A longer-term perspective reveals the historical exhaustion of the financial resources of the democratic interventionist state of the postwar period. German politics present and future is shaped by a deep crisis of public finance. Its current expression is an apparently insurmountable conflict...

The progress of markets erodes traditional relations of social solidarity that are essential for the stability and performance of societies. As markets advance, pressures build on the state to replace informal social obligations with formal ones. Regulation may fail, however, which tends to give...

Das Papier ist die erweiterte Fassung eines Beitrags zu einer Ringvorlesung über „Wissenschaftliche Politikberatung an der Universität Göttingen im Sommersemester 2009. Es untersucht, was speziell die Sozialwissenschaften zur Beratung der Politik beitragen können. Nomothetische Theorien,...