Financial and Technological Centralization: A Tentative Interpretation through Régulation

Centralisation is a relevant economic phenomenon that is receiving little attention in political economy. This concept points at allocative decision-making in an economic system. The economic and financial concentration of the last thirty years as well as technological change have progressively let everybody depend on less and less decision centres. We may single out three dimensions of centralisation: the increased size of the relevant corporations and their dependence on a few financial players - the Hilferding problem; the diffusion of technologies that produce interaction environments in which an increasing part of economic evaluations and transactions take place (platform capitalism); the diminishing relevance of national political jurisdictions as concerns the decisions on how to legally and institutionally frame the economic space in favour of a few political centres (the USA, China...). The consequence is that the ability of economic and democratic self-determination is progressively reduced. Moreover, social control is increased, but not in favour of democratic governments. The aim of the paper is to explore to what extent the study of comparative capitalism and, in particular, the theory of Régualtion can understand this phenomenon. The loss of self-containment of capitalistic systems makes the study more complex.