O trabalho submete a teste a hipótese de que o direito concorrencial brasileiro não possui hoje grau de sofisticação institucional adequado para lidar com arranjos cooperativos interempresariais utilizados por empresas a fim de desenvolver, implantar e difundir inovações tecnológicas. O critério da sofisticação institucional empregado para tanto consiste na verificação da implementação deliberada e estratégica de mudanças institucionais pelo Estado para prover vantagens institucionais comparativas para as empresas nele baseadas, em termos de maior segurança jurídica e menores custos de compliance. A fim de identificar os fatores relevantes para tal análise são empregados conceitos teóricos das linhas de pesquisa conhecidas como Nova Economia Institucional (NEI) e Variedades de Capitalismo (VdC), bem como uma análise empírica comparativa da política concorrencial aplicável a tais arranjos cooperativos nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. / This work tests the hypothesis that the Brazilian competition law has not today an appropriate degree of institutional sophistication to deal with interfirm cooperative arrangements employed by companies to develop, deploy and disseminate technological innovations. The criterion of institutional sophistication hereby employed consists on the verification of the deliberate and strategic implementation of institutional changes by the State in order to provide comparative institutional advantages for the companies based therein, in terms of more legal certainty and lower compliance costs. In order to identify the relevant factors for such analysis, theoretical concepts from New Institutional Economics (NIE) and Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literatures are employed, as well as a comparative empirical analysis of the competition policy applicable to such cooperative arrangements in the United States and Brazil.

O trabalho submete a teste a hipótese de que o direito concorrencial brasileiro não possui hoje grau de sofisticação institucional adequado para lidar com arranjos cooperativos interempresariais utilizados por empresas a fim de desenvolver, implantar e difundir inovações tecnológicas. O critério da sofisticação institucional empregado para tanto consiste na verificação da implementação deliberada e estratégica de mudanças institucionais pelo Estado para prover vantagens institucionais comparativas para as empresas nele baseadas, em termos de maior segurança jurídica e menores custos de compliance. A fim de identificar os fatores relevantes para tal análise são empregados conceitos teóricos das linhas de pesquisa conhecidas como Nova Economia Institucional (NEI) e Variedades de Capitalismo (VdC), bem como uma análise empírica comparativa da política concorrencial aplicável a tais arranjos cooperativos nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. / This work tests the hypothesis that the Brazilian competition law has not today an appropriate degree of institutional sophistication to deal with interfirm cooperative arrangements employed by companies to develop, deploy and disseminate technological innovations. The criterion of institutional sophistication hereby employed consists on the verification of the deliberate and strategic implementation of institutional changes by the State in order to provide comparative institutional advantages for the companies based therein, in terms of more legal certainty and lower compliance costs. In order to identify the relevant factors for such analysis, theoretical concepts from New Institutional Economics (NIE) and Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literatures are employed, as well as a comparative empirical analysis of the competition policy applicable to such cooperative arrangements in the United States and Brazil.

A central theme in the comparative political economy of the welfare state is the complementaries between political institutions, social policy, and labour markets. Yet little has been written to uncover this political-economic nexus in China, the world’s second largest economy. This thesis partly addresses this gap by studying the country’s public pension arrangement, the most expensive component of the Chinese welfare state. It reveals the working of the political-economic nexus in contemporary China by showing how it leads to two puzzling characteristics of the Chinese pension system, namely the rapid expansion in the absence of electoral pressures and the persistent regional fragmentation despite an authoritarian central government. It argues that the decentralised authoritarianism, in which China’s authoritarian central state delegates to regional governments and motivates them to achieve its developmental goals, drives municipal authorities to compete with each other in generating economic growth. In the inter-municipal economic competition, local leaders adopt an expansionary yet localising pension policy. This facilitates the formation of specific industrial skills, which are productive for particular local industries, and the retention of skilled industrial workers. All of this is important to local economic development in a context of industrial upgrading and labour market tightening. It is argued this is the political-economic logic of China’s pension system.

La libéralisation et la standardisation des marchés ont rendu les économies nationales instables. Les changements paradigmatiques causés par cette situation mènent au remodelage de la définition et du rôle de l’économie politique, affectant des institutions étatiques, dont l’état social et le marché du travail. Ce travail fait ressortir les différences d’interprétation et d’analyses selon les traditions en pensée économique. Le cas de l’Allemagne devient intéressant, puisqu’il y a une tradition de pensée économique particulière avec ses courants de pensée plus sociaux et, selon la théorie de variétés de capitalisme, un capitalisme différent du modèle américain. L’économiste social allemand Wolfgang Streeck soutient d’ailleurs que le capitalisme se dissocie tranquillement de son aspect démocratique alors que d’autres chercheurs n’arrivent pas à cette conclusion. Dans un contexte de libéralisation et de standardisation, ne devrait-il pas y avoir une standardisation des analyses et des courants de pensées économiques, eux-mêmes déterminés selon leur contexte politique et social ? Peut-on conclure que les conclusions de Streeck sont définies par les pensées économiques allemandes traditionnelles ? La recherche lie deux approches : celle économique (comment produire davantage) et celle politique (comment répartir). Cette discipline qu’est l’économie politique vient prendre en compte l’aspect social de l’économie. La méthodologie consiste à faire un portrait de la pensée économique de Streeck et le situer historiquement, nationalement et internationalement afin de démontrer que, malgré la mondialisation, les économies et pensées économiques nationales sont encore pertinentes. / Market liberalisation and standardisation have rendered national economies unstable. The paradigmatic changes caused by the situation have remodeled the definition and role of political economy. They have also affected state institutions, may it be the welfare state and the labour market. This research paper brings forward interpretation and analyses differences according to different traditions of economic thought. Germany’s case becomes interesting since it has a specific tradition of economic thought with its more social perspectives and, according to the varieties of capitalism theory, a very distinct capitalist model compared to the usually more preferred Anglo-Saxon model. The German social economist Wolfgang Streeck arguments that capitalism is slowly separating itself from its democratic aspect whereas other researchers come to other conclusions. In this context of liberalisation and standardisation, should there not be a standardisation of analyses and economic school of thoughts, themselves defined by their political and social context? Is it possible to conclude that Streeck’s conclusions are defined by traditional German economic thought? The research paper links two approaches: the economic approach (how to produce more) and the political one (how to distribute). The discipline of political economy takes the social aspect of economy into consideration. The methodology consists of sketching a portrait of Streeck’s economic thought and situating him historically, nationally and internationally, in order to demonstrate that, even with globalisation, national economies and national economic thought are still highly relevant.

Notre travail se penche sur le financement de la formation professionnelle continue tel qu'il a été négocié par les partenaires sociaux dans les pays européens post-fordistes. A travers une approche des associations patronales centrée sur la distribution inégale des ressources entre grandes firmes et PME, nous montrons que l'émergence d'une gestion corporatiste (les fonds de mutualisation) peut s'interpréter comme le résultat d'alliances inter-classes entre les syndicats, les associations patronales et les PME, contre les grandes entreprises. Bien que nous mobilisions un corpus centré sur les employeurs à l’image de ce que fait l'approche en termes de Variétés du Capitalisme (VoC – Hall et Soskice, 2001), la thèse soutenue est plus proche de l’institutionnalisme historique de l'Ecole française de la Régulation. En effet, l'attention accordée à l'hétérogénéité des firmes et au rôle du politique est difficilement compatible avec l’institutionnalisme rationnel de la VoC et sa conception des associations patronales comme simples outils de coordination des firmes / Our work tackles the issue of the financing of the continuous vocational training as it has been negotiated by social partners in the post-fordist European countries. The reflection is centered on the unequal distribution of resources among the large and small firms affiliated to employer associations. It is shown that the emergence of a corporatist governance (the training funds) can be interpreted as the result of cross-class coalitions between trade unions, employer association and SMEs, against big companies. Although we mobilize a theoretical corpus centered on employers as the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approach does (VoC – Hall and Soskice, 2001), our dissertation is closer to the historical institutionalism of the French Régulation School. Indeed, the attention granted to the firms’ heterogeneity and to the role of politics is hardly compatible with the VoC rational institutionalism and its conception of employer organizations as mere employer coordination instruments.

L'intégration européenne occasionne de multiples dilemmes pour les organisations syndicales, habitués à exercer leurs répertoires d'action dans un espace d'État-nation. Parmi les dilemmes spécifiquement liés à la gouvernance multiniveaux européenne, nous comptons la mobilité de la main-d'œuvre et la création d'un marché unique pour les services. Cette thèse examine les stratégies des organisations syndicales danoises et suédoises de trois secteurs pour s'attaquer à ces deux dilemmes. Des approches néo-institutionnalistes, notamment celle concernant les « variétés du capitalisme », s'attendraient à des réponses relativement uniformes, axées sur les fortes complémentarités institutionnelles nationales, tenant compte de la nature coordonnée des relations industrielles scandinaves. Notre thèse confirme que les institutions nationales jouent un rôle important pour atténuer les impacts de l'intégration économique, au fur et à mesure que l'intégration progresse. L'analyse de nos cas, basée sur plus de soixante entretiens semi-dirigés effectués en Europe, nous permet cependant d'affirmer un rôle également important pour des facteurs endogènes, notamment l'entrepreneuriat institutionnel et les capacités stratégiques. / European integration induces multiple dilemmas for trade unions whose repertories of action are normally limited to the scope of the nation state. Free movement of workers and the establishment of a common market for services are among said dilemmas that surface specifically in the context of European multilevel governance of industrial relations. This doctoral thesis examines trade union strategies in Denmark and Sweden in three sectors that address these two dilemmas. Neo-institutionalism, specifically “varieties of capitalism” literature, suggests that responses should be relatively uniform, centred around strong institutional complementarities on the national level, because of the strongly coordinated nature of the Nordic economies and industrial relations model. Our thesis confirms that national institutions play an important role in order to mitigate pressures of economic integration, in the long run. However, based on over sixty semi-structured interviews in Europe, our cases also ascertain an important role for endogenous factors, such as institutional entrepreneurship and strategic capabilities.

Varieties of Capitalism theory predicts that the skill specificity of workers determines their demand for social protection. In this thesis, I test this assumption using a measure of occupational mobility between pre- and post-unemployment, which I apply to European workers in different skill groups as defined by Fleckenstein et al., (2011). Using this measure as an indicator of the portability of workers' skills, I then evaluate whether the lower marketability of human capital investments is associated with greater demand for unemployment protection. The findings demonstrate that whilst this relationship is apparent in certain countries, notably Coordinated Market Economies such as Germany, the assumptions do not apply across institutional settings. Consequently, skill specificity cannot explain variation in attitudes towards unemployment protection policies between countries.

Cette thèse s’inscrit au cœur du chantier de réflexion sur l’interaction entre les États et les entreprises multinationales qui s’impose dans le contexte de l’accélération actuelle du processus de mondialisation de l’économie capitaliste. Nous l’abordons sous l’angle plus particulier des multinationales et de leur engagement institutionnel au sein des organisations, associations, forums ou réseaux qui contribuent à la définition et parfois même à la gestion des différentes politiques publiques orientées vers le développement économique, l’innovation et le marché du travail. Quelles sont les différentes facettes de l’engagement institutionnel des filiales de multinationales au Canada ? Comment ces comportements peuvent-ils être influencés par les différentes caractéristiques et stratégies de ces entreprises ? Un modèle théorique large, empruntant des hypothèses aux nombreuses approches théoriques s’intéressant aux comportements généraux des multinationales, est testé à l’aide d’analyses quantitatives de données obtenues dans le cadre d’une enquête auprès des multinationales au Canada associée au projet international INTREPID. D’abord, cette thèse permet une opérationnalisation plus précise du concept d’« imbrication de la firme » à travers la notion d’engagement institutionnel. Elle met en évidence les différentes dimensions de ce phénomène et remet en question la vision « essentiellement » positive qui l’entoure. Les résultats de cette thèse viennent questionner de la centralité des approches macro-institutionnalistes, particulièrement celle associée aux Variétés du capitalisme, dans les études sur les multinationales. Ils réaffirment par contre l’importance des différentes approches économiques et démontrent plus particulièrement la pertinence de la théorie de la dépendance aux ressources et l’impact de la présence d’un acteur structuré venant faire le contrepoids aux gestionnaires. Malgré nos efforts de théorisation, nous sommes incapable d’observer un effet modérateur des facteurs stratégiques sur l’impact du pays d’origine dans la détermination de l’engagement institutionnel. Cette thèse offre des indications permettant de cibler les interventions institutionnelles qui cherchent à « attacher » les multinationales à l’économie canadienne. Elle met aussi en évidence la contribution d’acteurs indirects dans la consolidation des relations d’engagement institutionnel et plus particulièrement le rôle positif que peuvent jouer les syndicats dans certains forums ou réseaux. / This thesis participates in a wide reflection on the interaction between government and multinational companies that is required in the current context of an accelerated globalization of the capitalist economy. We approach this issue by focusing on the institutional engagement of multinationals within different organizations, associations, forums or networks related to various development, innovation or labor market policies. What are the different dimensions of the institutionnal engagement of canadian subsidiary of multinationals ? How are those behaviors influenced by the various characteristics and strategies of these companies ? A comprehensive theoretical model, borrowing from many approaches used to understand the general behaviors of multinationals, is verified by quantitative analysis using original data obtained through the author’s participation in the Multinationals in Canada survey associated with the global INTREPID research initiative. By highlighting the different facet of institutional engagement of the firm, this thesis establishes a more accurate operationalization of the broad concept of the “embeddedness”. Doing so, it put in question the essentially positive interpretation of the lather. The results reaffirm the relevance of various economics approach, but question the centrality of macro-intuitionalist approaches, particularly the Varieties of capitalism paradigm. Our analysis also illustrates the relevance of the Resource dependence theory and the impact of the presence in a firm of a structured actor able to counterbalance managers. Despite our theoretical venture, we were unable to observe a moderator effect of autonomy or power of the subsidiary on the country of origin influence on its institutional engagement behaviors. This thesis provides some insight for better targeting institutional and economical interventions that seek to ‘embed’ multinationals and their capital inside the Canadian economy. It also draws light to the contributions of different stakeholder in the consolidation of the institutional engagement of multinationals, especially unions for training forums or employers networks.

Ce mémoire cherche à comprendre un paradoxe : les États-providence les plus généreux, façonnés par des partis sociaux-démocrates, sont financés par des taxes beaucoup plus régressives que les États-providence les moins généreux où les partis de droite, plus souvent au pouvoir, mettent en place une taxation plus progressive. Pour comprendre ce paradoxe, ce mémoire débute en analysant les pressions induites par la mondialisation des capitaux sur la taxation. Ensuite, le mémoire explore les causes institutionnelles des régimes fiscaux en effectuant une revue de la littérature analytique. Ces contraintes institutionnelles et fonctionnelles sur le comportement et les préférences des acteurs politiques permettent de définir trois idéaux-types de régimes fiscaux. Ces idéaux-types cadrent avec la typologie des régimes d’État-providence d’Esping-Andersen. En regroupant des typologies sur les régimes fiscaux et les régimes d’État-providence, ce mémoire souligne que le financement des politiques publiques représente une composante cruciale de l’économie politique de l’État-providence. / This thesis is about a paradox: the most generous welfare states, built by social-democratic parties, are financed by more regressive taxes than residual welfare states, which are funded by progressive taxes, despite the fact that they are governed by right parties more often. To understand this paradox, this thesis starts by analysing the pressures that globalisation puts on taxation. Then, the thesis reviews the literature of political science research on taxation to understand the institutional origins of distinct tax regimes. Three ideal types of tax regimes are defined by the study of institutional and functional constraints on political actors’ preferences and behaviour. These ideal types fit with Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare states regimes. By regrouping typologies on tax and welfare regimes, this thesis explores the link between revenues and expenses while showing that the funding of public policies is a crucial feature of the political economy of welfare states.

L'intégration européenne occasionne de multiples dilemmes pour les organisations syndicales, habitués à exercer leurs répertoires d'action dans un espace d'État-nation. Parmi les dilemmes spécifiquement liés à la gouvernance multiniveaux européenne, nous comptons la mobilité de la main-d'œuvre et la création d'un marché unique pour les services. Cette thèse examine les stratégies des organisations syndicales danoises et suédoises de trois secteurs pour s'attaquer à ces deux dilemmes. Des approches néo-institutionnalistes, notamment celle concernant les « variétés du capitalisme », s'attendraient à des réponses relativement uniformes, axées sur les fortes complémentarités institutionnelles nationales, tenant compte de la nature coordonnée des relations industrielles scandinaves. Notre thèse confirme que les institutions nationales jouent un rôle important pour atténuer les impacts de l'intégration économique, au fur et à mesure que l'intégration progresse. L'analyse de nos cas, basée sur plus de soixante entretiens semi-dirigés effectués en Europe, nous permet cependant d'affirmer un rôle également important pour des facteurs endogènes, notamment l'entrepreneuriat institutionnel et les capacités stratégiques. / European integration induces multiple dilemmas for trade unions whose repertories of action are normally limited to the scope of the nation state. Free movement of workers and the establishment of a common market for services are among said dilemmas that surface specifically in the context of European multilevel governance of industrial relations. This doctoral thesis examines trade union strategies in Denmark and Sweden in three sectors that address these two dilemmas. Neo-institutionalism, specifically “varieties of capitalism” literature, suggests that responses should be relatively uniform, centred around strong institutional complementarities on the national level, because of the strongly coordinated nature of the Nordic economies and industrial relations model. Our thesis confirms that national institutions play an important role in order to mitigate pressures of economic integration, in the long run. However, based on over sixty semi-structured interviews in Europe, our cases also ascertain an important role for endogenous factors, such as institutional entrepreneurship and strategic capabilities.