Eva Hartmann

Neo-pluralist political science, economic sociology and the conceptual foundations of the comparative capitalisms literatures

In this paper, we critically assess two of the key conceptual foundations for the comparative capitalisms (CC) literatures, neo-pluralist political science and economic sociology, in order to identify more clearly the deep intellectual roots of these literatures. Principally, we focus on how the strengths of neo-pluralism and economic sociology – their attention to detail in considering the huge range of ‘types’ of capitalism that exist across the world – come at a high price. Put briefly, the redefinition of ‘capitalism’ as ‘the economy’ concentrates research agendas on the specific political and social conditions found across the world, leaving ‘the economy’ relatively untouched. In consequence, ‘capitalist diversity’ is quickly, and often silently, equated to ‘political diversity’ or ‘social diversity’. As such, a key weakness of CC scholarship, identified by various authors in this Capital & Class special issue – that it does not provide a satisfactory theoretical understanding of capitalist societies – is a problem that runs deeper than the limitations that can be observed in contemporary debates. The implications of our argument are discussed in the conclusion.

Quality assurance and the shift towards private governance in higher education: Europeanisation through the back door?

ABSTRACT This contribution focuses on quality assurance (QA) agencies in the sphere of higher education. It develops a theoretical framework that interrelates systems theory with Gramscis theory of hegemony with a view to situating this new control of universities in the broader context of a further differentiation of society and emerging heterarchical modes of governance. A closer study of the emerging European market of QA agencies highlights the European dimension of this differentiation and the role of the market in advancing a variable geometry in the context of the European Higher Education Area.

The fetish of global competition

A number of scholars have criticised the methodological nationalism of the mainstream study of capitalist diversity for ignoring a global convergence trend triggered by global competition. This contribution agrees with this criticism but insists on the need to take the diversities into account in order to understand the dependence of capital on the geographical concreteness of living labour and its social context. At the same time, the paper outlines an analytical framework that sheds light on the process that makes this dependency invisible, hidden behind the convergence trend. This framework further develops Karl Marx’s and Evgeny Pashukanis’s notion of fetishism by drawing on accounts of state theory and economic sociology with a view to outlining the complex interplay of economic and extra-economic processes enabling this disguising. It assigns this process relative autonomy, and thus highlights another type of dependence of capital in its drive towards the realisation of surplus value.

The Educational Dimension of Global Hegemony

This article seeks to further strengthen a sociological turn within International Relations (IR), which aims to make classical social theory fruitful for analysing the transnationalisation of societies. The focus is on the contribution of Antonio Gramsci’s analysis in this regard. A number of scholars have transferred his theory of hegemony to the global level in order to gain a more sophisticated understanding of global power and its transformation in reaction to the deepening of global economic integration. Surprisingly, most neo-Gramscian scholars have devoted little attention to education, despite the importance Gramsci assigned to this social sphere. The article seeks to overcome this lacuna with a study of the internationalisation of higher education since the end of the Second World War. Against the backdrop of the insights this case study provides, it will suggest some modifications of the neo-Gramscian account of hegemony with a view to taking the sociological turn more seriously, and to deepening our understanding of the social quality and the scale of the emerging postnational hegemony.

The role of competition in the Europeanization of the professional complex

This contribution develops a theoretical framework in the vein of accounts of sociology of professions which highlight the role of professions in advancing social integration and the role of competition in this context. Against this theoretical backdrop, I will develops a critical account of the role of professions in the European integration. I hope to show why it is important for European Studies to pay more attention to sociology of professions and its notion of professions. Conversely, sociology of professions could learn from insights into the transnationalisation of politics and society provided by European Studies. The theoretical framework developed in this contribution will then be used to explore in a second part, through the magnifying glass of seminal rulings of the European Court of Justice, the Europeanization of the professional complex and the role of competition law in this context.

Special issue: a sociology of competition

Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will solve the current economic crisis. Much in line with Adam Smith, competition is seen as the most effective means to prevent producers from overpricing their products and from delivering poor quality. This take on competition differs diametrically from the view that strong competition will trigger a destructive race to the bottom, to the detriment of the whole society. Despite these fundamental differences, what both positions have in common is the assumption that competition has a major impact on society. In their seminal book on EU competition law, Michelle Cini and Lee McGowan identify competition policy as ‘the most important organizing principle in the capitalist world’ (Cini and McGowan 1998, 2). In the light of the importance assigned to competition, it comes as something of a surprise that competition is not a major topic within sociology. This special issue intends to contribute to overcoming this lacuna by outlining key dimensions of a sociology of competition. Such an account of competition is much more than just a sub-category of economic sociology; it rather explores all the different forms of competition in the sphere of economics, politics, sport, knowledge, beauty, fashion, art, and love, to name but a few areas where competition has gained momentum. Fortunately, this intellectual endeavour does not have to start from scratch but can benefit from the reasoning on competition which was prevalent in the sociology of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the contributions to this special issue draw on scholars such as Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, as well as Talcott Parsons, Franz Neumann, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi, and more recent sociological accounts of competition developed by Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Niklas Luhmann. The overall idea is to cover a broad range of different sociological accounts of competition with a view to providing a better understanding of how competition structures society. The contributions also aim to cover a broad range in methodological terms. Some analyses in this issue examine changes in the scholarly discussion on competition over the last two centuries. Other studies take the dissemination of these arguments into account by analysing changes in the dictionaries’ definition of competition. Another contribution examines the World Bank’s training manuals, which are used in capacity-building workshops. Last but not least, the concept of competition and its modification is studied through the lens of European case law.