In How Europe Became American (2021), Hans Vogel advances the provocative thesis that Europe did not merely succumb to U.S. dominance but voluntarily relinquished its role as a leading civilization by adopting American paradigms of power, economics, and culture. Rather than sustaining autonomous models of political economy or strategic authority, Europe internalized U.S. assumptions—particularly those associated with liberalization, financial openness, and market universalism—thereby narrowing the range of imaginable alternatives to American leadership.
This essay uses China as an analytical counter-model to sharpen Vogel’s critique. China’s selective resistance to key American economic paradigms—such as shock-therapy reforms, unrestricted capital flows, and exogenous growth models—demonstrates that credible alternatives to U.S.-style economic governance existed. Policies such as controlled foreign participation in Chinese banks, including approaches supported by U.S. officials like Henry M. Paulson Jr., underscore that engagement need not require full liberalization. The comparison with China is not intended to soften Vogel’s argument, but to clarify it: by contrasting Europe’s voluntary convergence with China’s strategic selectivity, the essay highlights what Europe chose to abandon—and what other paths remained demonstrably available.
From Embedded Political Economy to the Reign of the Market
Hans Vogel argues that one of Europe’s most consequential transformations was its passage from a historically embedded political economy to a form of market absolutism. Postwar European systems had treated markets as tools rather than masters, embedding them within frameworks of public ownership, national planning, and social obligation. Economic activity was understood as inseparable from political choice and collective purpose. Vogel contends that this tradition was not defeated by external coercion but consciously abandoned.
Under the U.S.-inspired neoliberal paradigm Europe adopted, the market came to be treated as the supreme organizing principle of society. Economic efficiency and profit maximization were elevated above social cohesion, cultural continuity, and national strategy. Political judgment increasingly yielded to market metrics, and policy debates were reframed around competitiveness, investor confidence, and growth rates rather than social outcomes or long-term development.
This shift entailed a profound redefinition of the state. Rather than acting as an owner, planner, or steward of national economic assets, European governments withdrew from direct economic responsibility. The state recast itself primarily as a regulator whose role was to facilitate markets rather than guide them. Long-term investment horizons, strategic coordination, and public control over key sectors were progressively surrendered to private actors and financial logic.
Equally significant was the ideological reframing of economic outcomes as “natural” or inevitable. Decisions about inequality, deindustrialization, capital mobility, or financialization were presented as the unavoidable consequences of global markets rather than as political choices. By insulating economic policy from democratic contestation, market outcomes were depoliticized, even as their social consequences intensified.
China’s trajectory provides a sharp analytical contrast that reinforces Vogel’s critique. While integrating deeply into global capitalism, China consistently rejected market absolutism. Markets were treated as instruments subordinate to national priorities such as regime stability, industrial upgrading, technological autonomy, and social control. When market dynamics conflicted with these objectives—whether in finance, housing, or technology—the state intervened decisively.
Unlike Europe, China retained commanding state ownership in strategic sectors including banking, energy, transport, and telecommunications. Through this ownership and through long-term planning mechanisms such as Five-Year Plans, the state actively steered investment, absorbed systemic risk, and shaped development paths that markets alone would not have produced. Economic outcomes were openly acknowledged as political decisions, not market inevitabilities.
Vogel explicitly characterizes Europe’s transformation as submission to the “gospel of neoliberalism,” not as a historical necessity. China’s experience underscores this point. Global integration did not require the elevation of markets into an unquestionable authority; it required political choice. Europe chose market absolutism, and in doing so, relinquished a core element of its own political-economic tradition.
Privatization and the Americanization of European Political Economy
In Hans Vogel’s account, large-scale privatization stands as one of the clearest expressions of Europe’s Americanization. Beginning in the late 1980s, privatization was not treated as a limited policy instrument but as a structural transformation of the European state. Assets long regarded as public goods and instruments of sovereignty were redefined as market commodities, signaling a fundamental shift in how ownership, power, and economic purpose were understood.
European governments sold off railways, utilities, postal services, telecommunications, and public transport—sectors that had historically anchored national integration and long-term planning. These moves were justified through arguments drawn directly from American economic thought: greater efficiency, intensified competition, and increased innovation. Ownership itself was portrayed as economically neutral, with little attention paid to strategic control or public accountability.
In practice, however, privatization rarely produced competitive markets. Instead, public monopolies were frequently converted into private or semi-private monopolies, often controlled by transnational firms. Prices rose, service quality declined, and democratic oversight weakened. Vogel emphasizes that this outcome bore little resemblance to classical free-market capitalism; it was, as he notes, “the transfer of national government monopolies into the hands of transnational monopolies.”
China’s approach offers a revealing contrast. Rather than privatizing core infrastructure, China retained state ownership in precisely those sectors Europe relinquished. Railways, energy, telecommunications, banking, and transport were treated as foundations of sovereignty rather than as profit-maximizing enterprises. Even when corporatized or partially opened to market mechanisms, these entities remained firmly under Party-state control.
Crucially, China rejected ideological justifications for privatization. Reforms were framed pragmatically and reversibly, guided by the question of whether a given arrangement strengthened national capacity. Market mechanisms were adopted selectively and withdrawn when they conflicted with strategic goals. Monopoly power was tolerated—but deliberately kept in state hands, where it could be disciplined or redirected without the constraints imposed by shareholder interests.
This contrast sharpens Vogel’s central claim. Europe did not privatize because global capitalism required it, but because it internalized American assumptions about ownership itself. China’s selective and reversible use of markets demonstrates that integration into the world economy did not necessitate surrendering control over strategic assets. Privatization in Europe was thus not an economic inevitability, but a political choice—one that marked a decisive step in the Americanization of its political economy.
Financial Power and the Ascendancy of Transnational Capital
Hans Vogel identifies financialization as a central mechanism through which Europe aligned itself with the American economic order. Financialization, in his account, refers not merely to the growth of financial markets but to the subordination of production, labor, and public policy to the priorities of finance. As this paradigm took hold, Europe’s economic governance increasingly mirrored that of the United States, where financial interests exert decisive influence over national outcomes.
A key feature of this transformation was the expanding role of Wall Street–style banking, hedge funds, and private equity within European economies. Capital markets gained prominence at the expense of industrial policy and long-term investment. China, by contrast, deliberately constrained the penetration of foreign financial actors. Entry was permitted only under tightly controlled conditions, with caps on ownership and limited operational scope—an approach publicly supported even by U.S. officials such as Henry M. Paulson Jr., who warned against shock liberalization of China’s financial system.
Financialization also reshaped corporate governance in Europe. Firms were increasingly managed to maximize short-term shareholder value, often at the cost of long-term productive capacity, workforce stability, and technological development. China structurally blocked this logic. Through state ownership, Party committees within firms, and restrictions on capital exit, corporate decision-making was oriented toward long-term national and industrial objectives rather than immediate financial returns.
At the level of the state, financialization imposed new constraints on democratic governance. European governments found themselves disciplined by debt markets, credit ratings, and investor confidence, frequently prioritizing financial credibility over voter preferences. China neutralized these pressures through capital controls and a state-dominated banking system in which the government remains the primary allocator of credit. As a result, fiscal and industrial policy are insulated from the volatility and discipline of global bond markets.
Vogel further links Europe’s embrace of financialization to its integration into American-centered power networks, including elite transnational forums such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group. These informal structures reinforced shared assumptions about finance, liberalization, and global governance. China consciously excluded itself from such networks, instead constructing parallel institutions—state banks, sovereign wealth funds, and later multilateral initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The comparison strengthens Vogel’s core argument. The dominance of finance and transnational capital is not an inevitable stage of economic development but the outcome of political alignment with American hegemony. China’s sustained repression of financial dominance demonstrates that alternative trajectories were feasible. Europe’s financialization thus reflects not necessity, but choice—one that fundamentally reconfigured the relationship between capital, the state, and democratic control.
From Civic Agent to Market Consumer
Among Hans Vogel’s arguments, perhaps the most philosophically consequential is his claim that Americanization fundamentally redefined the European subject. Beyond institutions or policies, Vogel contends that Europe absorbed an American conception of freedom that reshaped how individuals understood their place in society. The shift was not merely economic, but civilizational: it altered the meaning of citizenship itself.
Under the American paradigm, the citizen gradually ceased to be an active participant in a national political economy. Political agency, collective deliberation, and shared responsibility receded in importance. In their place emerged the figure of the consumer, whose freedom was measured primarily by access to goods, services, and lifestyle choices rather than by influence over economic direction or public priorities.
This transformation coincided with a paradoxical restructuring of the state. Taxes in Europe remained relatively high, yet the tangible role of the state in providing security and stewardship diminished. Public assets were privatized, and collective buffers against risk weakened. Responsibility for health, employment stability, and retirement increasingly shifted onto individuals, who were expected to navigate these risks through market participation rather than public provision.
Vogel emphasizes that this was not a neutral evolution but a normative reorientation. Consumption became a proxy for freedom, and satisfaction of preferences replaced participation in shaping the common good. Political disengagement was reframed as autonomy, while economic vulnerability was individualized rather than treated as a shared social problem.
China diverges sharply from this model. While consumption has expanded rapidly and is actively encouraged, it is never elevated to the core measure of legitimacy or freedom. The Chinese state treats citizens primarily as participants in a national development project, embedded within collective goals rather than as isolated market actors. Consumption is instrumental, not constitutive.
When consumption patterns threaten macroeconomic stability or strategic priorities—through housing bubbles, speculative finance, or platform-driven excess—the state intervenes directly. Rather than interpreting such intervention as a violation of freedom, Chinese policy frames it as a necessary correction in service of long-term national objectives.
For Vogel, Europe’s embrace of consumer-centered subjectivity marks a profound civilizational shift. China’s experience challenges the American claim that consumer choice is the highest expression of freedom. It demonstrates that mass consumption can coexist with political-economic collectivism, and that citizenship need not be dissolved into consumption for prosperity to expand. Europe’s transformation, once again, appears not as inevitability, but as choice.
Legal Convergence and the Quiet Expansion of American Standards
Hans Vogel argues that Europe’s economic Americanization was consolidated not only through ideology or ownership, but through legal and technical harmonization with the United States. Seemingly neutral rules governing accounting, finance, and corporate disclosure became powerful vehicles of alignment. Over time, these mechanisms embedded American norms deep within European economic life, often without public debate or explicit political choice.
A central example is access to U.S. capital markets. European firms seeking financing in New York were required to adopt U.S. accounting and reporting standards. What began as a condition for market entry gradually reshaped corporate practices more broadly, as American norms diffused back into Europe itself. Compliance with U.S. standards became a prerequisite not only for transatlantic activity but for credibility and legitimacy within European markets.
This process effectively subordinated European regulatory autonomy to American legal frameworks. Corporate governance, transparency requirements, and risk assessment increasingly reflected U.S. assumptions about markets and firms. As these standards spread, they acquired a quasi-universal status, transforming private market rules into de facto global law without democratic authorization.
China followed a markedly different path. Rather than accepting harmonization as inevitable, it treated technical standards as a domain of strategic sovereignty. Firms seeking foreign capital often did so through controlled listing structures that preserved domestic accounting rules and regulatory authority. Engagement with global finance was thus filtered, not internalized wholesale.
More broadly, China resisted the universalization of American standards by promoting parallel regimes, particularly in technology, payments, and infrastructure. Instead of retreating from globalization, it actively fragmented it, advancing a plural order in which multiple standards could coexist. This approach rejected the notion that global integration required legal convergence around a single, American-defined model.
The contrast reinforces Vogel’s core insight. Legal and technical harmonization was not an unavoidable byproduct of globalization but a political accommodation. Europe accepted the quiet expansion of American standards as neutral and efficient, while China recognized them as instruments of power—and responded by defending its capacity to define the rules under which its economy operates.
Consent, Not Coercion: The Voluntary Nature of Europe’s Alignment
A crucial element of Hans Vogel’s argument is his insistence that Europe’s Americanization was voluntary. He does not depict Europe as a passive victim of U.S. power or as a region coerced into submission. Instead, he argues that American economic paradigms were actively embraced, internalized, and legitimized from within European societies themselves.
According to Vogel, European political elites played a decisive role in this process. American models of liberalization, financial openness, and market primacy were welcomed as modern, rational, and technically superior. They were presented not as ideological choices, but as objective necessities dictated by globalization, competitiveness, and economic “reality.” In this framing, alternatives were dismissed as outdated or irresponsible rather than debated as legitimate options.
Public consent, Vogel suggests, followed through material comfort rather than political deliberation. Populations were not mobilized around questions of sovereignty or economic governance; instead, they were gradually integrated into a consumer-oriented order that delivered rising living standards, cheap credit, and expanded choice. Consumer satisfaction substituted for democratic engagement, making the transformation socially sustainable even as political agency narrowed.
China’s experience underscores the voluntarism of Europe’s path by demonstrating that exposure to American pressure did not mandate convergence. Chinese elites faced similar incentives—access to capital, technology, and global markets—and were repeatedly urged by U.S. officials to liberalize more rapidly. Yet they consistently chose constraint over shock reform, prioritizing control, sequencing, and national capacity over ideological conformity.
Where Europe internalized American economic ideology, China instrumentalized American capital. Engagement with global markets was treated as a means rather than an end, carefully filtered to avoid importing American norms of governance, ownership, and financial dominance. This distinction between use and adoption proved decisive in preserving policy autonomy.
The handling of elite dissent further sharpens the contrast. In Europe, figures who resisted American alignment—such as Charles de Gaulle—were marginalized over time, their concerns reframed as anachronistic or nationalist. In China, by contrast, resistance to neoliberalization was institutionally enforced through party discipline and centralized authority, preventing liberal ideology from capturing the state.
Vogel’s judgment is therefore not merely descriptive but evaluative. Europe did not lose sovereignty by force; it traded it away in exchange for comfort, stability, and ideological reassurance. The Chinese counterexample makes this conclusion unavoidable: another path was available, pressures were real but not decisive, and Europe’s transformation was ultimately a choice.
Final Thoughts: Vogel’s Underlying Conclusion
Vogel’s underlying conclusion is that Europe’s adoption of American economic paradigms amounted to more than a shift in policy; it marked the abdication of Europe’s role as an alternative civilizational model. In embracing a depoliticized vision of economics—one in which markets were treated as neutral, self-legitimating forces—Europe abandoned a tradition in which economic life was constrained by history, culture, and political responsibility. Economics ceased to be an arena of collective judgment and became instead a technical domain insulated from sovereignty and democratic choice.
China now occupies, however imperfectly, the space Europe vacated. Its economy remains embedded in political authority, its markets operate within strategic constraint, and sovereignty consistently outranks efficiency. This contrast sharpens Vogel’s final implication: economic globalization does not require submission to American paradigms. Europe did not lose sovereignty because it lacked power, but because it forgot that economics is a political art rather than a natural law—and in doing so, relinquished the civilizational agency it once possessed.
References
- How Europe Became American. Hans Vogel. 2021