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Product Description: At a time when so many cracks have emerged within the imagined community of 'the West', this important new book, by one of the leading social scientists in Europe, examines the intellectual history of comparing Europe and the United States...read more

Product Description: This volume addresses the problem of how modern societies politically cohere, and poses one of the most fundamental questions of contemporary political analysis: how can legitimate authority co-exist with effective governing capacity? In addressing this question, the author draws on a wide variety of material in both political theory and empirical sociology...read more

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Product Description: Claus Offe has spent most of his career analyzing the inner workings (and nonworkings) of Western democracies. After the upheavals of the late 1980s, however, his attention was drawn increasingly to the East, and particularly to the transformations occurring in the former German Democratic Republic...read more

Product Description: Clause Offe, one of the most insightful contemporary theorists of society and politics, has contributed greatly to our understanding of social policy and the odyssey of advanced capitalism in the late twentieth century. Modernity and the State, a dozen essays written over the last decade, develops his earlier lines of interest and extends them to the new societies emerging in Central-Eastern Europe...read more

Product Description: Clause Offe, one of the most insightful contemporary theorists of society and politics, has contributed greatly to our understanding of social policy and the odyssey of advanced capitalism in the late twentieth century. Modernity and the State, a dozen essays written over the last decade, develops his earlier lines of interest and extends them to the new societies emerging in Central-Eastern Europe...read more

Product Description: Der Band verdeutlicht Umbrüche der Transformationsphase in der politischen Theorie. In einigen Bereichen, etwa der Modernisierungs-, der Demokratietheorie oder der Theorie des Systemwechsels, ist der Einfluß konkreter Ereignisse wie der von 1989, beträchtlich...read more

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Product Description: This book examines the debate surrounding the future of "waged work" and the growth of an informal economy. Through detailed research, Claus Offe and Rolf G. Heinze contend that the nature of waged work, or exchanging time for money, is being transformed...read more

Product Description: Nutzenstiftende Tätigkeiten finden auch in modernen Gesellschaften keineswegs nur dort statt, wo erwerbswirtschaftlich gearbeitet und Geldeinkommen verdient wird. Zwischen Erwerbsarbeit und Haushalt hat sich eine Vielzahl von selbstorganisierten sozialen Netzen entwickelt,in denen ohne Bezahlung ein überhaushaltlicher Tausch von Hilfe und Diensten stattfindet...read more

Product Description: Should the Western democracies, contrary to their prevailing self-image as "planned" and "managed, " be seen as highly disorganized systems of social power and political authority? If so, what are the symptoms, consequences of, and possible remedies for these disorganizing tendencies? In these ten essays, Claus Offe seeks to answer such questions...read more

Claus Offe is one of the leading social scientists working in Germany today, and his work, particularly on the welfare state, has been enormously influential both in Europe and the United States. "Contradictions of the Welfare State" is the first collection of Offe's essays to appear in a single volume in English, and it contains a selection of his most important recent work on the breakdown of the post-war settlement. The political writings in this book are primarily concerned with the origins of the present difficulties - what Offe calls the 'crises of crisis management' - of welfare capitalist states. He indicates why in the present period, these states are no longer capable of fully managing the socio-political problems and conflicts generated by late capitalist societies and discusses the viability of New Right, corporatist, and democratic socialist proposals for restructuring the welfare state. The book also offers fresh and penetrating insights into a range of other subjects, including social movements, political parties, law, social policy, and labor markets. There is an interview with Claus Offe, prepared especially for this volume, and a substantial introductory chapter by John Keane which links the essays and explores Offe's central themes. Claus Offe has researched and lectured widely throughout Europe and North America and is Professor in the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. John Keane is an editor of Telos and Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Sociology at the Polytechnic of Central London. This book is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.