It is often claimed that the participation of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) can mitigate the democratic deficit of the European Union. This claim rests on the assumption that civil society organizations channel citizens' concerns to the European institutions, a view which is also shared by...

T.H. Marshall's reputation as an historian, social theorist, and practical interpreter of ideas about citizenship and welfare rights has probably never been higher than at the present time. Whether or not T. H. Marshall was "right" or "wrong" in his analysis of the questions raised in...

The essential argument of this paper is that, despite the work of many pioneering scholars, the original agenda of those who came to comparative public policy with a view to demonstrating that the functioning of democratic politics makes a difference remains substantially unfulfilled. The...

New data makes it possible to measure the evolution of social program generosity over the roughly three decades since the affluent democracies entered the "era of austerity." Compared with plausible expectations derived from power resource theory, as well as prior historical experience, these...

This article reflects on the important lecture "The Welfare State Over the Very Long Run", delivered by Paul Pierson, at the London School of Economics on 8 November 2010, on the occasion of the launch of Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State. Pierson's explanation for what he sees as the...

Labor market policies have been re-configured during the "activation turn" in labor market policy-making in the 1990s. This included restricting behavioral requirements for job seekers and benefit claimants, but also improving services (e.g. better placement services). In a nutshell, the "rights...

In the last two years, the Syrian uprising has turned from a civil protest movement against an authoritarian regime into an outright civil war in which the antagonists affiliations' and identities are increasingly framed in sectarian speech. In summer 2012, various politicians and analysts...

This thesis comprises four empirical research papers in the area of political economics. While the first two chapters deal with questions related to direct democracy, chapters three and four are about topics linked to representative democracy.