Introduction

Abstract

The chapter sets out the book’s main premise: that post-socialist transformations and Europeanization, instead of complimentary processes, can be politically incompatible, leading to different types of political conflicts over European integration. Comparing two most different welfare capitalist models, Estonia and Slovenia, the book argues that conflicts over European integration are shaped by collective ideas underlying a country’s particular post-socialist transformation path and whether the EU is perceived to fall to the left or right of the national political economic status quo.