One of the main questions in recent debates on the future of welfare states has been whether globalization or structural economic change will lead to convergence. To answer that question, the liberal welfare state of the United States and the conservative continental European welfare states are...

Workfare strategies, requiring recipients of public assistance to work or to participate in work related activities, are not a completely new phenomenon of the modern welfare state. Nevertheless, there have been remarkable policy changes and reforms in most of the Western capitalist societies...

The new form of international terrorism shows complex relations to the capitalist globalisation process. It is argued that the present international system - despite of the absolute economic and military dominance of the 'strong states' under US-leadership - is marked by a fundamental lack of...

The development of regulatory instruments and regulatory groups during the last three decades is discussed. The increasing complexity of financial markets was answered by an extension of formal and informal approaches to their political regulation but still there are a lot of unsolved...

In the current debate on globalisation the concept of "re-embedding" plays a prominent role. The authors criticise this term - which derives from Karl Polanyi - and confront it with the approach of "regulation theory". Regulation theory offers a more precise way of analysing the actual...