European Integration and the Clash of Capitalisms: Political Cleavages over Takeover Liberalization

Abstract

The integration of national markets for corporate control continues to lag behind the removal of barriers to trade in goods and services. To what extent does the protracted political battle over legal harmonization in this area reflect a clash of interests between liberal and coordinated national varieties of capitalism? To find out, we map the distribution of political support for liberal takeover rules within and across countries by analyzing a roll-call vote on the takeover directive in the European Parliament in July 2001. Our data show that, in line with the clash-of-capitalisms hypothesis, nationality did trump party group position on a left–right axis as a predictor of delegates' attitudes toward takeover regulation. Given the increasing interference of European Union-level legislative initiatives with the regulatory pillars of coordinated market economies, and the accession of 10 new Eastern European member states, we expect the salience of the clash-of-capitalisms cleavage to increase in the near future.