What Can a Unified Typology Explain?

Abstract

This book was in many ways structured like a play. We have been introduced to the main protagonists: the two typologies. We have seen what keeps them apart, and how they can nonetheless be brought together. But while it is usually self-evident that we want a play’s protagonists to come together, one question must be answered here, which Paul Pierson (2000: 808f.; also cf. Korpi 2000: 28) summarizes pointedly: ‘Much discussion has focused on whether there were more than three regimes and whether particular countries were correctly categorized. Less attention has been paid to the question of why it makes sense to talk about regimes or worlds of welfare at all’. Similarly, Arts and Gelissen (2010: 572) emphasize that typologizing is useless unless it helps to explain what we are interested in. So even if we can integrate typologies of production and welfare into a unified two-by-three typology of capitalist diversity, the question remains why we should do so. What is the added explanatory value of a unified typology?