Perspectives on the European economic and social model: distributional and institutional conflicts

Marius R. Busemeyer, Christian Kellermann, Alexander Petring and Andrej Stuchlik

International Journal of Public Policy, 2008, vol. 3, issue 1/2, 39-57

Abstract: Where are the fields of consensus and divergence in the positions of social democratic parties in Europe concerning the European Economic and Social Model (EESM)? Building on the findings of a Europe-wide survey, this article analyses patterns of social and economic policy preferences along country-group specific clusters. While consensus among centre-left parties concerning the general problem perception is rather strong, there is very little common ground on the level of actual problem-solving policies. This divergence can be explained by the dominance of 'national' interests over the general party-political agenda. These national interests are shaped, on the one hand, by interstate distributional conflicts, and, on the other hand, by the degree of approximation of one's own welfare state model to the model of the 'core European states' – the implicit blueprint of the EESM.

Keywords: European Economic and Social Model; EESM; social democratic parties; welfare state regimes; varieties of capitalism; distributional conflicts; institutional conflicts; social policy preferences; economic policy preferences; national interests; public policy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=17125 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijpubp:v:3:y:2008:i:1/2:p:39-57

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Public Policy from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().