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The Varieties of Capitalism literature would benefit from more coherence and a model of firm preferences will allow the many moving parts of this branch of scholarship to more convincingly hang together. I offer a critical review that calls for a mapping scheme that would orient and redirect a broad swath of the literature. This review will include scholarship that positions the firm as its core unit of analysis to trace and model the vertical and horizontal junctures of strategic interaction. Local, state, national, and supranational institutions and the dense webs that tether them together comprise the vertical junctures. The cross-firm intersections comprise the mainstay of the horizontal junctures. Importing this simple, compact vertical and horizontal mapping scheme braids the panoply of writing on the firm into four strands of patterned activity. I propose a typological model of firm preferences in (1) social and (2) competition policy arenas, which comports rather snuggly with much of the extant writings with in the VOC branch within these two policy spheres. This model hones in on variation in firm level lobbying strategies, recruitment, frame, and changing repertoire of resources throughout European integration since 1986 (Single European Act). This mapping scheme and preference model also has purchase on questions of agenda setting, malleable veto points, and the configurations of corporatism and pluralism at the EU level. The paper will include discussion of a down-stream enterprise - likely my dissertation - that would chart the intersection of national and EU social and competitive policy spheres through the lens of business interest intermediation since 1986. Some regression analysis will hopefully be presented, but my primary desire is feedback on the precision of my critical literature review and tweaking of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]