Wolfgang Streeck Turns 80
On October 27, 2026, Wolfgang Streeck, director emeritus at the MPIfG, celebrates his 80th birthday. Streeck is one of Germany’s most influential social scientists whose research lies at the intersection of sociology, political science, and political economy. Appointed to the MPIfG in 1995, he has played a decisive role in shaping the discussion on the dynamic between democratic politics and the capitalist economy.
Streeck studied sociology in Frankfurt am Main and New York. After returning from New York in 1974, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Münster and, from 1976, as a research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. In 1986, he was awarded his habilitation from the University of Bielefeld. From 1988 to 1995, he was a professor of sociology and industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1995, he was appointed as a director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, as the planned successor to the sociologist Renate Mayntz. He codirected the Institute with her and political scientist Fritz W. Scharpf until 1997, with Scharpf until 2003, and with the economic sociologist Jens Beckert from 2005 to 2014.
Streeck’s work has made a significant contribution to research on labor relations in postwar democracy and on the consequences of globalization and European integration for the political economy of advanced industrial societies. He belongs to the circle of the founders of the study of comparative capitalism and has made substantial contributions to research on liberalization processes and institutional change. Examining the “German model” of corporate capitalism as well as European economic and fiscal integration has consistently been at the center of his work.
His international career has taken him to many prestigious universities and research institutions as a visiting professor, including as Theodor Heuss Professor at The New School for Social Research in New York, the European University Institute in Florence, Bocconi University in Milan, the University of Warwick, the Instituto Juan March in Madrid, and Sciences Po in Paris. In addition to his research activities, Streeck has served as a policy advisor, including as a member of the Benchmarking Working Group of the Alliance for Jobs (1998–2001) and the Government Commission on the Modernization of Corporate Codetermination, which was established by Gerhard Schröder in 2005 and submitted its report in 2006 under Angela Merkel.
Streeck has received numerous awards. These include being named a Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana by the President of Italy in 2022, the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2011, and the German Sociological Association’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Public Understanding of Sociology in 2012. He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the British Academy; he is also an honorary member of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.
His monograph Gekaufte Zeit: Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus (Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism), which had its origins in his Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, has received particularly wide acclaim. In it, Streeck traces the transformation of the relationship between democracy and capitalism from the end of the postwar period to the global financial and economic crisis of 2008. The book has been translated into 17 languages.
Even after his retirement, Wolfgang Streeck remains academically active at the MPIfG to this day. The collection of essays How Will Capitalism End?, published in 2016, has been widely discussed, particularly in the English-speaking world. Most recently, he has focused on what he describes as the disempowerment of democratic institutions through globalization, as well as the role of the nation-state in the 21st century. The volume Zwischen Globalismus und Demokratie: Politische Ökonomie im ausgehenden Neoliberalismus was published in 2021, followed in 2024 by an expanded English translation, Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism. In 2022, together with Ruth Dukes, a professor of labor law, he published Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice, a study of labor relations and forms of work in developed economies. In 2027, Cambridge University Press will publish Institutionalising Class Conflict: Otto Kahn-Freund and the Political Economy of Labour Law, also the result of his collaboration with Ruth Dukes.
On October 29, the Institute will host a reception to honor the 80th birthday of Wolfgang Streeck. The laudation will be delivered by the political scientist Philip Manow.
In an extensive interview with the journalist Mathias Greffrath and Martin Höpner, a research group leader at the MPIfG, Streeck looks back on his academic career and traces his life and work through its most influential phases and recurring themes. The interview and a comprehensive list of his publications are available on the Institute’s website.
