Interest in political and institutional explanations of macroeconomic performance has burgeoned during the past two decades. The explosion of relevant works has been particularly impressive for the case of the industrialized democracies. From the early 1970s through the 1980s, political scientists and economists extensively elaborated Schumpeter's and Kalecki's early forays into the electoral rhythms of macroeconomic performance in these nations (Kalecki 1943; Schumpeter 1943 and Hibbs 1987a, b). In the late 1970s, Hibbs's (1977) “Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy” inaugurated a similar boom in studies of the macroeconomic impacts of partisan differences in government (see Hibbs 1987a, b). In the early 1980s, works by Schmitter (1981) and Olson (1982) spurred new study of macroeconomic consequences of modes of interest organization, already a notable topic since Shonfield's (1965) landmark publication of Modern Capitalism.

The literatures on macroeconomic impacts of elections, government partisanship, and interest organization have branched out beyond my ability to comprehensively trace, much less integrate, them here (see Bruno and Sachs 1985; Friedland and Sanders 1985; Katzenstein 1985; Hibbs 1987a, b; Calmfors and Driffil 1988; Hage, Gamier, and Fuller 1988; Przeworski and Waller stein 1988; Golden, Lange, and Waller stein 1991; and Swank 1992). Nevertheless, these strands of scholarship have been drawn together in what I shall call the “social democratic corporatist” (SDC) model of national economic performance. This stresses the following Janus-faced proposition: union organizational strength yields improved macroeconomic performance to the extent that Left parties participate in government; moreover, Left-party rule enhances economic performance to the extent that unions are strong.