Thanks to all the authors and reviewers who contributed to this effort, and to the @mpifg.bsky.social for supporting the workshop that launched the project 3+ years ago! Read the full issue—including our introduction—here:
📖 Competition & Change, Vol. 29(3–4)
➡️ journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/...

The papers explore how peripheral advanced economies navigate global hierarchies, balance of payments constraints & structural heterogeneity, and how peripherality shapes coalitional politics and agency -in varied cases such as Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain, Serbia, Chile, Uruguay & Israel

…and what adaptations does the growth model conceptual toolkit need to make sense of the politics of growth and stagnation in peripheral capitalist contexts? To tackle these questions, the SI brings insights from Latam structuralism, dependency theory and IPE in dialogue with the GM debate in CPE.

With this project, we wanted to bring peripherality at the centre of contemporary debates in Comparative Political Economy. How does our understanding of growth models and their politics change once we take peripheral capitalism seriously?

What a brilliant cohort of new doctors! It was a joy to overlap during my time at the Institute with these fantastic colleagues. Congrats you all!

Read the full paper here: pure.mpg.de/pubman/faces...

cc and with eternal thanks to my fantastic co-authors @fbulfone.bsky.social @m-stratenwerth.bsky.social who brought the paper to light whilst I have been in the trenches of post-maternity recovery and re-adjustment! you are the best!

Taking stock of more than a decade of CPE literature on Southern European growth models, the granular sectoral data we use in this paper, masterfully analysed by @m-stratenwerth.bsky.social, help to shed light on what really changed—and what didn’t—after the eurozone crisis.

📌 Bottom line:
1️⃣ Southern Europe has not converged toward the EMU core. It has diverged within itself.
2️⃣ High-value added export niches exist, but remain small.
3️⃣Exports alone can't deliver sustainable growth. Without a strong boost in domestic demand, growth, employment and wages keep stagnating.

We tentatively identify an “Iberian growth path” in Spain and Portugal—still peripheral, but relatively more successful in combining exports with domestic demand.

Meanwhile, Italy and Greece remain trapped in externally imposed austerity logics with weak domestic multipliers.

In short:
✅ Export orientation increased
❌ Structural upgrading limited
❌ Employment outcomes disappointing

Southern Europe may have moved toward a hybrid export model—but one still deeply peripheral within the EMU architecture.

🧵 Finding 3: Export-led growth in Southern Europe didn’t deliver in terms of jobs.
Employment losses during the crisis were massive.
Recovery in jobs— especially good jobs—was partial and slow. Export-related job creation didn’t offset earlier losses.

Spain and Portugal did see growth in some high value-added service exports—like IT, professional services, and R&D.
These sectors are still small, but growing faster than others—hints of emerging niches amid a broader low value-added landscape where tourism still plays a key role.

🧵 Finding 2: Despite reorientation to exports, SE economies still struggle to upgrade.
Manufacturing exports remain, overall, low-tech.
High value-added services are, overall, still marginal.
Greece stands out as most peripheralized; Italy retains stronger industrial capabilities.

The result?
🇪🇸 🇵🇹 Stronger overall growth performance.
🇮🇹 🇬🇷 Weak, export-dependent recoveries.

🧵 Finding 1: All 4 countries shifted toward greater reliance on exports as a growth driver after 2010.
BUT: Only Spain and Portugal managed to also revive domestic demand (private consumption & investment) after 2014. Italy and Greece didn’t.