INTRODUCTION manners for more than half a century. After World War II, North American social science had reached a high point visible for instance in the importance of the uni­versal social thought-system associated with the name of Talcott Parsons, and the social technologies advanced by empirical social researchers(in many cases émi­grés from Central Europe recruited to the war against Nazism and Fascism)(Flora 1999; Wallerstein 1996; Himmelstrand 1984; Mills 1959). Western Europe followed suit, again with local variation, and reinforced the ongo­ing process although initially the structure of input was reversed. In particular the social sciences of the smaller countries became strongly influenced by North American social science. Empirical social research in most European countries, survey research in particular, developed along the lines taken in North America, and many European social scientists spent a year or two in the US. So was the case in the Scandinavian countries as well as in most other countries in Western Europe. Social science was taught in universities and other institutions of higher learning across Western Europe with an eye to the most advanced theories and methodolo­gies formed afar from the battlefield of Europe. Nevertheless, the rethinking of truth, good and evil that occurred in US social science at the end of the First Cold War, opened up for a return of critical and reflexive thinking also in Western Europe. In particular the larger nations, France and Germany as starters, fostered a set of intellectuals that challenged received wisdom with an impact also on the other side of the Atlantic. On the periphery, there were also some noteworthy breakthroughs. Different Origins Thus, from the early and mid 1950s a specific development of social sciences was underway in Western Europe. They became“modernized” – universalised and di­versified – along the lines of a new dominant, or Hegemony as some would have it, as the earlier continental cultural dominant, Prussia, the victor behind the Second and Third Reich, in 1947 had been abolished. But Americanisation and Westernisa­tion have never been fully compatible, and across Western Europe the diversity simultaneously both increased and decreased during the post-war decades. Early on, the Council of Europe tried to encompass the entire continent, and managed to write a Social Charter. In contrast, in 1957, the Treaty of Rome signed by six coun­tries inspired another seven, including Switzerland, to form yet another trade zone (EFTA) a few years later. With the end of the First Cold War, obstacles to Euro­pean integration folded and though they were many, in the end a Single Market was on its way in the 1980s. Thereby, also voices for a Social Europe made their way to the public. Thus, the Social Politics of Western Europe put a stamp on the emerging Union when in 1991 Mrs Thatcher and her Ukania managed to opt out from the Social Dimension. 21