The modern welfare state is under threat from a variety of fronts. Changing demographic patterns, declining public trust, interest group demands and growing international competition for capital and labour are presenting modern states with intense pressures. This volume examines these competing pressures and offers a coherent analyses of both institutional resilience and institutional change. Adopting an evolutionary approach, this innovative volume demonstrates both how past practices and policies significantly affect the current options and how social and economic forces impinge upon each of these societies in surprisingly different ways. Cross-national in scope and unified in approach, Restructuring the Welfare State examines core issues facing the contemporary welfare state while at the same time significantly advancing historical institutionalist theory.

Autorentext

BO ROTHSTEIN is the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at the University of Göteborg, Sweden

SVEN STEINMO is a Professor in Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Inhalt

Restructuring Politics: Institutional Analysis and the Challenges of Modern Welfare States; B.Rothstein & S.Steinmo Institutions - Experiences - Preferences: How Welfare State Design Affects Political Trust and Ideology; S.Kumlin Is America Becoming More Exceptional?: How Public Policy Corporatized Social Citizenship; F.Dobbin Privatization, Devolution and the Welfare State: Rethinking the Prevailing Wisdom; S.R.Smith Political Institutions and the Politics of Race in the Development of the Modern Welfare State; R.C.Liebermann Including Foreigners in National Welfare States: Institutional Venues and Rules of the Game; V.Guirandon Negotiating Welfare Reform: Actors and Institutions in the Japanese Welfare State; M.Estevez-Abe Political Trust and Support for the Welfare State: Unpacking a Supposed Relationship; S.Svallfors The Universal Welfare State as a Social Dilemma; B.Rothstein