Recent elaborations on models of capitalism try to integrate more closely meso-level differences with macro-level theorisation on capitalism as a whole. The specific problems of competitiveness and democracy detected by Soskice in liberal market economies and by Burroni, Pavolini and Regini in Southern Europe stand therefore in a theoretical tension with theories of models’ complementarity and of advanced democratic capitalism. A review of the arguments with regard to the role of education and innovation for capitalism and democracy points at the importance of testing trends across models, and of investigating the mutual dependencies between winning and left-behind places not only within models, but also among them.