Context: After the Eurozone crisis unfolded a decade ago, comparative political economy has investigated reforms of public administration, labour market, welfare state and economic policy particularly in Southern European nations which were hit hardest by the crisis. However, analyses of skill...

Scholars have argued about the impact of fiscal decentralisation on public spending for a long time without coming to any firm theoretical and empirical conclusions. In contrast to earlier studies, this paper looks at the impact of fiscal decentralisation across different types of spending. It...

This paper argues that the German system of vocational training is undergoing subtle but significant changes from a mainly collectivist system to a more segmentalist one. To make the argument, the paper first discusses the two logics of collectivism and segmentalism, and how the German system is...

This paper is about the relative impact of retirement and social class on individual attitudes towards welfare state policies in advanced industrial democracies. Which factor is more important in explaining individuals' social policy preferences: socio-economic background or retirement? How can...

This paper builds on the arguments developed by Carles Boix (1997, 1998) about partisan differences in supply-side oriented strategies. The original Boix model argues that social democrats in government prefer to increase public investment in human capital formation, while conservatives are...