Following from the theoretical points made before, the thesis first offers a theoretical account of how the political making of the individual can be studied in a deeper way than the current literature on economic regimes has engaged in with so far. It falls back on the very basic notions of how to conceptualise the individual in a particular societal context. Sociological elements are relevant as they give insight into how the individual and society interact (Foucault 1991; Campbell 2009), and how the individual then becomes to be regarded in a particular context (Joas and Knoebl 2009). This is exactly what the thesis is interested in, to study the very definition of
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the ideal-typical individual itself, the making of the self as an economic agent. The central research question then becomes the following:
How can a constructivist understanding of the individual open up the field of ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ in a way as to provide a complementary political analysis of public policies in relation to consumption issues, more specifically in the cases of British and German home ownership and mortgage markets?
Positioned in the VoC literature, the argument sets forward an alternative approach. Indeed, what comes to the forefront are “the economic and cultural conditions in which this aptitude is acquired”, referring to the aptitude to act as an individual inside a particular economic context of market processes and state interventions. Also, a diachronic approach is taken when it comes to the empirical part as to fully bring to the forefront the political tensions in the making of certain everyday conceptions of economic agency (Watson 2011a).
The case studies then cover a time span of eleven years each, from 1997 to 2007. This time frame has been chosen as it represents the period when British house prices experiences considerable growth levels. For each economic regime, state interventions into the home ownership market and the mortgage market are analysed in order to shed light into the definition of economic agency in each of them. These markets are chosen as they represent not only instances where conceptions of the individual are vital, but also as they constitute economic loci that are central to both varieties of capitalism, even though in diverse ways as the empirical chapters show. The hypothesis is that the conceptions of the individual are consistent among the same economy as the socio-political context is similar, but that they differ between
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countries as the wider conditions are significantly different. As the framework sets out the relationships between the definition of the ideal-typical economic subject and the context in which such an understanding is reproduced, the logic is that the environment acts upon the making of the individual in a consistent way. This hypothesis is taken from the VoC literature itself that uses the notion of institutional complementarities to underline that the different features of economies follow the same logic (Hall and Soskice 2001, 19). This is also why categorisations can be performed that compare the totality of economies. In relation to the thesis, what then comes to the forefront in the empirical studies are the exact fashions in which the individual is embedded into, on the one hand economic market mechanisms, and on the other hand the depictions of the latter by state actors. In this triangular relationship between the individual, the market and the state, applied to the theme of housing consumption, the thesis outlines the deeply political features not only of sets of policies but also of the process itself by which the individual is depicted as an economic agent, on his/her own and in relation to other market participants.
As regards the methodological approach, the empirical data for the case studies is constituted of parliamentary discussions and commissioned reports then discussed in parliament outlining certain policies. As such they highlight the features of the central line of thought behind such state interventions, they set out the contours of a particular rationale for state intervention to use the terminology introduced above (Bayley 2004). Once the concept of the state is conceptualised as an institution and as a set of policies in relation to the individual in this case, the justifications of a certain kind of state intervention can be traced back in debates between state actors. As such parliamentary debates are the most relevant sources of enquiry in relation to the
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research question set out above. Indeed, it is especially in parliamentary discussions that justifications for specific plans of action are set forward, hence hinting at the rationale for the underlying reasons behind state policies. In these utterances, state actors make a case for their approach to various economic themes. More specifically, they are also setting out particular readings or definitions of the economic agent per se, as well as of how the market is supposed to work, on its own and in relation to the individual.
The character of debate is especially insightful in parliamentary utterances as it forces the state actors to express his/her views against others, hence exactly proceeding with the marginalisation of alternative naïve theories. As described above, it is this very process of construction of sense (Every and Augoustinos 2007), that can come in more or less explicit fashions, that is central to the efforts of the thesis to point towards complementary political features of capitalist variety. At the same time, following parliamentary debates allows the scholar to set out the potentially inconsistent elements of the rationale for state action, as well as spotting naïve theories of economic agency and of the market that are contradictory, or at least inconsistent. As such, the political nature of policy interventions can be tracked down in a way that allows for the theoretical focus on the facilitation of certain sets of naïve theories to be operationalised (Van Dijk 2000, 88). At the same time, the diachronic focus allows for a time dimension in the justification of economic policy.
As the capitalist economies investigated here are governed by the means of a parliamentary system, comparability is ensured. However, that is not to say that the
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institutional features of the British and German parliament can be assumed to be the same. In fact, chapter four sets out a theoretical account of how to take these differences into account. The concept of individual-state relationship then not only picks up on the content of the policy outcome, but also on its form. Again then, the distinction introduced in relation to the state as an institution and as a set of policies is a heuristic one, meaning that it allows for a scholarly refinement without assuming that the two sides are ontologically separate. The theoretical as well as the empirical chapters reflect such a perspective.