ABSTRACT
The three sets of questions I want to discuss here are as follow. (1) Is there such a thing as ‘European capitalism’? Are there institutional and structural features that apply more or less to all European political economies and only to European political economies? How do European political economies and societies contrast if compared with their liberal counterparts of the English-speaking world? (2) If they exist, how can these distinctive similarities, or family affinities of European capitalisms, be explained in historical terms and justified in normative or functional terms? (3) What can we expect and predict concerning the impact of European integration upon the distinctive features of European ‘social capitalism’? Is it likely that European societies will converge in the process of integration on the distinctive European ‘social model’, as represented by and inherited from European nation states, or is there evidence of trends to the opposite? If so, European integration would undermine the ‘Europeanness’ of the emerging political economy of the European Union (EU).
