At the 2009 SASE meeting in Paris, Amitai Etzioni, Michael Piore and Wolfgang Streeck discussed the potential contributions of behavioural economics to socio-economics. Following are slightly expanded versions of their presentations

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 inflation...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...

The paper explores possible frontiers of historical-institutionalist analysis. It argues three points: that progress will require a return from a static to a dynamic perspective in which change is no longer a special case but a universal condition of any social order; that theory must not a...

European social policy changed with the evolution of European and global capitalism, the scope and shape of European-level international institutions, the size and heterogeneity of “Europe” as a polity, and the politics of the European national welfare state. The paper outlines the long-term...

Die Autoren analysieren die gleichzeitige Entstehung von Multibranchengewerkschaften (conglomerate unions) in den Niederlanden und in Deutschland. Dabei stellen sie fest, daß diese Entwicklung keine länderübergreifenden Zusammenhänge zeigt. Es sind die gleichen endogenen Faktoren in den...

Over the past four decades, the accumulation of policy legacies and public debt has led to a decline in fiscal flexibility in Germany and the United States. By applying an index of fiscal democracy to Germany, the paper illustrates the associated shrinkage of democratic control over budget...

The paper reviews the origins of the comparative study of capitalism and of the diverse approaches applied to it in contemporary political economy. It distinguishes four models accounting for differences in the institutional make-up of national capitalist economies, which it refers to as the...

Seit Anfang der 1970er-Jahre lässt sich eine graduelle Verschärfung der fiskalischen Situation moderner Staaten beobachten. Chronisch gewordene Defizite und eine dramatisch gestiegene Staatsverschuldung sind zu einer beherrschenden Rahmenbedingung wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Politik geworden. Das...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...