1 December 2015 Social Structures of Accumulation theory and Varieties of Capitalism: Long-run capitalist accumulation vs. comparative institutional analysis 1 Besnik Pula Department of Political Science Virginia Tech bpula@vt.edu Working out the elements of social structures of accumulation (SSA) theory to fit a comparative framework requires overcoming some of the limits of existing work in the field. The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework has the advantage of having developed a more sophisticated comparative framework in which the specific institutional features of distinct VoCs can be identified and classified along the liberal market (LME) and coordinated market (CME) type. The VoC framework places the firm at the heart of its theoretical model, with the analytical question becoming one of understanding the logics of how distinct political economies resolve the problem of inter-firm coordination (Hall and Soskice 2001). The concept of “institutional complementaries” aids the analysis of individual economies, because analysis is focused on the replication and diffusion of institutional logics of coordination across institutional domains, structuring the institutional logics of distinct political economies in comprehensive ways. The complementary configurations of, say, vocational training with the organization of labor Working paper drawn from current manuscript on a comparative analysis of the 1 making of postsocialist capitalisms. Please direct comments to the author at bpula@vt.edu.