Social Policy in Smaller European Union States

Revised and expanded versions of 10 papers selected from presentation at the international conference "Social Policy in the New Europe: The Experience of Austria and the Smaller EU Members," held in Twin Cities, Minnesota discuss the social investment agenda from ideas to policy; interests coalitions, and social reform; and diverging institutional legacies. Specific topics include how globalization and the European Union are changing European welfare states, how to adjust institutional social policy, Austrian social policy reform in the era of integration and rising population, the dynamics of collective bargaining reform in Spain and Portugal, and the Germanic university system in comparative perspective. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gary B. Cohen is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Minnesota. His research has focused on social development, ethnic group relations, and education in modern Austria and the Czech lands. His publications include two books, 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); articles in The Journal of Modern History, Central European History, The Austrian History Yearbook, The East European Quarterly, Jewish History, and The Social Science Quarterly; and numerous book chapters.

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). His current research interests focus on the politics of education policy, the relationship between inequality and democracy, and the effects of asset price inflation on political preferences.

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 service in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. Her current research turns to an analysis of how citizens respond to such reforms, examining the interaction between public preferences and the welfare state.

Robert Henry Cox is Professor in the School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma 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. His research focuses on the development and evolution of welfare states in advanced industrialized countries, and his writings on the welfare state have explored the moral foundations of welfare programs, the politics of policy change, and the technical details of systems of taxation and social insurance.