Abstract This introductory chapter ties together themes running through all the chapters in this volume. It discusses critiques of the Varieties of Capitalism or VoC approach in four areas in which it has proven most vulnerable to criticism, and proposes a framework to address these. First, the chapter analyses the role of political and distributive struggles in generating change and adjustment. Second, it reconsiders the nature and function of complementarities in shaping and constraining institutional change. Third, the chapter extends the VoC approach to a broader range of political economies than traditionally receives attention, from southern Europe to Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Fourth, it restores the role of the state in VoC analysis, not just where that role is most overt, but as an important factor in the construction everywhere of what Hall calls ‘institutional ecologies’. The chapter then uses these insights to understand the shifts in the contemporary political economy of Europe.
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