Abstract

In Europe and around the world, social policies and welfare services have faced increasing pressure in recent years as a result of political, economic, and social changes. Just as Europe was a leader in the development of the welfare state and the supportive structures of corporatist politics from the 1920s onward, Europe in particular has experienced stresses from globalization and striking innovation in welfare policies. While debates in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France often attract wide international attention, smaller European countries—Belgium, Denmark, Austria, or Finland—are often overlooked. This volume seeks to correct this unfortunate oversight as these smaller countries serve as models for reform, undertaking experiments that only later gain the attention of stymied reformers in the larger countries.

Ben W. Ansell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He has also worked as an academic consultant to HM Treasury in the UK and for the Leitch Review of Skills, advising the UK government on long-term education policy. He is the author of From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education (2010).

Gary B. Cohen is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Minnesota. His publications include numerous journal articles and books, including The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (1981; 2nd ed., revised, 2006) and Education and Middle-Class Society in Imperial Austria, 1848–1918 (1996).

Robert Henry Cox is Professor in the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and is coordinator for European Studies. He is co-editor of the journal Governance, and is the co-director of the European Union Center at OU.

Jane Gingrich is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. In 2008-09 she was also a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. Her recent book, Making markets in the welfare state: The politics of varying market reforms (2011), looks at the politics of market reforms in public services in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.