Revisiting the regulation approach: Critical reflections on the contradictions, dilemmas, fixes and crisis dynamics of growth regimes

Abstract

Capitalist growth regimes are analysed drawing on Marx’s insights into the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, regulation theoretical arguments about the five basic structural forms of accumulation regimes and their modes of regulation, historical geographical materialism’s emphasis on spatio-temporal fixes, and state-theoretical accounts of the ‘government + governance’ of capitalist social formations in the shadow of hierarchy. This framework is then applied to four specific growth regimes and their crisis tendencies. These regimes are Atlantic Fordism, two (among many) alternative post-Fordist trajectories – the knowledge-based economy and finance-dominated capitalism – and a radical ‘no-growth’ variant of the ‘Green New Deal’. The article highlights the crisis tendencies of the first three and assesses whether the Green New Deal represents an alternative route out of crisis or the capture of an eco-social project by the forces that brought us finance-dominated accumulation. It concludes with a future research agenda.