Product Description: It is commonly assumed that the rise of modern democracies put an end to the spectacular and ceremonial aspects of political rule that were so characteristic of monarchies and other earlier regimes. The medieval idea that the king had two bodies - a mortal physical body and an eternal political body - strikes us today as alien and remote from our understanding of politics: with the transition from monarchy to modern representative democracy, the idea of the body politic was abandoned...read more

Product Description: This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world...read more

This book challenges the popular thesis of a downward trend in the viability of welfare states in competitive market economies.With approaches ranging from historical case studies to cross-national analyses, the contributors explore various aspects of the relationships between welfare states, industrial relations, financial government and production systems. Building upon and combining comparative studies of both the varieties of capitalism and the worlds of welfare state regimes, the book considers issues such as:*the role of employers and unions in social policy*the interdependencies between financial markets and pension systems* the current welfare reform process.It sheds new light on the tenuous relationship between social policies and market economies and provides thought-provoking reading for students and scholars of Comparative Politics, Public Policy, the Welfare State and Political Economy.

Product Description: 1. 1 Problemstellung Es gehort zu den heute allgemein akzeptierten Erkenntnissen, dass Politik sektoral differenziert ist. Dahinter steht die - vor allem von der Policy-Forschung vermittelte - Einsicht, dass Funktionsprobleme moderner Gesellschaften und darauf abzie lende Steuerungsversuche keinen universellen Charakter besit zen, sondern eine hochgradig politikfeldspezifische Pragung aufweisen...read more