Eastern Enlargement of the European Union challenged the design of European Welfare states. Many authors discuss the impact of East European social security systems on their West European counterparts and fear a “race to the bottom”. This paper addresses welfare state developments in the...

The paper provides a multi-disciplinary overview of normative and empirical issues concerning labor markets and inequalities in contemporary capitalist democracies. It begins with a discussion of philosophical controversies in relation to issues of distributive justice. This is followed by a...