Remaking the Connections: Marxism and the French Regulation School

Abstract

The current Robert Boyer-led French Regulation School (FRS) characterizes the contemporary era as a diversity of national capitalisms. Boyer’s new approach displaces the original FRS focus on “models of development.” This article rallies against the current direction and re-engages the FRS’s earlier mid-range Marxist-influenced account of capitalist development. In particular, key concepts of “regulation” and “model of development” are reworked in the context of a revised account of the Fordist model of development. These concepts are then adapted to work up an outline of the “neoliberal model of development.”