One of the main features of the world economy since the late nineteenth century has been the growing dominance of the American economy in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Aspects of this development - e.g. rationalization or the world-wide diffusion of Coca-Cola - have been researched, but largely in isolation. Americanization of the European Economy provides a comprehensive yet compact survey of the growth of American economic influence in Europe since the 1880s. Three distinct but cumulative waves of Americanization are identified. Americanization was (and still is) a complex process of technological, political, and cultural transfer, and this overview explains why and how the USA and the American model of industrial capitalism came to be accepted as the dominant paradigm of political economy in today's Europe. Americanization of the European Economy summarizes the ongoing discussion by business historians, sociologists, and political scientists and makes it accessible to all types of readers who are interested in political and economic development.

This book develops a new and conceptually distinctive analysis of Americanization in European and Japanese industry after the Second World War, based on a rich set of sectoral and firm-based studies by an international group of distinguished scholars. The authors highlight the autonomous and creative role of local actors in selectively adapting US technology and management methods to suit local conditions and, strikingly, in creating new hybrid forms that combined indigenous and foreign practices in unforeseen and often remarkably competitive ways. Their findings will be of compelling interest not only to historians and social scientists concerned with the dynamics of post-war economic growth and industrial development, but also to those engaged in contemporary debates about the cross-national transfer and diffusion of productive models.

Using Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two destructive wars, ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster, this book explores the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism.

"The focus of this book is the emerging economic confrontation between European and U.S. capitalism at the end of the 'golden age' of capitalism in the late 1960s. Ernest Mandel here paints a remarkably clear, comprehensive, and detailed portrait of trends at that critical period. Mandel moves with ease from the most general international problems to the specifics of corporate activity, and few developments in the business and economic worlds seem to have escaped his attention. His story starts with the erosion of the enormous power possessed by American capitalism at the close of World War II. Compelled by the exigencies of its counter-revolutionary role to revive the European and Japanese economies, the U.S. then found itself confronted by formidable competitors in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. But this competition was constrained by the process of international concentration of capital; capital, spilling over outmoded national boundaries, interpenetrated to modify the competition both between Europe and America and among the European states themselves. Despite this, capital proved very far from being able to free itself from national attachments, from the interests of a specific national bourgeoisie" -- Provided by publisher's website.

Transnationale Geschichte als Schlüssel zur nationalen Geschichte. Amerikanisierung und Antiamerikanismus sind in Deutschland und Europa im 20. Jahrhundert allgegenwärtige, sich wandelnde und umstrittene Phänomene gewesen. Sie haben die einzelnen Nationen und die transatlantischen Beziehungen tiefgreifend geprägt. Mary Nolan, Expertin für deutsche und transnationale Geschichte, untersucht, wie die Europäer von amerikanischen Wirtschafts-, Kultur- und Politikmodellen beeinflusst wurden und mit ihnen umgingen. Dabei entstanden hybride Gesellschaften und politische Systeme, die sich manchmal deutlich von den Vereinigten Staaten unterschieden, in jüngerer Zeit aber, angesichts von Wirtschafts- und Migrationskrisen und rechtsradikalem Populismus, die dortigen Entwicklungen widerspiegeln. Wie die Aufsätze von Mary Nolan zeigen, waren die diplomatischen Beziehungen und die Visionen von der globalen Ordnung eine ständige Quelle transatlantischer Konflikte. Das Gleiche gilt für Fragen zu Frauen, Geschlecht und Sexualität. Die transatlantischen Beziehungen werden häufig auf sehr geschlechtsspezifische Weise erzählt. Nolan zeigt, dass die transnationale Geschichte neue Einblicke sowohl in die nationale Geschichte als auch in die internationalen Beziehungen bietet. Transnational history as a key to national history. Americanization and anti-Americanism have been pervasive, shifting and contested phenomena in twentieth-century Germany and Europe. They have profoundly shaped individual nations and transatlantic relations. Mary Nolan, a scholar of German and transnational history, investigates how Europeans were influenced by and negotiated with American economic, cultural and political models, creating hybrid societies and polities that sometimes looked markedly different from the United States, but more recently, with economic and migration crises and right-radical populism, mirror developments there. As Mary Nolan's essays show, diplomatic relations and visions of the global order have been a persistent source of transatlantic conflict. So too have been questions of women, gender and sexuality. Transatlantic relations are frequently narrated in highly gendered ways. Nolan demonstrates that transnational history offers new insights into both national histories and international relations.

In this book John Killick introduces the reader to a key aspect of economic history: the impact of American economic intervention in Europe after World War II. The effects of this impact are still open to debate. The Marshall Plan has traditionally been seen as a decisive turning-point in European economic and political history, but its effect is now being called into question. Would Europe have revived spontaneously after 1945? Did American dollars save the world in 1947? Was American influence the underlying reason for the general drift away from socialism and the move towards European federalism in the late 1940s and early 1950s? If the Marshall Plan--in conjunction with NATO--created a coherent and prosperous western bloc, was this critical for the outcome of the Cold War? These are important questions, to which this careful analysis provides some new and accessible answers.

The Americanization of European Union Democracy Promotion: Ideology, Diversity, and United States Hegemony is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of the origins, development and growing prominence of international democracy promotion in the past hundred years.

In a lively critique of how international and comparative political economy misjudge the relationship between global markets and states, this book demonstrates the central place of the American state in today's world of globalized finance. The contributors set aside traditional emphases on military intervention, looking instead to economics.