The rise and fall of policies regulating early exit from labour markets remains enigmatic for comparative politics. Most explanations focus on structural or institutional causes. A missing source of national variation, this discussion paper argues, lies in cross-country differences in voters'...

In der Diskussion über arbeitsmarktpolitische Reformen fordern nationale Regierungen und internationale Organisationen immer stärker das Lernen von anderen Ländern. Das politikwissenschaftliche Standardmodell zur Erklärung von Reformen der Arbeitsmarktpolitik ist jedoch zumeist rein...

Ausgangspunkt dieses Diskussionspapieres ist die von Fritz Scharpf vertretene Auf-fassung, dass wohlfahrtsstaatliche Institutionen maßgeblich an der Entwicklung unterschiedlicher Dienstleistungssektoren beteiligt sind. Anhand dieser Idee werden polit-ökonomische Hypothesen hergeleitet und...

The twin predicaments of German labour market performance and welfare state performance triggered an ongoing debate on reforming the German model. Recently, this debate has yielded an outcome in the form of the so-called Hartz laws, a bundle of labour market policies aimed at the reduction of...

Pension schemes that redistribute money to the elderly have seen a remarkable surge in developing countries. To explain this phenomenon we build a political economy model of a Beveridgean pay-as-you-go social security system which incorporates family transfers driven by costs of non-compliance...

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, in wie weit polit-ökonomische Ansätze den Prozess der Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union erklären können. Eine grundlegende These der Arbeit lautet wie folgt: Kritiker der Theorien rationaler Entscheidungen beziehen sich häufig auf eine sehr...

This paper has been prepared as a part of a broader Ezoneplus project that evaluates European Monetary Union (EMU) and its enlargement to prospective members in central and eastern Europe. The project is financially supported by European Commission (HPSE-CT-2001-00084). It contains the following...

This report discusses both the reshaping of certain policy areas and the socio-political repercussions an Eastward enlargement of the euro-zone may have. The focus lies on the potential for social conflict enhanced by the enlargement process and their consequences for national policy-making. The...

This Regional Input is a supplement to Ezoneplus Working Paper No. 13 on the Social Dimension of the Eastward Enlargement of the Eurozone. Within Ezoneplus the Social Dimension is a hybrid in the sense that it addresses both the reshaping of certain policies and the socio-political repercussions...