ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an international dimension to the theoretical framework. I focus on European integration and its domestic politicisation as challenging factors for social concertation, and propose a set of heuristic hypotheses to explore the impact of European integration on social concertation. European integration has been seen as a major influence on concertation, yet the causal mechanisms whereby this influence takes place have stayed relatively unclear. Whereas existing scholarship has tended to posit a somewhat mechanistic relationship between them, either in the direction of a weakening or of a strengthening, this chapter explores the complex mechanisms whereby domestic politics mediates the effects of European integration on social concertation
