There are few long-term studies in which the development of vocational education and training (VET) is placed in a larger societal framework. Consequently, there is limited understanding as to why VET has evolved quite differently even in countries with similar economic and social development. In his reflections on a possible theoretical framework for analyzing the historical development of European VET systems, Wolf-Dietrich Greinert takes a three-step approach searching for common principles of the various systems. VET is firstly embedded in national work cultures manifest in labor law. It is the work cultures which form the basis of specific VET regimes. Work cultures and VET regimes in turn come with leading ideas, which legitimatize a certain didactic orientation. Based on a diachronic analysis from the Industrial Revolution onwards, three general types of VET systems are identified: the liberal market economy model in Britain, the state-regulated bureaucratic model in France and the dual-corporate model in Germany.