Sven Steinmo

Structuring politics : historical institutionalism in comparative analysis

Preface 1. Historical institutionalism in comparative politics Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo 2. Labor market institutions and working class strength Bo Rothstein 3. The rules of the game: the logic of health policy-making in France, Switzerland, and Sweden Ellen Immergut 4. The movement from Keynesianism to monetarism Peter A. Hall 5. Political structure, state policy, and industrial change: early railroad policy in the United States and Prussia Colleen A. Dunlavy 6. Institutions and political change: working class formation in England and the United States, 1820-1896 Victoria C. Hattam 7. Ideas and the politics of bounded innovation Margaret Weir 8. The establishment of work-welfare programmes in the United States and Britain: politics, ideas, and institutions Desmond S. King.

The New Political Economy of Taxation in Advanced Capitalist Democracies

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1-5, Atlanta, GA, and the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 27-30, Chicago, IL. The authors thank Steffen Ganghof, Philip Genschel, Mark Hallerberg, Alex Hicks, William Keech, Dennis Quinn, and the anonymous reviewers and editor of this journal for many helpful comments and Dennis Quinn for generously sharing data. Duane Swank thanks the German Marshal Fund of the United States and Marquette University for support of work incorporated in this paper. Data utilized in this paper are available from duane. swank@marquette.edu.

It's the Institutions, Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Insurance Always Fails in America

We argue that the United States does not have comprehensive national health insurance (NHI) because American political institutions are biased against this type of reform. The original design of a fragmented and federated national political system serving an increasingly large and diverse polity has been further fragmented by a series of political reforms beginning with the Progressive era and culminating with the congressional reforms of the mid-1970s. This institutional structure yields enormous power to intransigent interest groups and thus makes efforts by progressive reformers such as President Clinton (and previous reform-minded presidents before him) to mount a successful NHI campaign impossible. We show how this institutional structure has shaped political strategies and political outcomes related to NHI since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Finally, we argue that this institutional structure contributes to the antigovernment attitudes so often observed among Americans.

DO INSTITUTIONS REALLY MATTER? Taxation in Industrialized Democracies

New institutionalism has emerged as one of the most prominent research agendas in the field of comparative politics, political economy, and public policy. This article examines the role of institutional variation in political/economic regimes in shaping tax burdens in industrialized democracies. An institutionalist model for tax policy variation is tested across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) democracies. Countries are conceptualized and statistically modeled in terms of majoritarian, shifting coalition, and dominant coalition governments. Regression analysis and cluster analysis are used to statistically model cross-national tax burdens relative to the strength of labor organization and party dominance in parliament. This study finds that political and economic institutions are important in explaining tax policy variation. Specifying the structure of political and economic institutions helps to explain the size of the state in modern capitalist democracies. This article specifies and demonstrates which institutions matter and how much they matter.

Do Libraries Matter? Public libraries and the creation of social capital

Purpose – Librarians and the library profession keep repeating that libraries contribute greatly to generating social capital by “building community”. However, little evidence of this has been presented. This paper aims to be a first step towards correcting this situation by asking whether public libraries matter in the creation of generalized trust.Design/methodology/approach – This study used quantitative data in analyzing macro‐level data on whether public library expenditure could explain social trust patterns in the OECD countries. Additionally, a few qualitative interviews with public library leaders in the USA and Norway were used to indicate by what mechanisms, or by which processes, libraries generate generalized trust.Findings – The main finding is that public libraries seem the most important factor in creating generalized trust in the OECD area, even more so than efficient/impartial public institutions. However, there is the problem of causal direction. It might be the case that it is high tru...

Globalization and Taxation Challenges to the Swedish Welfare State

Many have argued that the increased international mobility of both capital and labor witnessed in recent years will force advanced capitalist democracies to cut taxes and, thus, ultimately roll back their welfare states. This analysis tests this hypothesis through an examination of policy developments in Sweden, the country with the worlds heaviest tax burden and largest social welfare state. The analysis focuses on the history and structure of taxation policy (the policy arena predicted to be most directly affected by globalization). The findings reveal that there have been very important changes in the Swedish welfare state: The tax and spending regimes have been changed less than the globalization thesis predicts. This analysis argues that Sweden has indeed adapted and changed in recent years but finds little support for the more dire thesis that countries like Sweden must abandon their high-tax regimes and/or their generous social welfare systems.

Restructuring the welfare state : political institutions and policy change

Restructuring Politics: Institutional Analysis and the Challenges of Modern Welfare States B.Rothstein & S.Steinmo Institutions - Experiences - Preferences: How Welfare State Design Affects Political Trust and Ideology S.Kumlin Is America Becoming More Exceptional?: How Public Policy Corporatized Social Citizenship F.Dobbin Privatization, Devolution and the Welfare State: Rethinking the Prevailing Wisdom S.R.Smith Political Institutions and the Politics of Race in the Development of the Modern Welfare State R.C.Liebermann Including Foreigners in National Welfare States: Institutional Venues and Rules of the Game V.Guirandon Negotiating Welfare Reform: Actors and Institutions in the Japanese Welfare State M.Estevez-Abe Political Trust and Support for the Welfare State: Unpacking a Supposed Relationship S.Svallfors The Universal Welfare State as a Social Dilemma B.Rothstein

Bucking the Trend? The Welfare State and the Global Economy: The Swedish Case Up Close

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Restructuring Politics: Institutional Analysis and the Challenges of Modern Welfare States

This volume pursues two basic themes—the first empirical, the second theoretical. Substantively, we are interested in exploring the ways in which modern welfare states have dealt with the challenges offered them at the end of the twentieth century There are a number of forces that appear to impinge upon and challenge some of the fundamental assumptions and institutions that have been central to the welfare state for at least the last half of the century (Kuhnle 2000; Pierson 2001). Many of these challenges can be captured by the phrase “globalization,” but as a number of studies have recently shown, the worst fears (or best hopes) of the “globalization” theorists have not been borne out by the facts.1

Social Democracy vs. Socialism: Goal Adaptation in Social Democratic Sweden

RECENTLY, a debate between two leading Left intellectuals, Adam Przeworski and Gosta Esping-Anderson, has re-ignited scholarly interest in the century-old question Can social-democratic reformism lead to a socialist transformation? Each of these authors brings powerful analytic skills and a wealth of information about the politics and development of European socialdemocratic polities to this question. Each reaches fundamentally different