We revisit the concept of Diversified Quality Production (DQP), which we introduced about thirty years ago. Our purpose is to examine the extent to which the concept can still be considered tenable for describing and explaining the development of the interaction between the political economy and...

What is the impact of business interest groups on the formulation of public social policies? This paper reviews the literature in political science, history, and sociology on this question. It identifies two strands: one analyzes the political power and influence of business, the other the...

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 European Monetary Union (EMU) has removed crucial instruments of macroeconomic management from the control of democratically accountable governments. Worse still, the EMU has systemically caused destabilizing macroeconomic imbalances that member states found difficult or impossible to...

Illegal markets differ from legal markets in many respects. Although illegal markets have economic significance and are of theoretical importance, they have been largely ignored by economic sociology. In this article we propose a categorization for illegal markets and highlight reasons why...

In this paper, I put the ongoing G20 process of improving the regulation of international finance into a historically informed perspective. To understand the driving forces behind and obstacles to international cooperation in governing finance I combine concepts from international political...

This paper critically assesses microfinance's expansion into the provision of public goods. It focuses on the problem of public goods and collective action and refers to the specific example of water and sanitation. The microfinancing of water and sanitation is a private business model which...

The literature notes an increasing trend towards labor market stratification and dualization in coordinated market economies such as Germany. Labor market insiders and insider-oriented cross-class coalitions are usually identified as the driving forces behind these developments. This paper adds...

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...

This paper starts from four observations: (1) voter turnout is declining in established democracies; (2) low turnout means socio-economically unequal turnout; (3) compulsory voting is an effective means to increase turnout; (4) even low-turnout countries, however, have neither introduced nor...