Stein Rokkan was one of the leading social scientist of the post-war world. He was a prolific writer, yet nowhere is his contribution to social science--the conceptual and developmental map of Europe--presented in an integrated and systematic way. Drawing on Rokkan's published, unpublished and translated writings, this book systematizes and integrates Rokkan's numerous writings in the way he himself planned to do.

This work seeks to provide a novel perspective on the condition of European welfare states. The challenges to the welfare state are indisputable, ranging from changing demographic, social and family structures to high levels of unemployment, rising entitlements and the growth of social expenditure. Crisis, breakdown and dismantlement have emerged as the catchphrases of both academic and media analyses of the European welfare states. This book challenges the premises behind such reductive attitudes, focusing instead on the survival of the welfare state and its possible future development. An...

This book updates, and takes stock of, Lipset and Rokkan's classic work Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, an influential work since its publication in 1967. With an introduction by the original author, Seymour Martin Lipset, it examines the significance of the original volume for the history of political sociology, and assesses its theoretical and empirical relevance for the study of elections, voters and parties now at the beginning of the 21st century. Most importantly, this volume gives scope to new areas such as consociational democracies, small island...

This book delves into issues at the heart of government. Its sharp analysis of the unique Nordic welfare system provides urgent lessons for governments and societies across the globe.
Welfare programs and institutions tend to be analyzed as instrumental arrangements, overlooking the fact that welfare programs are essentially expressions of moral conceptions and values. This book recognizes this distinction and offers analyses, perspectives and interpretations of the normative foundation of the 'Nordic welfare state model'.
The authors examine the main normative principles in this...