Alpar Losonc () (Faculty of Technical Sciences, Department for Social Sciences, Novi Sad, Serbia)
Abstract
Recently Claus Offe has put the question that concerns the fate of the European model of social capitalism: Can the model of social capitalism survive the European integration in the context of certain contemporary tendencies? Offe has presupposed that the mentioned model is challenged by the processes of globalization and the integration of the post socialist countries into the European Union. The working hypothesis of the article is that there is an opportunity to provide a coherent answer to this question. The article consists of two parts. In the first part the author starts with the Polanyis socio-economic theory and emphasises the importance of this approach for the analysing of the tendencies of capitalism in Western Europe and in the post socialist countries. The author argues that with the Polanyis theory we are able to explicate the forms of the embedded liberalism in Western Europe after 1945 and the orientation of non-embedded neo-liberalism and the functioning of the workfare state after the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state. Despite the tendencies of the globalisation projected by neo-liberalism, the central element of the social capitalism, namely, the welfare state, remains with the dimensions of the continuity. In the next part the author points out that there is an asymmetrical structure between the Western-Europe and non-Western part of Europe concerning the socialisation of capitalism. The neoliberalisation in accordance with the model of the transfer of ideal-type of capitalism is more strongly implemented in the countries of transition. In addition, the mentioned theoretical approach provides opportunities to explain the failures of implementing of neo-liberalism in the post socialist countries. On the basis of the endorsing of the socio-economic aspects we can adress the issue pointed out by Offe.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Faculty of economics, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
200643.
Length: 18 pages Date of creation: 2006 Date of revision:
Dec 2006 Publication status: Published in Panoeconomicus, December 2006, pages 407-425 Handle: RePEc:voj:wpaper:200643
Find related papers by JEL classification: P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism P30 - Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - General
Did you know? You can include your works in the database easily by uploading them on the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) if you do not have access to an institutional RePEc archive.