Chapter 7 argues that law-abiding firms’ concerns for reputation generate discursive resources, which contribute to workers’ expectations of success. Unlike collective action for legal rights, interest-based protests rarely use disruptive tactics that physically expand the scope of conflict. Instead, workers use publicity tactics to attract the attention of third-party allies who exercise direct influence over the target firm’s policies. The main channel examined in this chapter is media exposure. It shows that workers at law-abiding firms have more discursive resources due to their firms newsworthiness and thus are more prone to expect that their protests would succeed. This shows that even in the more favorable environment for atomized protests, not all workers have the resources to engage in collective action. By limiting social mobilization, the regime has been able to manage the frequency and nature of atomized protests. At the same time, workers with the resources to engage in atomized protests are much less likely to hold the central government responsible for the situation they are in.

The constitution of a political economy is not a fixed constellation of relationships but a set of principles governing which relative positions and transformations are feasible under the existing constitutional arrangements. Constitutional principles imply that persistence and change are closely intertwined: a degree of persistence ensures the identity and stability of a political economy, while openness to transformation is necessary to allow resilience vis-à-vis shocks and adjustment to societal change. Each economic body is identified by a particular division of labour, representation of interdependencies, and dispositions of individuals and groups in the economy. Dispositions and interests are also central in the constitution of the political body, which leads to a definition of systemic interest and of the range of variation within which a given systemic interest can accommodate different constellations of partial interests. This conception of political economy makes principles of economic ordering essential to the life of the polity, and acknowledges the existence of political alliances or conflicts arising from division of labour between centres of agency in the economic sphere. The consideration of matches and mismatches between the two spheres opens a line of investigation that is central to understanding the history and prospects of political economies.

Mutually fitting objectives presuppose capabilities and dispositions whose relative positions are identifiable and mutually recognized. This chapter reconstructs Adam Smith’s argument from his theory of fellow feeling to the theory of the division of labour and examines E.G. Wakefield’s reappraisal of Smith’s theory in terms of the distinction between simple cooperation and complex cooperation. Complex cooperation in the production sphere requires that the specific tasks carried out by specialized actors generate networks of materials transferred from one producer (or set of producers) to another. Division of labour by complex cooperation involves the dimensions of capabilities, tasks, and materials and requires proportionality conditions at the level of capabilities and tasks as discussed in Babbage’s law of multiples. A functioning network based on complex cooperation also requires a proportionality condition for interdependent materials in the light of the Hawkins-Simon condition for a self-reproducing economy. Alternative arrangements of capabilities, tasks, and materials bring about different production regimes, which are associated with different modes of coordination between production processes. The chapter examines the conditions under which the change of production regime entails switching to a different structure of social networks and leads to a different material constitution of the polity.

Both the economy and the polity are embedded in a relational field. This field generates the range of relative positions that individuals and groups take within it while making other positions impossible. The constitutions of the economy and of the polity reflect objective arrangements of positions providing constraints and opportunities for human agency. They may also shape actors to follow specific courses of action rather than others. Certain policy actions may be compatible with the existing economic constitution but not with the existing political constitution, and vice versa. Only policy actions compatible with both the economic and the political constitution can be conducted without changes in either. A constitutional heuristic is needed to assess whether a certain policy is feasible under a given constitutional settlement or not. This chapter focuses on the multi-dimensional and multi-level architecture that policy design should follow in light of the relevant constitutional heuristic. Policy actions are designed and implemented across manifold modes of association in the material sphere and plural modes of collective action in the political sphere. The chapter provides a framework grounded in constitutional heuristic for the analysis of embedded policy measures in the industrial, credit, and international trade fields.

The unforeseen extent and duration of World War I interrupted much of Europe’s access to the abundant lands of the New World, on which its food supply had come to depend. In Germany, the British blockade starved some 800,000 people; mortality increased most (over 60 percent) from malnutrition-related tuberculosis. Central to the appeal of Hitler’s National Socialist movement was its call for the conquest of Lebensraum in eastern Europe and western Russia – and the expulsion or extermination of those regions’ native inhabitants – as a means to self-sufficiency in food. Both in Mein Kampf and in his “second book,” Hitler argued explicitly that neither factor substitution, factor mobility, nor new technologies could guarantee Germans’ food supply; only the admittedly costly and risky route of conquest would suffice. When Stresemann’s “export powerhouse” strategy of factor mobility collapsed after 1929, Hitler’s alternative won strong popular support. In the “breakthrough” election of 1930, the Nazi vote increased most in the cities that had suffered the highest wartime mortality from tuberculosis. Hitler’s genocidal plan appealed especially to the populations that had endured the worst wartime hunger and death.

The chapter introduces the central arguments and main findings of the book.

Chapter 8 reviews the main arguments of the book, with a discussion about how they can be applied to the new political environment in the Xi era and beyond. The chapter shows that the frequency of atomized protests did not necessarily decline in the Xi era, but its nature changed substantially. The number of interest-based protests declined dramatically, and this could be related to the Xi regimes tighter control over civil society actors such as journalists and labor NGOs. Based on two prominent cases of government crackdown on labor NGOs, the chapter demonstrates that atomized incorporation inevitably requires the regimes continued efforts to monitor and punish defectors. The chapter discusses long-term implications of atomized incorporation by looking at subtle forms of noncooperation.

Whether a society adapts to a supply shock or resists it coercively depends on the costs of each action. The more costly is adaptation, the likelier is a coercive response. We consider three kinds of adaptation, each usually costlier than the last: factor substitution, factor mobility, and factor-saving technology. Where substitution is elastic, producers can readily substitute a cheaper factor for one that has become suddenly expensive. Inelastic substitution forecloses that alternative, but often a suddenly devalued factor can exit to a different sector or region where it remains in higher demand. Where neither substitution nor exit is possible, a factor-saving technology or institutions that use a factor more efficiently – e.g., where labor is suddenly scarce, a labor-saving technology – can sometimes be adopted or invented. The puzzle, addressed in the next chapter, is why a new technology does, or does not, arise.