Introduction : studying varieties of welfare capitalism / Bernhard Ebbinghaus and Philip Manow -- Business coordination, wage bargaining and the welfare state : Germany and Japan in comparative historical perspective / Philip Manow -- Strategic bargaining and social policy development :...

Forms of European multi-level administration show an increased 'defibration' of the state through a shift of functioning onto the European level, onto other transnationally acting member states and onto the level of social self-organisation. At the same time a new 'complexity' is to be observed...