This paper provides an important reassessment of the factors that affect macroeconomic policy making in the European nations. Notermans shows that many of the conventional models based on the power of the left, institutional or cultural variables cannot account for the course of macroeconomic policy. Instead he argues for the critical importance of international economic variables. His analysis attempts to account for both the policies of the German Bundesbank and the failures of neo-corporatism in the smaller European nations.
