英文摘要 |
This article explores the ways in which Wenzhou and Wuxi, under the constraints of the local comparative institutional advantages and institutional complementarity, develop different coping strategies in response to intensified domestic market competition and international financial crisis in their respective paths toward market transition when China is embracing global capitalism. From an institutional perspective, this paper argues that it is the outward bridging character of business associations in Wenzhou that assume the role of a strong institutional entrepreneur to initiate institutional innovation, contributing to the local transition from the semi-laissez faire market economy to a market economy coordinated by business associations in order to prevent market failure. In contrast, it is the domination of the local state in Wuxi that ended local state corporatism over the past two decades and took the local-state-coordinated mixed-market economy at the turn of the century. The local state in Wuxi played only a weak institutional entrepreneurial role, always followed in the steps of the central state, and lacked initiative to shape its own path of transition. As a result, this article demonstrates the characteristics of bricolage and layering in the institutional change of Wenzhou and Wuxi's economic transition. |