Introduction

Social actors’ political awareness of the need to reinforce the supranational dimension of social cohesion has gradually turned the concept of the European Social Model (ESM) into a key notion in political and scientific debates on social responses to globalisation. As this concept plays a key part in the articulation of the debate, a meta-analysis is required in order to avoid, often unnecessary, conceptual traps.

Use of the concept of ESM in academic and political debate is characterised by two main and interconnected features (Jepsen and Serrano Pascual, this volume): on the one hand, the usually taken-for-granted assumption of the reality status of the concept; on the other hand, its highly ambiguous and polysemous nature. The ESM is used with differing meanings in accordance with rather ambiguous definitions. A clear definition of what constitutes its essence seems to be lacking in most articles on the subject, while a review of the most important of these articles reveals that, insofar as definitions are to be found, they do not necessarily converge. When discussing whether the ESM exists and whether its various manifestations are converging or diverging, the question therefore arises of precisely what it is that is being discussed and what type of causal relationships are being brought into play. The prerequisite for answering these questions, which are basically empirical in nature, is an analytical tool; this implies analysing what we mean by the ESM and identifying its components. The polysemy surrounding the concept might well be found to reflect a lack of scientific precision in relation to its use in the debate on the European Union (EU). But this polysemy may also be understood in rhetorical terms, as a means of moving from one ‘interpretative repertoire’1 to another, for any one of a variety of purposes (for instance, to legitimise a policy proposal, to construct a sense of belonging, to turn supranational regulation into a need, and so on).

Moreover, the concept is based, to a very large extent, on a host of assumptions, most of which have not been empirically established, and the discussion is frequently built up without any serious examination of the main tools used to construct it.