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An influential framework in comparative political economy, the "Varieties of Capital-ism" thesis predicts the systematic variation of national policy responses across differ-ent types of advanced economies and claims that policy differences in national political and economic arrangements are likely to persist in the midst of increased international pressure. These two claims are founded upon the propositions that: 1) different varie-ties of capitalism produce different corporate strategies and associated political re-sponses; and more specifically 2) domestic institutional settings define comparative institutional advantages, which remain the dominant frame of reference of corporate actors. While generating important insights into patterns of national adjustment, the varieties of capitalism has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the type of "global pressures" to which national economies are exposed. We examine the robustness of this framework in light of the EU's eastern enlargement and the policy choices made by individual European Union member states on the issue of the opening up of national labor markets. The decision of the EU-15, at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, to invite eight Central and East-European Countries (CEECs) to join the EU on May 1, 2004 fuelled fears in many European countries that intensifying competition from low-wage manpower from the new member states would erode national regulatory regimes. In this paper, we investi-gate the usefulness of the varieties of capitalism framework by conducting a structured comparative analysis of Britain, Denmark, and Sweden. Though the variety of capitalism literature captures important aspects of national policy-responses to the enlargement process, the main conclusion of the paper is that this influential perspective needs to be supplemented by more sophisticated accounts of politics, which shed light on how inter-party competition shapes national adjustment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of commentators have noted the weakness and/or liberal nature of labor institutions in the new EU member states of eastern Europe. This paper examines some additional evidence of that weakness, as well as the correspondence of labor policy with other policy areas, specifically pensions and tax policy. It then explores possible mechanisms through which the liberal nature of these policies might influence the previously existing member states of western Europe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political scientists have recognized that European welfare states are increasingly embedded in the multi-level polity of the European Union, the precise consequences of this development are unclear. Against this background, this paper analyzes the impact of popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of national welfare state arrangements on EU support. Data from the 2002 European Social Survey show a negative effect in a majority of member states: citizens dissatisfied with welfare state policy outputs are more prone than others to hold eurosceptic attitudes. Moreover, this effect is stronger in institutional environments where elites and citizens should reasonably perceive greater EU-induced threats to the welfare state, as well as where such threats already appear to have become a reality in the form of welfare state cutbacks coinciding with the post-Maastricht EMU process. Similarly, effects are stronger in member states where the most eurosceptic parties also tend to be the most welfare state-supporting ones. Under such conditions, we theorize, it is more probable that citizens receive cues from leftist/euro-sceptic parties saying that welfare state deterioration is related to European integration. In contrast, we find that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens hold too little EU information and knowledge. On the contrary, the link between welfare dissatisfaction and low EU support grows stronger with more knowledge and information. This suggests that welfare state dissatisfaction does not generate euroscepticism because citizens know little about Europe, but rather because of the institutional environment that Europe?s large welfare states are finding themselves in, and because of how many European political actors have chosen to interpret and explain that environment to citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]