The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers! traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet.
Offering a comparative perspective on the history of American political economy, Kathleen Thelen shows how large-scale retailers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden faced a far less hospitable regulatory environment than companies in the United States, which enjoyed judicial forbearance and often active government support. As American companies grew in scale and scope, they assembled an ever-expanding political coalition that could be weaponized to head off regulatory efforts, leveraging their market strength to squeeze suppliers and workers and even engaging in outright rule breaking when they encountered resistance.
Placing the rise of the Amazon economy in a broader comparative-historical context, Attention, Shoppers! reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper鈥檚 paradise built on cheap labor and mass consumption.
Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her books include How Institutions Evolve, Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity, and (with Jacob S. Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Paul Pierson) The American Political Economy: Politics, Markets, and Power.
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“In this essential book, one of our leading and most insightful social scientists explains how the retail capitalism of Amazon and Walmart emerged. Centering the role of power and institutions across a century of political, legal, and economic fights, Thelen charts how these new business models established their dominant position. This is required reading to understand the past, present, and future of American political economy.”—K. Sabeel Rahman, Cornell Law School
“A tour de force. Drawing comparisons with European countries, Thelen shows why a consumer growth model triumphed in the United States, one in which low-cost retailers dominate and low-income Americans are dependent on them.”—Margaret Weir, author of Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States
“Thelen provides a rich and extensively researched reconstruction of the evolution of American retail capitalism over two centuries. Attention, Shoppers! is political economy at its best, illustrating how economic outcomes are intricately tied to political battles and regulatory decisions. Essential reading.”—Lucio Baccaro, coauthor of Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation: European Industrial Relations since the 1970s
“Thelen reveals how America’s distinctive regulatory—sometimes deregulatory—approach created a market where Amazon and its precursors could thrive. Attention, Shoppers! is a pathbreaking study that provides insight into not only the past but also the future of online retail.”—Louis Hyman, Johns Hopkins University
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