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This article re-examines the division between optimists and pessimists within the literature on the Open Method of Coordination`s (OMC) effectiveness. Each of those camps tends to focus on a different question. Optimists are more concerned with the question of whether the OMC exerts an influence on the national level and through which mechanisms, whilst pessimists concentrate on the question of whether the OMC can strengthen EU social policy and therefore European welfare states. This article combines these two perspectives and argues that the OMC is indeed capable of influencing national policies through the dissemination of ideas and learning as the optimists stress. However, policy learning at the member state level is shaped and constrained by a variety of internal and external pressures. Against the hopes of most of the OMC optimists, this makes the OMC largely ineffective in preventing welfare state retrenchment
