From the welfare state to the competition state

Abstract

This contribution adopts a state- and regulation-theoretical approach to the welfare state in Europe and the more general issue of whether the EU operates more as a marionette or regisseur. I argue that the concepts of welfare and competition state are too vague to provide a useful account of recent transformations in European statehood and propose instead that a transition is now well under way from different forms of Keynesian national welfare state to different forms of Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime. I also reject the two competing descriptions of the European Union and suggest another, namely, that the EU is a co-dependent co-regisseur of the multilevel metagovernance of the contradictory and conflictual process of Europeanization in a still emerging world society. In this context I further argue that, while the EU is the dominant metagovernance instance within Europe in this regard, it is only a nodal instance of multilevel metagovernance on the global stage.