Festschrift für Fritz W. Scharpf - MPIfG

90 I · Reformen und Innovationen
are interested. Likewise, policy makers, investors and other users of social
research into forms of capitalism probably want to know simply “is this
economy like the USA or like Germany?” The labelling model is also of
value when measuring instruments are crude. We do not have in the social
sciences finely tuned ways of measuring how much of a particular element
is to be found in something as complex as a national economy; we might
however be able to say, broadly, what an economy is more or less “like” –
in other words, which simple model it most resembles.
Further – and this has been fundamental in turning many researchers towards
a labelling approach – research strategies of this kind can apply reasonably
rigorous statistical tests to data concerning a small number of cases
(the small n problem in macro-comparative research). This has been particularly
important in work on comparative capitalism. Is unemployment
higher in liberal, conservative or social-democratic welfare states? Are exports
higher in liberal or coordinated market economies? Chi-squared and
other simple tests can be used to answer such questions among the very
small n of all-OECD countries, provided cases can be seen as examples of
models, and provided there is a very limited number of categories. This
point also enables us to understand the reluctance of researchers to accept
hybrid cases, otherwise the obvious bolt hole for those wishing to reconcile
labelling and analysis. The Dutch and British welfare states may well be
mixed examples of, respectively, continental and social-democratic, and liberal
and social-democratic types. But if the researcher is trying to apply a
chi-squared test they have to be put in one or another box or be excluded,
reducing n. Hybrid cases quickly become treated as having a dominant feature
plus a lot of noise, which is ignored.
The disadvantages of this approach include obviously its crudeness, but
also – and this is our fundamental concern – its incapacity to help us confront
scope for change and innovation. Let us assume an actor-centred approach
with knowledge being problematic for the actors. They will have
easier access to knowledge which already exists in practical form close to
them than to that which is remotely or only theoretically available. “Closeness”
here means principally institutional closeness: the capacity of the actors
to have access to the institution in which the relevant knowledge is embedded.
The more heterogeneous the context within which actors operate,
the more opportunity they will have of encountering practical knowledge
which they have not used before in the immediate context, but which is part
of the more general repertoire which is relatively accessible to them. This
leads to the hypothesis: that institutional heterogeneity will facilitate inno-