The Lisbon Strategy supports reform of Member States' tax-benefit systems while the 'fiscal philosophy' of the EMU postulates that governments should allow only automatic stabilizers, built into tax-benefit systems, to smooth aggregate income. We ask whether these two pillars of EU economic...

The fiscal policy framework of EMU and possible reforms of the Stability and Growth Pact have elicited much debate. The pact has been predicated on a conception of it as a device to discipline Member States. This gives rise to a paradox in which the credibility of policy-makers it is supposed to...

Many European countries have embraced the choice agenda in welfare arrangements with a view of improving efficiency and/or quality. The motivations range from legitimising public welfare and administrative modernisation, to electoral politics and cost containment. Our research project included...

The crisis since August 2007 provides an opportunity to observe the workings of good governance institutions under an extreme stress test and in radically different political settings. Institutions such as independent central banks, fiscal rules and regulatory oversight of public finances were...

The objective of this paper is to study the effects on solidarity, risk, and equity of the introduction of choice and competition into the provision of public services. Many European countries have embraced the choice agenda in welfare arrangements with a view of improving efficiency and/or...

The study of welfare capitalism is concerned with a founding question of political economy, namely how capitalism and democracy can be combined. Ever since the publication of Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in 1990, the answer was sought in identifying ideal types of...