"Cooperation and Political Economic Performance in Affluent Democratic Capitalism"

Alexander Hicks and Lane Kenworthy

American Journal of Sociology, vol. 103, no. 6, 1998, pp. 1631-72

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Abstract

Research on comparative political economic performance has traditionally followed two separate tracks, one concerned with collective economic gain (growth and efficiency) and the other focused on distribution and redistribution. Cooperative institutions offer a key to understanding cross-national variation among the affluent capitalist democracies in both facets of political economic performance. These institutions cluster along two dimensions: neocorporatism and firm-level cooperation. Pooled time-series analysis for 18 nations over 1960-89 suggests that (1) neocorporatism is a major source of distributive/redistributive policies and outcomes and of several sources of collective gain; (2) firm-level cooperation is a key contributor to economic growth.
 

Data set

Click here to access the data set.

The data set is in Microsoft Excel 97. The data cover 18 nations over 5 time periods (90 cases). (See below for a data set with scores for the individual cooperation items by year.) For variable definitions and data sources, see Table 6 of the article. The variables are:

NATION     Country number (see below)
YEAR       Time period (see below)
GOVTRANS   Government transfers
UNEMPL     Unemployment
GDPPCGR    Real per capita GDP growth
INVESTMT   Investment
TRADEBAL   Trade balance
INFL       Inflation
NEOCORP    Neocorporatism
FLCOOP     Firm-level cooperation
SDGOV      Social democratic government
CDGOV      Christian democratic government
AGED       Aged
CATCHUP    Catch up
SCLEROS    Years of uninterrupted democracy
UNIONDEN   Union density
CBINDEP    Central bank independence
DUM6067    1 = 1960-67, 0 = all other time periods
DUM6873    1 = 1968-73, 0 = all other time periods
DUM7479    1 = 1974-79, 0 = all other time periods
DUM8089    1 = 1980-89, 0 = all other time periods
DUM9094    1 = 1990-94, 0 = all other time periods
DUM7489    1 = 1974-89, 0 = all other time periods
BUSCONF    Cooperative institution 1: Business confederations
WAGECOOR   Cooperative institution 2: Coordinated wage bargaining
GOVTINTS   Cooperative institution 3: Government and interest groups
TNC-LC     Cooperative institution 4a: Lijphart-Crepaz index of tripartite
           neocorporatism
TNC-HS     Cooperative institution 4b: Hicks-Swank index of tripartite
           neocorporatism
INVFIRMS   Cooperative institution 5: Investors and firms
PURCHSUP   Cooperative institution 6: Purchasers and suppliers
COMPFIRMS  Cooperative institution 7: Competing firms
LABMGMT    Cooperative institution 8: Labor and management
WRKRTEAMS  Cooperative institution 9: Workers
MDIVTEAMS  Cooperative institution 10: Functional departments within firms

Data for the decommodification and active labor market policy (ALMP) variables cover only one and two time periods, respectively, and thus are not included here. They are available from the authors upon request.

Coding for the variable NATION:

1   Australia
2   Austria
3   Belgium
4   Canada
5   Denmark
6   Finland
7   France
8   Germany
9   Ireland
10  Italy
11  Japan
12  Netherlands
13  New Zealand
14  Norway
15  Sweden
16  Switzerland
17  United Kingdom
18  United States

Coding for the variable YEAR:

1  1960-67
2  1968-73
3  1974-79
4  1980-89
5  1990-94

Click here to access a data set (in Microsoft Excel 97) that provides annual scores for the individual cooperation items and the two aggregated cooperation variables. The variables in this data set are:

NATION
NATION#
YEAR
BUSCONF    Cooperative institution 1: Business confederations
WAGECOOR   Cooperative institution 2: Coordinated wage bargaining
GOVTINTS   Cooperative institution 3: Government and interest groups
TNC-LC     Cooperative institution 4a: Lijphart-Crepaz index of tripartite
           neocorporatism
TNC-HS     Cooperative institution 4b: Hicks-Swank index of tripartite
           neocorporatism
INVFIRMS   Cooperative institution 5: Investors and firms
PURCHSUP   Cooperative institution 6: Purchasers and suppliers
COMPFIRMS  Cooperative institution 7: Competing firms
LABMGMT    Cooperative institution 8: Labor and management
WRKRTEAMS  Cooperative institution 9: Workers
MDIVTEAMS  Cooperative institution 10: Functional departments within firms
NEOCORP    Hicks-Kenworthy neocorporatism variable
FLCOOP     Hicks-Kenworthy firm-level cooperation variable