Wolfgang Streeck

Wolfgang Streeck (German: [ʃtʀeːk]; born 27 October 1946) is a German economic sociologist and emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.

Early life

Streeck was born "just outside Münster", the son of refugees—ethnic Germans from eastern Europe displaced at the end of the Second World War. His mother was a Sudeten German from Czechoslovakia. Streeck studied sociology at the Goethe University Frankfurt and pursued graduate studies in the same discipline at Columbia University between 1972 and 1974.

Career

In 1974, Streeck became assistant professor in sociology at the University of Münster and in 1986 finished his habilitation in sociology at Bielefeld University. Between 1988 and 1995, he worked as professor of sociology and industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, returning to Germany in 1995 to take up the post of director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and working as professor of sociology at the University of Cologne. He retired from his directorship in 2014, becoming emeritus director.

Academic contributions

Streeck's early research focused on industrial relations, trade unions, and the "German model" of coordinated market economy. Following the 2008 financial crisis, his work shifted towards a critical macrosociology of capitalism, analyzing the structural tensions between capitalist markets and democratic politics.

Delayed crisis of democratic capitalism

In his 2013 book Gekaufte Zeit (translated as Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism), Streeck argues that the political economy of the Western world since the 1970s has been defined by a strategy of "buying time" to defer a crisis of legitimacy.