dominated regimes might have emerged in but few spaces ( Jessop,
2013b, p. 244), they are part of a strategy of a transnational power block ( Jessop, 2013c, p. 16-17). In
this vein, there are social formations on which neoliberalism was imposed, but by and large the latter
is ‘the product of speciic national and transnational class projects’ ( Jessop, 2012a, p. 210, our emphasis ) that actively pursued neoliberal regime shifts. It can also be said that the bases for expanding and
maintaining this model are located in the greater power of inancial capital and on a wider dynamics
of domination:
his regime gained increasing inluence in the variegated world market through the disembedding of inancial capital and the importance of neoliberalism as the driving force in world market integration [...] he continuing eforts to
revive this model tell us something about the limits of the regulation approach in so far as it ignores the broader dynamics
of class domination, the ability of those with power not to have to learn from their mistakes, and the growing turn to authoritarian statism and, indeed, repressive measures to maintain class power ( Jessop, 2013c, p. 18).
5. Reassessing the transition towards the Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime: notes
for an open research agenda
We suggest that Jessop’s contribution can be better appreciated if seen as part of an agenda that
to date remains largely to be done. Criticised and improved though it may be, and even if we might in
fact occasionally come upon structuralist, functionalist or determinist elements, Jessop’s wider oeuvre
does not authorise such an interpretation. With this in mind, we now explore the transition to the
SWPR trying to bring out the potential of this approach, to indicate some issues we consider better
dealt with from a change in perspective and to highlight the imprecise, ambiguous or insuiciently
studied phenomena.
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An overall assessment of the author’s interpretation lies in it being or not deterministic, structuralist or functionalist. Firstly, it should be noted that, in contradistinction to Cerny’s (2006, p. 691692) understanding, it is not the transition to post-Fordism that brings about the SWPR. Fordism and
post-Fordism are emergent categories only reproduced through the social relations on which they are
founded, and only insofar as these relations are themselves reproduced by the relevant actors ( Jessop,
1996). hus, any idea of a crisis of Fordism must be based on the incapacity of reproducing its main
forms (e.g., the wage norm); likewise, one can only speak of a post-Fordist accumulation regime or
social formation to the extent that there is an ensemble of mutually supportive relations. It is thus
the case that, quite clearly, ‘the transition to post-Fordism and the KBE is itself a dependent variable’
(Cerny, 2006, p. 691), in the double sense that it can only be explained by the institutionalisation of
a series of relations from which it emerges and that, as any other event, it is caused by multiple determinations that must be historically explained ( Jessop, 1990, p. 12).
here is another reason why the transition to post-Fordism did not cause the SWPR – objects
and modes of regulation, regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation are actually co-constituted ( Jessop, 2006d, p. 365, 2006a, p. 300). Speciic elements found in each of them may be prior to
these forms, such as microelectronics and the privatisation of state services, but one can only consider that post-Fordism exists when these various objects – or, better, the relations between them – acquire a certain degree of structured coherence. his happens via a multifaceted process, with political
as well as economic determinants, that alters the overall eicacy of every element ( Jessop, 1990, p.
311). It should also be noted that modes of regulation, including state forms, are ‘chance discoveries’
(Fundsache) ( Jessop, 2006b, p. 84, 2006f, p. 238), the development of which does not follow a preordained process that leaves economic circuits unaltered. hey rather come to be through attempts at relexively moulding economic and political relations and imposing partial coherence on nascent structures
( Jessop, 2006a, p. 316)9. In this vein, if economic factors were the amongst the main ones responsible
for destructuring Fordism, they cannot be seen to have single-handedly structured even the post-Fordist regime of accumulation, let alone other dimensions of post-Fordism. here is no inert economic
dimension to summon beneicial state forms, as Hay (2004, p. 48) suggests. In all efect, the reason
why Jessop sees the SWPR as an inherently post-Fordist state runs rather the other way round: ‘he
key mechanism in this case [is] the critical role of the state in securing the extra-economic conditions
for capital accumulation and hence in shaping and guiding the forms that capital accumulation can take’
( Jessop, 2002, p. 268, our emphasis).
Seen in this light, it would thus seem that economic determinism is not to be found in the transition to the SWPR. he issue should not be so rapidly, dismissed, however, for we believe there in fact
are some traces of it, as in the following quote:
9 Brenner’s (2003, 2004b) works are a good example of this process. he author highlights how urban governance mechanisms underwent extensive changes during the crisis of Fordism and gradually ixed themselves around glocalising competition strategies, which actively participated in regularising accumulation along lines that came to be post-Fordist.
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he general and widespread nature of the changes involved in the tendential emergence of the SWPR
suggests that the primary causes of this transition should be sought in general and widespread features
of the postwar political economy since the 1970s and ‘80s ( Jessop, 2002, p. 142).
Regardless of the term ‘political economy’ indicating a wider conception of the economic, there
are some deterministic elements not easily dismissed here. Without denying this, we suggest that it
can be sidestepped by referring to Jessop’s wider oeuvre according to the following interpretation. he
author ( Jessop, 1982, p. 211-220) proposes that a theory is adequate to the extent that it retroductively
explains the contingent necessity of the phenomena at hand, at the degree of complexity and concreteness that it is formulated, while also being extensible to diferent levels of complexity and concreteness.
In addition to this, the more abstract is a hypothesis, the greater will be the variation of the results
compatible with it – it is underdetermined. It must be borne in mind that the SWPR is a very abstract
concept since, for example, its participation in the reproduction of labour force is deined in terms of
promoting lexibility and the (re)insertion of workers in the market, while varying between the extremes of ‘lexploitation’ and ‘lexicurity’ ( Jessop, 2002, p. 156). Even Brenner (2009), which often works
with Jessop, recognises that in many aspects the latter’s account of the rescaling of the state is rather
preliminary. he SWPR is, in a nutshell, ‘the naturally necessary form of the capitalist type of state in
a globalizing knowledge-based economy’ ( Jessop, 2002, p. 268). We suggest this means that the concept is deined at the degree of abstraction that allows it to encompass every necessary dimension of a
state form compatible with post-Fordist social formations, and no more than this.
We propose the following interpretation. Retrospectively, one notices that there was an ongoing
transition to post-Fordism and that there were no radical breaks with capitalism, but rather attempts
to carry on with the integration of the social formations of Atlantic Fordism to the world market. In
this scenario, political-economic factors are behind the emergence of the SWPR at a highly abstract
plane, given two interconnected issues. Firstly, the growing integration of the economies and the higher
mobility of capital are the main reasons why it was necessary to restructure Fordism and the KWNS.
Secondly, the world market assumed greater weight as a mandatory reference of economic calculation
and as a space of competition. Insofar as this subjects each individual capital and social formation to
the lines of force given by the clash of all accumulation strategies, the compatibility with the capital
relation growingly becomes a validation criterion for the various social forms. Increasing the interconnectedness of the world market was certainly not a historical necessity, but, once this condition is accepted,
the ecological dominance of the economy is heightened. his should not be taken to mean that global
economic integration implies the adoption of a single ensemble of social forms, which would naturalise – and hence fetishize – one amongst many paradigms. What is at stake here is that there is greater
pressure to develop competitiveness in face of the totality of capitals (a more restrictive condition than
competing in national boundaries), however that may occur. he social formations are thus faced with
more numerous and more intense economic forces, many of which they cannot individually inluence.
he impact of an eventual misalignment to global competitive conditions is thereby increased. One
10
may thus conclude that there is a stronger necessity of developing a competitive economic structure,
with higher penalties attached to failing to do so. In other words, the economic places greater adaptive pressures on social formations as a whole and is more capable of destabilising the various social
dimensions. Which is to say, the ecological dominance of the economy increases.
We might then say that, for the various agents participating in the development of a new state
form, certain economic elements – which would come to be part of the post-Fordist accumulation regime – imposed themselves as structural conditions for a great part of their strategies10. In this sense,
given the acceptance of the project of increasing global inancial and productive integration, the economic
in fact assumed greater ecological dominance. In this context, economic factors were actually able to
mould important traits of the state forms being developed. his account suggests that, for this speciic
matter, competing in a growingly integrated world market and further increasing this integration were
strategies and objectives present in the various analysed spaces – and they decisively produce certain
traits that, hypothetically, allow one indicate the tendential emergence of the SWPR in all of them.
We thus suggest that Jessop tries to demonstrate the hypothesis that some very general aspects of the
transition to the SWPR are given mainly by economic factors. he issue then becomes assessing to
what extent does this inform more concrete approaches while not being rendered contradictory by
them ( Jessop, 1982, p. 211-220).
We present two examples of this possible integration. Oosterlynck (2010) studies the transformation of the Belgian state and shows how a general scenario, given by the crisis of Fordism and the
transition to post-Fordism, was overdetermined by factors speciic to the case at hand. he author
convincingly demonstrates the open-ended character of state rescaling processes, while also exploring
the strategically selective terrain in which they operate. Of particular relevance here is how far-reaching events (such as the end of colonialism and the competitive challenge of post-Fordist production processes) interact with more speciic ones (such as the linguistic basis for developing regional
hegemonic projects), as well as how the end result in Belgium can be seen in the lines of an SWPR.
Jessop (2006e) himself also provides an interesting case study. Comparing the English and German
transition to conservative regimes in the mid-eighties, he concludes that greater similarities were observed in matters more inluenced by international competition and in which post-Fordism was already more coherent, while in both cases a break with Fordist regulation (that had become inefective)
was necessary. On the other hand, the prior trajectory of both countries produced crises of diferent
intensity and dimensions in each one, which favoured varying responses as regards the extents of the
transformations to be conducted. In this sense, we observe political and economic strategies in each
formation that deal both with the inescapable scenario of the crisis of Fordism and the KWNS, under
the risk of developing a ‘strategy that is inconsistent with long-run trends emerging from the clash of
10 ‘the “structural” moment in social relations is now seen to comprise those elements in a given temporal-spatial strategic
context which cannot be altered by a given agent (or set of agents) pursuing a given strategy during a given time period.
he “conjunctural” moment in turn will comprise those elements in a given temporal-spatial strategic context which can
be modiied’ ( Jessop, 1996, p. 124).
11
all strategies in the world economy’ ( Jessop, 2006e, p. 149), and with each country’s political and economic particularities that overdetermine concrete struggles.
It thus seems possible to read Jessop in a manner that avoids the determinist elements that eventually arise. If he future of the capitalist state ( Jessop, 2002) really is rather silent as regards the speciic
processes that brought about the transition to the SWPR, it is not an approach incompatible with, or
in opposition to, more concrete ones. On the contrary, there is a research agenda, including works by
Jessop and others11, which tries to relexively integrate both. In order to correctly frame this agenda, a
note on the relationship between abstraction, agency, the economic and the political seems necessary
here. While the abstract analyses Jessop usually conducts do not tend to specify agency in the studied
processes, one is thereby not necessarily in structuralist terrain. his is true as long as there efectively
is space for it in more concrete dimensions – i.e., as long as the agents are not seen simply as Träger of
the indicated relations, but are actually able to strategically reproduce or transform the latter ( Jessop,
1982, 1996). Hence, it is necessary to admit the underdetermination of these abstract explanations. On
the other hand, this must not be confused with equating structures with the economic and agency with
the political, as Varró (2010, p. 1268-1269) would have it, for two reasons. Firstly, for Jessop (1996) has
a relativized and dialectical approach to the duality of structure and agency. Political dimensions thus
might be structural constraints for some actors and strategies, while, inversely, economic elements might emerge as conjunctural opportunities for others. Secondly, the interrelations Jessop posits between
the economic and the political completely disavow the conception of a self-suicient economic sphere
reproducing itself behind the backs of the agents and a voluntarist political dimension12. His concepts
actually try to show how agency and structure are always present in the economic and the political,
and how these dimensions continuously interact and are mutually implicated. As an example, hegemonic projects are not only conditioned by economic factors but also decisively inluence the latter,
while accumulation strategies are an agential category dealing mainly with capital accumulation that
nevertheless include political and discursive conditions of success ( Jessop, 1983, 2003, 2006a). We thus
suggest that it is a false dilemma asking whether the transition to post-Fordism and the SWPR was
either politically or economically determined, as Cerny (2006) seems to put it. Inevitably, state transformations are efected through political processes; what is important is to investigate how political
and economic factors, and the deinition of a certain conjuncture, interacted over time to bring about
the results observed. Accordingly, Jessop’s account points out that economic (but also political) factors
made it necessary to break with the KWNS and, in the open restructuring process that then begins,
the victorious strategies did not seek to detach themselves from the world market and the apparently
11 he following works can be considered to advance this research agenda, either by explicitly following in Jessop’s footsteps or, more frequently, by critically approaching his work and trying to progress on it (Brenner, 2003, 2004b, 2009;
Goodwin et al., 2005; Jessop, 2006e, 2013d; Jessop et al., 2008; Jones, 2008; Oosterlynck, 2010; Wissen, 2009).
12 he idea is precisely to avoid what can deducted from a statement of Varró’s, in which the political is explicitly equated to all agential features of social reproduction and, implicitly, the economic is reduced to structures: ‘“re-politicising”
also entails that we leave room for agents who act within a ield of multiple structures. he political in this sense comes to
signify the potential for change that resides in all social relations” (Varró, 2010, p. 1273).
12
more competitive nascent forms of economic organisation, but, rather, took these as desirable objectives – and, in time, they were able to gradually institutionalise, in a mutually implicated manner, what
would come to be a post-Fordist accumulation regime (the KBE) and state form (the SWPR).
Given the possibility of a non-determinist reading of Jessop, let us now observe how functionalism comes to bear on his analysis. It must irst be noted that a crass kind of functionalism that proposes a perfect it between the state form and the accumulation regime is not to be found. It is suicient
to indicate that Jessop has long considered that the typical form of the capitalist state problematizes
its capitalist function and that, in the speciic case of the SWPR, he points out many enduring contradictions and insuiciencies, such as the incapacity of developing a stable spatiotemporal ix ( Jessop,
2006g, p. 294, 2006h, p. 341-344, 2002). Nevertheless, this is no proper demonstration of a lack of
functionalism – proposing that the most functional forms will be selected because they are functional,
however much precarious this maximum congruence may be, is still a functionalist interpretation.
It is clear that the SWPR is to some extent functional, for it has got the ‘basic structural features that are congruent with the globalizing, knowledge-based economy’ ( Jessop, 2002, p. 268). We
must then investigate how this congruence is seen to emerge, where it efectively does so. Two previous
points should be established. First, in no moment does the author say that the SWPR will in fact institutionalise itself. Functionality is thus not seen as a suicient condition for the emergence of social
forms. Second, this state form is an ideal-type, not a concrete description of ‘actually existing’ states;
hence, we are dealing with an empirically-informed, theoretically-based mental experiment that seeks
to identify certain complementary features of a regime of accumulation and a state form.
Bearing this in mind, it should be noted that in the theoretical framework employed some degree
of adequacy between the political and the economic is necessary for social reproduction to take place.
Given that accumulation depends on a set of relations only partially under the value form ( Jessop, 1983,
2001, 2002), insofar as the capital relation is reproduced some congruence between the state form and
the accumulation regime must have been present. his escapes functionalism for two reasons. Firstly,
because in no moment is it decreed that capital will be reproduced (and hence the necessary presence an organic state); and, secondly, for it does not require the most functional forms to be selected. In
view of this, the somewhat trite observation that capitalism greatly expanded during the post-1980
period, marked as it might have been by higher instability, suggests the presence of a congruent state
form – albeit with relevant contradictions and insuiciencies.
We might explore the issue employing the contributions of Cultural Political Economy (CPE),
a still embryonic approach being developed mainly by Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum. Although considerations of space prohibit us from fully dealing with this recent methodological turn, it seems a relevant framework since one of its central concerns has been the interplay of semiotic and extra-semiotic
factors in the evolution of institutions ( Jessop, 2007, 2013b). Crises of a mode of development (such
as Fordism) are considered to represent the incapacity of reproducing the capital relation according
13
to formerly established norms, thus giving rise to a conjuncture of ‘profound cognitive, strategic, and
practical disorientation by disrupting actors’ sedimented views of the world’ ( Jessop, 2013b, p. 237).
here then is space for developing myriad interpretations of the crisis and politicising solidly established issues. During this initial moment of unstructured complexity, semiotic factors are particularly
eicacious in producing various interpretations. As one moves towards the selection and retention of
these discourses to serve as bases for social action and the sedimentation of institutions, however, extrasemiotic factor tend to grow in relevance. his is a path-shaping process that occurs under the shadow
of path-dependency, in which the strategies for interpreting, contesting and acting upon the crises are
continuously subjected to semiotic and extra-semiotic factors, with variable weight. he plausibility
and the potential for selection/retention of a certain discourse or strategy is also depend on how it
resonates with the experience of relevant groups, how it deals with the media, its interaction with the
selectivities of various public and private apparatuses and its capacity of convincing speciic actors. In
addition to this, each strategy is met with diferent structurally-inscribed selectivities – a crisis-management strategy organised around bailing-out large enterprises and waiting for alleged tricklingdown efects, for example, in principle needs to convince fewer (if important) actors than one based
on popular contestation of the regime and workers’ self-organisation. As crisis-management and crisis-contestation unfolds, an ensemble of interpretations and practical responses might eventually give
rise to a new situation of structured complexity, when, ex deinitio, the crisis period will have ended
and some congruence between the diferent social dimensions will be observed. Under the hypothesis
of a continuation of capitalism, this involves restoring accumulation as the chief principle of societalization and guaranteeing the compatibility of the state form and the accumulation regime. It should
be highlighted that functionality is one amongst the many factors to inluence the probability of a given
discourse or strategy being selected and retained:
Other things being equal, more resonant interpretations will get selected as the basis for action,
whether this takes the form of restoration, piecemeal reform, or radical innovation. But other
things are rarely equal. Power matters. Powerful narratives without powerful bases from which to
implement them are less efective than more ‘arbitrary, rationalistic and willed’ accounts that are
pursued consistently by the powerful through the exercise of power. Indeed, periods of crisis illustrate
forcefully that power involves the capacity not to have to learn from one’s own mistakes ( Jessop, 2013b,
p. 241, author’s emphasis).
hese observations clearly establish the possibility of a non-functionalist theoretical framework.
What is at stake is that, to exit a period of crisis, minimally practical strategies must be pursued. While
functionality does indeed afect their probability of being retained, many other issues are in place and
there is no guarantee whatsoever that the most functional strategies will be selected. It should also be
noted that if Hirsch (1977) has already taught us that the state does not respond directly to economic
issues, but to their political repercussions, this should not be extended to indicate that there is no mutually responsive interaction between economic and political variables eventually capable of inding a
translation into the state form. Contrary to what Hay (2004, p. 43) seems to understand, it is hence
14
possible to approach in non-structuralist-functionalist manners the process whereby the state form
and the regime of accumulation (do not) become complementary to each other: the variation, selection
and retention of discourses and strategies do indeed respond to extra-semiotic and economic variables.
We suggest further exploring the issue under the light of the concepts of ecological dominance of the
economy, hegemonic project and accumulation strategy.
hese notions are part of the ‘social ixes’ Jessop proposes. hey try to bridge diferent social
dimensions, particularly the economic and the political. We do not have space here to present the
following consideration at length, but we understand that Jessop gradually developed these various
social ixes in response to critiques of politicism13, trying to avoid the latter by growingly exploring the
imbrication of political and economic phenomena. We further understand that these various concepts
are developed in a two-pronged process, in which the author successively acknowledges the underdetermination of a certain aspect of social formations and, simultaneously, proposes a middle-range
strategic concept that explores how this dimension might contingently acquire substantive unity in
and through social action. Jessop thus leans towards viewing social reproduction and accumulation as
a priori ever more improbable, while at the same time proposing to investigate how it is efectively secured. A cursory glance reveals that back in his irst book Jessop (1982) recognised that the class unity
of the state was not guaranteed, and thus proposed that hegemony could provide for it. he next year
( Jessop, 1983), we ind that the value and state forms are underdetermined, but can be substantiated
through accumulation strategies and hegemonic projects. As the decade progresses ( Jessop, 1990), the
state apparatus itself is made devoid of pre-given substantive unity – nevertheless, speciic state projects can secure it. he author’s larger contact with the Regulation Approach (tentatively positioned
in Jessop, 1993) leads to a similar efect, since one of the guiding principles of this theoretical corpus
is examining via middle-range concepts how accumulation – although inherently contradictory and
fraught with class struggle – is possible (Boyer, 1990, p. 70; Jessop; Sum, 2006). We also suggest that
studying the relationship between the mechanisms for coordinating social relations and the circuit
of capital ( Jessop, 1995), as well as the ‘political economy of scale’ ( Jessop, 2000), may all be seen as
part of this process14. If our reading is right, we can suggest that these concepts intend to demonstrate
ive points: i) the a priori inexistence of substantive unity (and hence functionality of any kind) for a
given aspect, be it in a single social dimension (e.g., unity of the state apparatus) or in the interaction
between more than one (e.g., economic hegemony); ii) the possibility of establishing such unity in a
certain spatiotemporal horizon; iii) the precariousness of such unity; iv) the necessity of concrete practices for
13 For some important moments of the debates behind this process, see ( Jessop, 1983, 1987, 1991, 2000). We believe
authors associated to ‘open Marxism’ were amongst the main instigators of these various shifts; some contributions can be
found in (Bonefeld, 1987, 1993; Bonefeld; Holloway, 1991; Clarke, 1991; Holloway, 1988). Two self-reviews of
the author’s theoretical trajectory can be found in ( Jessop, 2001, 2007).
14 Ecological dominance does not precisely it our scheme, for it is not an agential concept. Nevertheless, it is how Jessop
breaks with economic determination (in the n-th instance). he latter in a certain sense considers that there is a long-term
pre-given unity of class and economic power, while ecological dominance points towards a contingently greater inluence
of the capital relation. As to the political economy of scale, the rough idea would be that a spatiotemporal ix contingently
provides spatiotemporal closure to the circuit of capital, whose predominant scale is not pre-given.
15
such unity to be observed; and v) in view of they being developed by exploring the mutual implication
of the political and the economic, the multi-determined or complex character of the possibility of such
unity being established.
Let us then consider how these concepts inform our understanding of how the SWPR and the
KBE might have become complementary to each other. he ecological dominance of the economy,
recently increased due to the internationalisation of the circuit of capital and its greater capacities of
time-space distantiation and compression, indicates that the economic sphere ofers greater adaptive
pressures to the other systems than the other way around ( Jessop, 2002, p. 24-28, 2010b, 2010a). It is
not precisely a matter of capital being able to dynamically secure adequate extra-economic supports,
but rather that ‘the logic of accumulation tends to cause more problems for other systems than they cause
for the expanded reproduction of capital’ ( Jessop, 2010b, p. 79, our emphasis), that it is able to export
its crises and contradiction to other social dimensions. he main thrust of the idea hence lies in denoting the asymmetry between the economy and other spheres. A particular emphasis should be put
on the capacity of accumulation-derived problems being translated into other orders, even exploiting
the latter as a means of guaranteeing the accumulation of capital15. In this sense, much more than to
functionality, it is an idea related to the capacity of economic phenomena and economic power subverting the capacity of other systems reproducing themselves – it might perhaps be a demonstration
of systemic dysfunctionality.
Accumulation strategies, state projects and hegemonic projects, on the other hand, are more
related to the possibility of establishing congruence between political and economic forms. hree aspects are noteworthy in this: the ability of forming a general interest (in economic or wider terms),
the multiple bases and criteria necessary for the project or strategy to be successful and, given the latter point, the need to translate economic capacities into political ones and vice-versa as a condition
of eicaciousness. Jessop points out that any general interest, even if restricted to that of ‘capital in
general’, must be relationally created ( Jessop, 1990, p. 152-155). Successful accumulation strategies
and hegemonic projects must deine and sediment such an interest, which then becomes the basis for
institution-building. In other words, an important strategic dimension lies in being able to conform
a social and economic imaginary that, by selectively and hierarchically reducing complexity, deines
subgroups of social relations and interests that become the practical objects of structurally oriented
strategic action ( Jessop, 1983, 2007, 2013b). It should also be borne in mind that capital depends on
relations outside the value form for its reproduction, just as the state is dependent on accumulation.
If this by no means implies that they will by necessity conform to each other, it does suggest that,
even if accumulation strategies mainly deal with economic factors, they tend to try and secure adequate extra-economic conditions. Likewise, however much hegemonic projects need not refer primarily
to accumulation, they are bound to be more successful insofar as they are able to establish mutually
15 On such a process in the Eurozone crisis, see ( Jessop, 2013b).
16
compatible state forms and regimes of accumulation, for – amongst others – this enables the distribution of material concessions to subordinate groups ( Jessop, 1983, 1985, 2003).
It is thus to be expected for agents to relexively pursue strategies that aim at bringing about
certain congruence between economic and political forms. If this amounts to no more than using
economic power to reach particularistic political ends (or vice-versa), it would be reduced to a case of
economic domination and the lack of a substantive unity of state power – to use a Poulantzian expression, the state would not have relative autonomy regarding the various capitals. On the other hand,
the strategic terrain in which hegemonic disputes and accumulation strategies are played out tends to
require the sacriice of more immediate interests in order to cement longer-term goals and class domination. his is represented in the development of a materially based general interest. he latter tends
to be more stable and is more likely to be legitimised and accepted insofar as there is an overlapping
between diferent positions of dominance, particularly in the economic and political dimensions. We
may place certain remarks of Jessop’s in this context, such as ‘the expanded reproduction of capital is
best viewed as “economic hegemony armored by economic domination”’ ( Jessop, 1983, p. 93) or that
hegemony depends on structurally embedded factors, its strategic orientation and its relation to accumulation ( Jessop, 1983, p. 98-107, 1985, p. 347-353).
his discussion clearly suggests that the reproduction of capital in a relatively stable fashion
centrally depends on there being congruence between the accumulation regime, the state form and
other social dimensions. It moreover indicates that such a condition can only be guaranteed by speciic practices relexively aimed at institution-building, even if not necessarily as a planned result of
the latter. In face of the substantive interdependence of the various social dimensions, as well as of the
multi-determined conditions of success of economic and political strategies, there is also a constant
process – as unequal as it may be – of translating phenomena from one dimension to the others. At
last, there is also the possibility of there not being any societal unity whatsoever, in which case there
would be no governance or regularisation of accumulation.
In any case, Jessop’s theoretical framework suggests that short of an explicit crisis one is to expect
some congruence between the state form and the regime of accumulation. In no case should it be concluded, however, that the most functional forms are the ones to be selected and retained. Hay’s (2004,
p. 48) question of why we are to expect that the economically most functional state form is to emerge
thus seems a valid issue. In fact, when Jessop states that ‘a Schumpeterian workfare post-national regime will provide the best possible – but still imperfect and always provisional – spatio-temporal ix for a
globalizing, knowledge-based, post-Fordist economy’ ( Jessop, 2002, p. 268) we are left we the options
of considering this a functionalist slip or seeing it as a rather empty statement. In the latter case, the
SWPR should be seen as the state form that developed alongside the KBE, decisively shaping capital
accumulation under this regime; the best possible ix would be reduced to the trite condition of being the
inherently post-Fordist form. We do not see any analytical purchase with this, on the contrary – there
17
would be a serious risk of hypostasising the SWPR and post-Fordism as ‘inal’ forms, or ones with an
already-deined developmental trajectory, which would be contrary to the approach as a whole.
We propose dealing with the issue in a more explicit evolutionary approach, for the following
reasons. In the irst place, it ofers a direct manner of investigating, in a single analytical framework,
the participation of semiotic and extra-semiotic elements in institutional development, as has been
recently done under the CPE project. In the second place, it is well suited to better specify the factors
responsible for (not) generating congruence in particular aspects of the social formations (such as in
the reproduction of labour force or the prevalent governance mechanisms). It is also capable of shedding light on the processes that lead to a greater or smaller weight of the state in regularising capital
accumulation. An evolutionary framework is furthermore a good way of avoiding functionalist traits,
for the possibility of dysfunctional lock-ins is often a result of such an approach. On a more general
note, an evolutionary account its well the stylised facts regarding institutional development during
crisis periods that Jessop (2002, 2006b, 2006e) and Brenner (2003, 2004b, 2009) present – namely, that
there is a phase of experimentation with old and new forms of crisis-management, which for diferent
reasons (not quite clearly presented) are selected and retained, or else get discarded.
Our proposal is based on the consideration that, whereas Jessop does explore the mutual interconnections between the political and the economic and indicates how strategies mainly concerning
one of these spheres have got in the other decisive success conditions, his comments remain at a fairly
general or non-speciic level. While we are told that the state’s strategic selectivities impact the longterm viability of a hegemonic project, there is not much to be found on which selectivities impact which
aspects of the projects, nor on the particular implications of carrying forward an hegemonic project out
of tone with certain aspects of the state form16. Likewise, there is the proposition that accumulation
strategies are more stable when the hegemonic fraction of capital also enjoys economic domination,
but there is little on which factors lead to this condition or on the results of it not happening. Jessop
deeply explores the adequacy of economic and political forms, indicates some contradictions that arise when such compatibility is not observed and examines how strategic action must tumble through
diferent social dimensions in order to be successful, but is much less clear in investigating how and
under which conditions can the agents efectively secure these necessary means. Moreover, the author
rarely goes down to the factors responsible for the structural coupling of the state form and the accumulation regime in its speciic aspects. here does not seem to be much, for example, on which factors
favour the SWPR to help shape the reproduction of labour power in ways favourable to the KBE – and,
additionally, if these factors are compatible or not with those that favour a congruent scalar coniguration. In these terms, an evolutionary framework might reveal the (in)compossibility of the congruence
between the state form and the accumulation regime in its diferent aspects, which seems to it recent
research agendas ( Jessop, 2007, p. 225-245; Jones; Jessop, 2010). At the current stage, there does not
16 here indeed are certain remarks on this, such as that hegemony tends to be less inclusive, and more based on repression, when economic growth falters ( Jessop, 1982, 1983, 1985, 2003). Nevertheless, we consider them to be underdeveloped.
18
seem to be clear indications of why certain complementarities are more present or likely than others,
which we consider a relevant deiciency.
his suggestion is certainly not to everyone’s taste, as van Heur (2010b) attests, but it should be
highlighted that we do not suggest it as the single theoretical development to be pursued. It does not
make up for ‘speciicity and detailed analysis’ (van Heur, 2010b, p. 453), nor can it take the place of
historical accounts, but we argue that it ofers a valuable general analytical guide. As it is developed
through a relexive movement from the abstract-simple to the concrete-complex, it might gradually be
able to specify the importance of a series of factors in the evolution of political and economic forms.
To the extent that it reveals the more resilient aspects of social formations and those more prone to be
transformed, it can also inform practical actions and the militancy.
In short, we propose that Jessop’s account of the emergence of the SWPR can be read in a nonfunctional, non-structuralist and non-deterministic way. In order to do so, one must pay attention to
how the author’s various works come together in this and how he future of the capitalist state is but a
step of a wider research agenda, avoiding the temptation to directly ‘substantiate’ the more abstract arguments (in this case, mainly economic in nature) in a reductionist manner – against which the author
has long argued ( Jessop, 1982). Having done so, we now propose some further changes to the agenda.
hey are related to the space that post-Fordism comprehends and the articulation between diferent
subtypes of post-Fordist social formations and accumulation strategies.
Fordism was, according to Jessop, organised around a national spatiotemporal ix17. It is the latter
that allows one to study Atlantic Fordism as a series of national economies, for the essential determinants of the mode of development at hand were to be found in each national space (with variations
between them). Post-Fordism, on the other hand, is hypothetically characterised by the relativization of
scale, a loss of primacy of the national level and, to date, no stable spatiotemporal ix. hese are amongst some of the results linked to what Jessop has termed the ‘political economy of scale’, doubtlessly a
great contribution of his. Nonetheless, we consider that its full potential has not yet been brought to
bear on two points. Firstly, we suggest that, whether currently in existence or not, post-Fordism might
develop a spatiotemporal ix that itself displays a relativized scale – or better, a complex polymorphy.
When Jessop considers that there currently is no ix, it seems as though he is looking for essentially
territorially-delimited arrangements with nested scales, for the possibilities most commonly referred
to are the global, the local and the triadic levels – with the latter been seen as the most likely ( Jessop,
2000, p. 348, 2006h, p. 344, 2002, p. 182). If the arguments for the relativization of scale are convincing, one should no longer focus only on ‘simple’, territorially-cohesive conigurations, but should rather explore to what extent arrangements with multiple, partially overlapping and intermeshed scales,
perhaps organised in networks, together account for a spatiotemporal ix capable of making compatible the various temporal and spatial dynamics of the main post-Fordist forms of capital. We do not
ofer a substantive answer to the issue, but suggest that a clue may be in the global city-regions whose
17 On small open Fordist economies, see ( Jessop, 2006b).
19
importance Jessop points out. hey might comprise the main scale of a post-Fordist ix, to which other
secondary scales and networks would be attached – such as their direct zones of inluence, high-technology districts and innovation poles. he idea behind this proposition is that this spatiality would
encompass the main inancial and knowledge-intensive circuits. We also suggest that, if a ix actually
does institutionalise itself, it will be the emergent result of the interaction between various ‘partial ixes’
( Jessop, 2007, p. 187). Given its spatially less inclusive nature, as well as its multiple non-concentric
hierarchies, it is expected of this ‘relativized scale’ to increase many forms of inequality. As what is at
stake, however, is the stabilisation of the accumulation of capital – an inherently contradictory process,
based on exploitation –, this in no way requires any progressive developments to take place. It might
be the case that a stable post-Fordist ix will lead to a recrudescence of the sociospatial division of the
costs of the capital relation in many axes – between countries, states, neighbourhoods, between capital
and labour and so forth. As a metaphor, we could think of a fractal of inequalities. In this case, there
would certainly be a huge impact on legitimation and repression strategies, as well as on the stability
of the mode of development as a whole. he implications for the various capitalist political forms loom
large, for this amounts to an intense reorganisation of contemporary spatiality that would no doubt
lead to the production of, using Brenner’s (2004a) expression, ‘new state spaces’. Exploring the issue is
clearly out our scope, but it strikes us as a relevant ield for research.
Related to the former point, we propose that economic reproduction in the space that once was
Atlantic Fordism has come to involve, as a necessary condition, a strong articulation with the Asian
economies, particularly as regards the imports of manufactured goods from what is now the ‘workshop
of the world’. Which is to say, post-Fordism should not comprise the territory of Atlantic Fordism
thirty years later, but a larger circuit that encompasses the main phenomena behind the socioeconomic dynamics of the formations at hand. Post-Fordism is not a merely chronological concept, such as
after-Fordism would be, nor an evolutive one to indicate a phase of formations that once were Fordist,
such as late Fordism. It aims, on the other hand, at representing conservation-dissolution efects (with
a predominance of the latter), and designates the patterns capable of answering to the Fordist impasses and crises ( Jessop, 2006b, 2006h). As these in large part came from beyond Atlantic Fordism, as is
the case with the organisation of production processes, post-Fordism needs to comprehend the spaces
organised along those lines. Yet more important, the growing economic integration between the space
of Atlantic Fordism and Eastern Asia, the former having become structurally dependent on importing
manufactured goods produced with low wages in the latter, indicates that a key-element of post-Fordist accumulation lies in the relationship between the triadic economies.
he clearest example of this is in what came to be known as ‘Chimerica’, which ‘indicates the
pathological co-dependence of the US and Chinese economies”( Jessop et al., 2013, p. s11). Based on
this, it is clear that theorising about the US accumulation regime (or the post-Fordist one in general) not taking into account the role of Eastern Asia in it implies ignoring a central dimension of the
20
studied object. It is, for example, Chinese imports (and growing debt) that allows for maintaining a
minimum consumption level for the population at large. We can say that while the Chinese and the
US accumulation regimes are jointly compossible, they are individually impossible. hus, understanding either of them necessarily entails studying the other. he issue is that as Fordism had a national
spatiotemporal ix one could approach the countries it comprised individually, for their tendencies were
not essentially altered by their relationship to other spaces. For post-Fordism, however, the situation
is diferent. As accumulation is not contained in the national level, but is determined by the relations
between phenomena organised along relativized scales, one cannot approach it in terms of relatively
self-referential national circuits – for they individually lack the determinants of their processes of accumulation. In other terms, one must study the polymorphy of accumulation being careful not to enclose it in a presupposed spatiality that does not comprehend its relevant circuits. As indicated above,
we suggest this involves Asian ‘territories, places, scales and networks’, not necessarily including whole
countries – it might be the case that post-Fordism necessitates certain speciic networks and places,
and not other wider Asian dimensions.
Associated to this, we believe the approach can be improved if framed in terms of a variegated
capitalism, as Jessop has been recently leaning ( Jessop, 2010a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013d, 2012c). As the
author himself is turning to this direction, we shall not explore it in more detail here. Nevertheless,
some brief indications of how we believe this is an important development seem in place. he two
main changes that concerns us are the explicit consideration of i) how a given regime of accumulation,
of variant thereof, impacts the conditions of existence of the rest, and ii) how by the interaction of all
of them the world market is reproduced as the ultimate horizon, ‘as both the historical presupposition
and the posit (outcome) of diferential accumulation’ ( Jessop, 2013d, p. 5). Given this, one is better
placed to examine how the ecological dominance of a certain variety of capitalism codetermines the
evolution of others, as well as the (im)possibility of extending regimes of accumulation beyond the
spaces in which they are found. Another important result is that seeing the world market as being
reproduced through a process of variegation clearly opens space for exploring social and economic
alternatives. By investigating the interdependency of social formations, one can analyse the possibility of setting up regimes of accumulation and state forms that are not versions of dominant ones, but
new paths compatible with the force lines given by the world market. his, it seems, might eliminate a
certain ‘fatalism’ that can at irst sight be associated to the idea of a growing ecological dominance of
the economy and the integration to the world market.
On a diferent note, we propose that one should not consider that there are diferent regimes
of accumulation competing in the same spatiotemporal matrix. As seen above, Jessop (2013c) has recently considered that the transition to post-Fordism comprehended a dispute between two regimes
of accumulation, the KBE and a inance-dominated one. We consider this to be a setback, for less attention is paid to the relations between the diferent forms of capital and their concrete and abstract
21
dimensions, particularly as regards, in this case, inancial capital and ‘knowledge-intensive capital’. It
is not that Jessop thereby ignores all articulations between these moments of the circuit of capital, but
it does seem profoundly counterproductive to look at the issue through competing regimes, and not
through a single one with diferent developmental tendencies and a contradictory relation between
the above-mentioned dominant forms of capital.
he competition between regimes of accumulation is a matter that deserves attention. In some
moments, the concepts of regimes of accumulation and accumulation strategies seem to be conlated,
as when Jessop (2013c, p. 20) states that ‘although I have presented the KBE and inance-dominated
accumulation as if they were simple alternatives, they actually co-existed as competing accumulation
strategies’. here is a risk of conferring agency to an emergent category (the regime), thus falling into
a form of structuralism. here are two options in avoiding this. We might take the citation to mean
that there were a series of social relations being developed, which could be divided in two groups. Each
of these would display a certain internal coherence and developmental tendencies that indicated the
potential of constituting an accumulation regime. Competition between the latter would thus assume
a metaphorical sense, related to the fact that developing the relations from which each emerges negatively impacted the stability of the other. Against this, we might consider that there was an efective
competition between accumulation strategies. In this case, it seems better not to pose a regime corresponding to each strategy, since ‘there can never be a one-to-one correspondence between structures and
strategies’ ( Jessop, 1987, p. 157). On the contrary, one ought to see how accumulation is regularised/
governed as the global result, only partially foreseen, of the conlict between diferent strategies – as
contradictory as they might be. A useful consideration is that the objects of regulation both pre-exist
it, as so many ‘free elements’, and are constituted through it, as they are integrated into partial totalization attempts that relatively ix them as moments of the mode of regulation ( Jessop, 1990, p. 311).
According to this view, the various strategies attempted to coordinate social relations through diferent
circuits that would alter the eicacy of all of them, and it is through the synthesis of these practices
that an accumulation regime emerges – however diferent it may be from the one each individual strategy intended. While we do accept that ‘there is neither regulation in general nor general regulation;
only particular regulation and the totality of regulation’ ( Jessop, 1990, p. 311), it should be noted that
the ‘totality of regulation’ difers from the sum of particular regulations – the eicacy of the latter is
afected by all strategies in play, while the totality of regulation emerges from, and as the (but partially
intended) resultant of, the clash of all attempts at regulation. As Jessop puts it, indicating how coordination arises through conlicting strategies:
he success of the ‘nth’ strategy depends on its complementarities to all other relevant strategies […]
here is no global subject to plan accumulation strategies […] Instead we ind only diferent subjects
whose activities are more or less co-ordinated, whose activities meet more or less resistance from other
forces, and whose strategies are pursued within a structural context which is both constraining and
facilitating ( Jessop, 1987, p. 158-159).
22
In lieu of studying two ideal-typical accumulation regimes of doubtful existence, one would explore the contradictions of a certain form of regularisation and governance that operates without a
clear strategy behind it (‘there is no global subject to plan accumulation strategies’). here are elements
to do so. One can study the diferent fractions of capital (particularly those involved with inance and
knowledge-based sectors) in terms of their capacity to exert ecological dominance or economic determination, domination and hegemony, and thereby explore the resultant tensions or complementarities.
Jessop himself hints at this, when he suggests that there is a ‘growing antagonism between the globalising knowledge-based economy as the material and ideological expression of productive capital and
the logic of a inance-led, shareholder-value oriented process of capital accumulation’ ( Jessop, 2010a,
p. 36). It should be borne in mind that inancial domination, in this context, refers to ‘the articulation
of the circuits of inance and production and is not intended to re-assert the misleading distinction
between inance and the “real economy”’ ( Jessop, 2013a, p. 53-54). One could then explore how this
supposedly less stable regime, which lacks a clearly dominant strategy, interacts with the hegemonic
project (if any) as regards the latter’s bases of support, the room in it for ofering material concessions,
its legitimation strategies and so on. In the case of the US, a particularly important dimension is how
the insuiciencies of such a regime interact with, and are partially made up for by, the country’s global
hegemonic position and hence its capacity to issue the global reserve currency.
his argument is also informed by some substantive observations. Firstly, there is a complex and
intense articulation between the inancial and productive forms of capital, especially in knowledge-intensive sectors. his suggests that the regularisation of the latter’s circuit should not be conceived in the
absence of a key-role for inancial capital. In spite of this not being a necessary implication of Jessop’s
recent works (see in particular 2013c), since one can investigate the practical articulation of the two
ideal-typical regimes proposed, it does seem at the very least a counter-productive heuristic procedure.
As, moreover, the idea of an accumulation regime deines the elements of an economic arrangement
that jointly reveal the main features of the form that the expanded accumulation of capital tends to assume, it seems more sound to explicitly encompass in a single regime of accumulation, as was previously
done, the articulation between inancial capital and the KBE. his could perhaps happen via attempts
to impose conlicting accumulation strategies (e.g., one of inancial and the other of knowledge-intensive sectors), with a resultant regularisation/governance of accumulation comprising elements of
both – but corresponding to neither. We do not propose any substantive solution, but there are various
works18 that in pointing out the complementarities and instabilities of the relation between inance
and innovation indicate that their interlinking is a central characteristic of contemporary capitalism
– hence, both must be theorised together. he idea of competing regimes is made even harder if the
most advanced expressions of inancial domination and a knowledge-intensive, innovative economy
18 See, for example, (Albuquerque, 2010). For a more general take on the role of inancial circuits in contemporary
capitalism, from a Marxist view, see (Bryan; Rafferty, 2006).
23
are arguably to be found, in a deeply connected fashion (as venture capital attests), in the same social
formation – the USA, both home to Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
In light of the preceding, neither should one devise a state form compatible with the inance-dominated regime and another compatible with the KBE. It seems better to further develop the SWPR,
paying attention to its (non-)complementarities with the various moments of the circuit of capital.
It once more seems that some of Jessop’s recent works fall behind his earlier output, particularly as
he deines that the SWPR would be a congruent state form only insofar as it is ‘lexicurity’-oriented
( Jessop, 2013c, p. 18). his constitutes a perhaps excessive detachment from concrete cases (the SWPR
would only be found in, say, Denmark and the Netherlands), as well as, which is more preoccupying,
a conception of regularisation of accumulation that would necessarily comprehend progressive traits.
Even if risking repetitiveness, we stress that regularising accumulation is nothing more (nor less) than
guaranteeing, in a precarious, partial and unstable manner, that the expanded reproduction of capital
asserts itself as the main principle of societalization. his, by necessity, entails the reproduction of contradictions and of exploitation.
6. FINAL REMARKS
his brief tour of Jessop’s account of the transition to the SWPR has defended that it constitutes, some deiciencies notwithstanding, a fertile research project. We have argued that there are indeed
certain structuralist or functionalist nuances to it, as well as passages which if not carefully placed in
their due context might be (mis)construed as a resort to economic determinism. his, however, only
holds if one reads the author as having presented a inished and suicient account of the emergence of
the current state form, particularly by taking he future of the capitalist state ( Jessop, 2002) in isolation.
Once one approaches this contribution as part of an ongoing research agenda, on the other hand, we
have tried to show that the latter is capable of unfolding a progressively iner critique of contemporary
political economy. With this in mind, we have ofered the following suggestions.
First, we propose developing a more strictly evolutionary approach to the process of institutional
creation and retention, which might eliminate some functionalist and deterministic tensions. It can,
additionally, provide a more precise analytical blueprint to the interrelation between economic and
the political forms, particularly as regards the conditions that favour them becoming congruent or not
in speciic points. In the second place, we argue for integrating Chinese and Eastern Asian spaces to
post-Fordism. his is because they are an intrinsic element of post-Fordist economic reproduction, the
exclusion of which, therefore, leads to a cycle that cannot be closed and to a biased theorisation – notably in not realising the dependence of KBE to the precarious work of the ‘sweatshop of the world’.
We also suggest, as Jessop has recently started to do, to study post-Fordism through the interaction of
its diferent sub-types. Instead of relatively independent modalities of post-Fordism and the SWPR,
one would look at how their relationship to each other, to the various other social formations and to
24
the world market, as the ultimate horizon and the necessary reference of production and valorisation,
concur to reproduce all of them. It is thus a movement towards studying the (in)compossibility of the
reproduction of post-Fordist capitalist formations in their global insertion, which additionally would,
as argued above, facilitate identifying economic and political alternatives. In the fourth place, we propose not to theorise about competing regimes of accumulation in a same spatiotemporal matrix, but
rather about a single regime developed through conlicting strategies, so as to better apprehend the
articulation of the diferent forms of capital and the impacts therefrom. At last, we suggest that the
relativization of scale should be brought to bear on identifying eventual spatiotemporal ixes. here
seems to be some residual ‘methodological territorialism’ in the hypotheses Jessop advances for a post-Fordist spatiotemporal ix – based on his own works, one should consider the possibility of a such a
ix assuming a complex polymorphy.
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