gely remain organized within nation-states. Despite a general and long-term trend towards conversion in the Western world, ambiguous as it may be (Kohler-Koch 1995; Therborn 1995), social cleavages, political culture, social structures and political identities are to a large extent national. European societies have many similar but few common problems. A large number of institutions emerged as the result of long and fierce fights over conflicting values that took place within nation states. Among these are party systems, democracy and the welfare state in their respective national versions.These institutions cannot be easily europeanized, because of this path-dependent development and the necessity to link them to a societal base. Political parties are the most well known example. High expectations of the emergence of a European party system on the occasion of the first direct elections of the European Parliament were largely disappointed. Even parties of the same ideological orientation but from different member states had great difficulties to agree even on minimal common programmatic guidelines. As their organizational and electoral basis remains within the member states, they follow the imperatives of the national political game instead of showing solidarity, and be it only programmatic solidarity, with a party in a different country. Thus, on a very general level the economy and economic law are largely europeanized in the European Union whereas politics and society but also constitutional law largely remains national. In particular large enterprises and parts of the political executive are able to act effectively on the European level whereas this is only to a much lesser degree the case for political parties, social movements, trade unions and to some degree interest groups. Because of the structural nature of this asymmetry, the EU will have to live with it for a considerable time to come.Permanent Institutional Change. In weste...
