Varieties of capitalism in an internationalized world: domestic institutional change in European telecommunications

This article examines how internationalization affects domestic decisions about the reform of market institutions. A developing literature argues that nations maintain different “varieties of capitalism” in the face of economic globalization because of diverse domestic settings. However, in an internationalized world, powerful forces for change applying across border scan affect decision making within domestic arenas. The article therefore analyzes how three factors (transnational technological and economic developments, overseas reforms, and European regulation) affected institutional reform in a selected case study of telecommunications regulation in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy between the 1960s and 2002. The author argues that when different forms of internationalization are strong and combined, they can overwhelm institutional inertia and the effects of different national settings to result in rapid change and cross-national convergence in market institutions. Hence different varieties of capitalism may endure only when international pressures are low and/or for limited periods of time.