The “financial crisis” and its sequel, the current sovereign debt crisis, appear to be the latest permutations of an old conflict between capitalism and democracy that forcefully reasserted itself after the end of the postwar growth period. Today’s calamities were preceded by high...

Rising public debt has been widespread in democratic-capitalist political economies since the 1970s, generally accompanied among other things by weak economic growth, rising unemployment, increasing inequality, growing tax resistance, and declining political participation. Following an initial...

Die Internationalisierung der Weltwirtschaft entzieht die Volkswirtschaften dem Zugriff nationaler Regulierung. Diese Entwicklung führt für den Nationalstaat, immer noch der wichtigste Ort demokratischer Politik und sozialer Solidarität, zu Legitimationsproblemen und zur Notwendigkeit einer...

Skills and skill formation have become central topics in contemporary political economy. This essay traces a key concept in the current debate – the distinction between general and specific skills – back to its diverse origins in American postwar labor economics, comparative industrial...

The progress of markets erodes traditional relations of social solidarity that are essential for the stability and performance of societies. As markets advance, pressures build on the state to replace informal social obligations with formal ones. Regulation may fail, however, which tends to give...

Das Papier ist die erweiterte Fassung eines Beitrags zu einer Ringvorlesung über „Wissenschaftliche Politikberatung an der Universität Göttingen im Sommersemester 2009. Es untersucht, was speziell die Sozialwissenschaften zur Beratung der Politik beitragen können. Nomothetische Theorien,...

Das Papier, vorgetragen beim Institutstag 2008 des Max-Planck-Instituts für Gesellschaftsforschung, fragt nach dem Zusammenhang sozialwissenschaftlicher Theorieentwicklung und dem Wandel der politisch-ökonomischen Verhältnisse. Zentrale These ist, dass sozialwissenschaftliche Theorien sich...

The paper was presented as a keynote lecture at the 10th anniversary of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) in April 2008. It surveys the trajectory of scholarly work on labor after 1945, from its initial emphasis on rights of industrial and social citizenship to its...