ILPC 2026

Despite a broad-based consensus on the conceptual inadequacy of the varieties of capitalism (VoC) (Hall and Soskice, 2001) for comparative political economy of work (e.g. Frege and Kelly, 2013; Heyes et al., 2014; Milner, 2015), especially from the perspective of labour process analysis (Smith and Thompson, 2009; Vidal and Hauptmeier, 2014). For these critics, especially those looking to develop labour process analysis at the level of political economy (Smith and Thompson, 2009), VoC puts far too much analytic emphasis on the variety of path-dependent national economies and too little on the commonalities and tendencies emanating from global capitalism (Thompson, 2010). Instead, they advocate an approach that seeks to capture the dynamic interaction between global politico-economic forces and existing local-regional institutions to explain (e.g. Vidal and Hauptmeier, 2014). For labour process analysis one of the most fruitful sources of engagement with global political economy in recent times has been in the mapping and analysis of global value chains (Newsome et al., 2015), which has evoked an extensive range of work that necessitates trying to address the connectivity problem between labour process analysis at the point of production and the broader political economy. Equally, another field of work that seeks to fix the connection is the literature on the impact of financialisation on labour and the workplace (e.g. Cushen and Thompson, 2016). Despite this endeavour in both fields there has been limited progress in both fields. Yet in the shadows of the comparatively narrower field of study into the rise of temporary agency labour markets, nationally and internationally (Brook and Purcell, 2017) the variegated capitalism approach (Peck and Theodore, 2007) has emerged as arguably the predominant analytic paradigm, particularly among labour geographers (see Coe et al., 2010; Jordhuis-Lier et al., 2015; Theodore, 2016). Compared to the functionalism of VoC’s mono-scalar path-dependency analysis, variegated capitalism offers a dynamic account of the complex interrelationship between domestic and international politico-economic phenomena that combine to shape uneven employment conditions and labour markets across national, local and sectoral contexts. It commences from the foundational understanding that the variable characteristics of global capitalism are the product of the uneven but combined development (see Davidson, 2017) of national and sectoral institutional conditions, not least those pertaining to the specificities of labour markets and differing labour process regimes. As such, variegated capitalism employs a multi-scalar, contingent understanding of institutional change (Zhang and Peck, 2016) that allows it to capture the dynamic and complex connections between the local labour process at the local point of production and wider developments in the international political economy. The conceptual development of variegated capitalism with labour process analysis has largely stayed within the confines of labour geography (see Theodore, 2016) with very few exceptions (e.g. Brook and Purcell, 2017; Coe 2015). This is despite its conceptual compatibility with labour process analysis in stressing the complex, dynamic and contingent nature of change at the micro, meso and macro levels of work and employment in global capitalism; and its utility in mapping, comparing and explaining work and employment in a myriad of forms and places, including under financialised capital, in GVCs, through digital platforms and many other manifestations of labour in the global economy. In line with Atzeni’s (2014) call to develop interdisciplinary perspectives on the challenges facing workers and labour in a globalised economy, we argue for bringing variegated capitalism into the mainstream of debates on the future direction of labour process analysis. At a minimum it will strengthen the theoretical resources at our disposal to address the connectivity problem; and is likely to provide a substantive theoretical basis for honing our analyses of contemporary work, employment and labour. References Atzeni, M. (2014), Introduction: Neo-liberal globalisation and interdisciplinary perspectives on labour and collective action in M. Atzeni (ed.) Workers and Labour in Globalised Capitalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-22. Brook, P. and Purcell, C. (2017) The resistible rise of the temporary employment industry in France, Economic and Industrial Democracy. First published 6 June doi.org/10.1177/0143831X17695439 Coe N, Jones K and Ward K (2010) The business of temporary staffing: a developing research agenda. Geography Compass 4(8): 1055-1068. Coe N (2015) ‘Labour and global production networks: mapping variegated landscapes of agency’ in K. Newsome, P. Taylor, J. Bair and A. Rainnie (eds.), Putting Labour in its Place: Labour Process Analysis and Global Value Chains, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 171-192. Cushen, J. and Thompson, P. (2016) Financialization and value: why labour and the labour process still matter’, Work, Employment and Society, 30(2): 352-365. Davidson, N. (2017) Combined and Uneven Development: Modernity, Modernism, Revolution http://ppesydney.net/uneven-combined-development-modernity-modernism-revolution-4-continuities-changes/ Frege, C. and Kelly, J. (2013) ‘Theoretical perspectives on comparative employment relations’ in C. Frege and J. Kelly (eds.), Comparative Employment Relations in the Global Economy, London: Routledge, pp. 8-26. Hall PA and Soskice DW (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Heyes J, Lewis P and Clark I (2014) Varieties of capitalism reconsidered: learning from the great recession and its aftermath. In: Hauptmeier M and Vidal M (eds.) Comparative Political Economy of Work. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, pp.33-51. Jordhus-Lier D, Coe NM and Bråten ST (2015) Contested growth: the development of Norway’s temporary staffing industry. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 97(1): 113-130. Milner S (2015) Comparative Employment Relations: France, Germany and Britain. London: Palgrave. Peck J and Theodore N (2007) Variegated Capitalism. Progress in Human Geography 31(6): 731-772. Newsome, K., Taylor, P., Bair, J. and Rainnie, A. (eds.) (2015), Putting Labour in its Place: Labour Process Analysis and Global Value Chains, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-26. Smith, C. and Thompson, P. (2009) ‘Labour power and labour process: Contesting the marginality of the sociology of work’, Sociology, 43(5): 913-930. Theodore, N. (2016) Worlds of Work: Changing Landscapes of Production and the New Geographies of Opportunity. Geography Compass, 10: 179–189. doi: 10.1111/gec3.12261. Thompson, P. (2010) The capitalist labour process: concepts and connections, Capital and Class, 34(1): 7-14. Vidal M and Hauptmeier M (2014) Comparative political economy and labour process theory: towards a synthesis. In: M Hauptmeier and M Vidal (eds) Comparative Political Economy of Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.1-32. Zhang J and Peck J (2016) Variegated Capitalism, Chinese Style: Regional Models, Multi-scalar Constructions. Regional Studies 50(1): 52-78.