Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy

How large American retailers outgrew the capacity of government to regulate them

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’s 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.