Germany is a central case for research on comparative political economy, which has inspired theorizing on national differences and historical trajectories. This book assesses Germany’s political economy after the end of the "social democratic" 20th century to rethink its dominant properties and create new opportunities for using the country as a powerful lens into the evolution of democratic capitalism. Documenting large-scale changes and new tensions in the welfare state, company strategies, interest intermediation, and macroeconomic governance, the volume makes the case for analysing contemporary Germany through the politics of imbalance rather than the long-standing paradigm of institutional stability. This conceptual reorientation around inequalities and disparities provides much-needed traction for clarifying the causal dynamics that govern ongoing processes of institutional recomposition. Delving into the politics of imbalance, the volume explicates the systemic properties of capitalism, multivalent policy feedback, and the organizational foundations of creative adjustment as key vantage points for understanding new forms of distributional conflict within and beyond Germany. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of German Politics.

Germany is a central case for research on comparative political economy, which has inspired theorizing on national differences and historical trajectories. This book assesses Germany's political economy after the end of the "social democratic" 20th century to rethink its dominant properties and create new opportunities for using the country as a powerful lens into the evolution of democratic capitalism. Documenting large-scale changes and new tensions in the welfare state, company strategies, interest intermediation, and macroeconomic governance, the volume makes the case for analysing contemporary Germany through the politics of imbalance rather than the long-standing paradigm of institutional stability. This conceptual reorientation around inequalities and disparities provides much-needed traction for clarifying the causal dynamics that govern ongoing processes of institutional recomposition. Delving into the politics of imbalance, the volume explicates the systemic properties of capitalism, multivalent policy feedback, and the organizational foundations of creative adjustment as key vantage points for understanding new forms of distributional conflict within and beyond Germany. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of German Politics.

Does digital transformation make worker power impossible? Many seem to think so, especially those who see the Silicon Valley model as the best chance for economic growth in the twenty-first century. If economic growth requires deregulating markets for labor and finance capital, then labor's traditional power resources - especially institutions for social protection and the unions that support and enforce them - need to be dismantled. Rising inequality and spreading precarity are therefore inevitable and unavoidable in a world where workers cannot defend against employer discretion. In Recoding Power, Rothstein argues that worker power is possible in digital transformation, and outlines three tactics that workers can use in order to defend against precarity. Tracing how workers respond to mass layoffs at four tech firms in the United States and Germany, Rothstein shows that workers can build power in twenty-first century capitalism when they put workplace discourse at the center of their tactics for collective action. Close analysis of struggles in the workplace uncovers the creative tactics workers can develop to "recode" management's discourse in order to recognize the possibility of power and mobilize to transform that possibility into reality. By centering workers' lived experiences in the workplace, Recoding Power develops an account of actually existing digital transformation, illustrating how the path of capitalist development is shaped not by economic necessity, but by political creativity.