E pluribus unum? Capitalism and democracy dilemmas

Recent elaborations on models of capitalism try to integrate more closelymeso-level differences with macro-level theorisation on capitalism as a whole. Thespecific problems of competitiveness and democracy detected by Soskice in liberalmarket economies and by Burroni, Pavolini and Regini in Southern Europe standtherefore in a theoretical tension with theories of models’ complementarity and ofadvanced democratic capitalism. A review of the arguments with regard to the roleof education and innovation for capitalism and democracy points at the importanceof testing trends across models, and of investigating the mutual dependencies betweenwinning and left-behind places not only within models, but also among them.