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 object world of the social sciences is complex, historical and self-reflexive. It generates nonlinear effects, it is unique, and it is able to understand the theories developed about it and respond to them intentionally. Recognizing the emergent, historically contingent and self-organizing...

The paper presents some of the ideas underlying the current research program of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). It begins with a discussion of how the institute's programmatic orientation has evolved since it was founded in 1984. Programmatic change over the years...

Anders als in den international eingebetteten nationalen Wachstums- und Umverteilungsgemeinschaften der Nachkriegszeit muß gewerkschaftliche Politik heute auf ganz neue Weise über nationale Grenzen hinausschauen. Zu den vielen unvertrauten Erscheinungen, die sie dort vorfindet, gehört die...

This paper outlines an institutionalist political economy approach to capitalism as a specific type of social order. Social science institutionalism considers social systems to be structured by sanctioned rules of obligatory behavior. Its perspective is one of collective ordering, or governance,...

Der Beitrag thematisiert zunächst die Rahmenbedingungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und die spezifische Krise des deutschen Beschäftigungssystems (stabile Koinzidenz hoher Arbeitslosigkeit mit einer niedrigen Erwerbsquote). Ziel der Arbeitsmarkt- und Beschäftigungspolitik müsste es sein, eine auch...