How Will Capitalism End?

Wolfgang Streeck

Wolfgang Streeck (born 27 October 1946) is a German economic sociologist and emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. n 1974 he became assistant professor in sociology at the University of Münster and in 1986 finished his habilitation in sociology at Bielefeld University. Between 1988 and 1995 he worked as professor of sociology and industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, returning to Germany in 1995 to take up the post of director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and working as professor of sociology at the University of Cologne. He retired from his directorship in 2014, becoming emeritus director. Streeck's research is focused on analyzing the political economy of capitalism, wherein he proposes to take on a dialectical approach to institutional analysis as opposed to the more rigid varieties of capitalism. He has written extensively on the political economy of Germany and more recently has involved himself in debates over the politics of austerity, the rise of what he terms the debt-state as a result of the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and the future of the European Union.