Diversity and Varieties of Capitalism Finland, Spain, and Switzerland

Sara Holmqvist May 2010,7 Nicolas Dellicour

Jerome van den Bosch

Socio-Economic

Diversity and Varieties of Capitalism

Finland, Spain, and Switzerland

Mr. Dominique Anxo Linneuniversitetet

Introduction

The paper will focus on the work of Bruno Amable, “The Diversity of Capitalism”. Throughout our essay we will compare the five major institutional areas, described by Bruno Amable, between three different countries we choose, which are Finland, Spain, and Switzerland. The five major institutional areas are Product Market Competition, Wage-Labour Nexus and labour market institutions, the Financial Systems and Corporate Governance, social protection and welfare state regimes, and training and educational systems.

According to Bruno Amable ‘s definition of models of capitalism; Finland belong to the Social-Democratic economies, Spain coordinates with the South European Capitalism, and concerning Switzerland it is not very clear. Switzerland reflects many characteristics of the Market Based Economies but change has brought Switzerland closer to the ideal type of Continental European Capitalism.

“The main objective is to go beyond the classification based on social protection systems, industrial relations systems and labour market regulation” .

Overview

The republic of Finland is located between the West and the East. From the thirteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Finland was a part of Sweden. Then, for more than a century, Finland was part of Russia. Even after its formal independence in 1917, Finland has had to do its best to prevent itself from becoming a part of the Soviet Union or Germany. After the 1970s, Finland’s development has been remarkable: both overall productivity and labour productivity have risen twice as fast as...