The contributors to this collection discuss the development of corporate governance in ten European countries. The systematic cross-country comparison of West and East, North and South, and country-specific settings is its main focus. Chapters are based on empirically grounded country cases and explore the evolution of economic organization over time. Each of the case study chapters refer implicitly to Germany and UK models as their benchmarks for contradicting as well as evolving traits. The book demonstrates the lack of convergence towards a clear model of corporate governance in post-communist economies, and the variety of institutional developments in advanced economies. The introductory chapter discusses the concept of corporate governance in the context of varieties of contemporary capitalism, overtly addressing the changes in the post-communist institutional environment. The concluding chapter addresses the impact of the EU on corporate governance in the candidate countries. The volume offers both a new theoretical approach and recent country specific evidence uncovering a mixture of both convergent and path-dependant tendencies, as opposed to a 'linear' vision of economic development.

Corporate Governance from a Comparative Perspective: Bridging East and West; M.Federowicz
Are Italy and Spain Mediterranean Sisters? A Comparison of Corporate Governance Systems; R.Aguilera
Ukraine: The Newly Built State and Economic Institutions; V.Sidenko & O.Kuziakiv
Bulgaria: The rise of Capitalism and Actors' Rationality; D.Minev & M.Jeliazkova
The Czech Republic: The Case of Delayed Transformation; M.Havrda
Poland: Worker Driven Transformation to Capitalism?; M.Federowicz
Ownership and Corporate Governance in the Hungarian Large Enterprise Sector; É.Voszka
Revisiting the French Model Coordination and Restructuring in French Industry (in the 1980s and 1990s); B.Hancké
The Specificity of Corporate Governance in Small States: Instituionalization and Questioning of Ownership Restriction in Switzerland and Sweden; T.David & A.Mach
European Integration and Corporate Governance in Central Europe: Trajectories of Institutional Change; H.Grabbe

MICHAL FEDEROWICZ is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences and a lecturer at the Central European University. He has published a number of papers as well as a book entitled Poland's Economic Order: Persistence and Transformation.

RUTH AGUILERA is Assistant Professor in International Management and Labour and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign. Her research interests lie in the intersection of comparative corporate governance and institutional analysis.