How are European workplaces being transformed? What kinds of new social bargains are emerging across the European Union? How are they being institutionalised? How are new workplace bargains shaped by the broader politics of sectors, regions and national economies?These questions are crucial to the future of the European ‘social model’. The objective of this research programme is to provide answers to these questions, drawing on cross-national survey research on workplace organisation from 1995 to 2010 and selected industrial case studies in the small open European economies of Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.These questions also raise crucial theoretical issues. The research reformulates the core elements of the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ framework that has dominated comparative political economy for the past decade (Hall and Soskice, 2001). It improves our understanding of the diverse organisation of capitalism in Europe, of how that diversity is rooted in politically constructed ‘pathways to the future’, and of how capitalism is constructed out of social and institutional capabilities across Europe.