Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced Western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes three major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different Western countries. He argues that current economic processes, such as those moving toward a postindustrial order, are shaped not by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to all those working on issues of economic development and postindustrialism. Its audience will include students of sociology, economics, and politics."

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

/pdf/international-norm-dynamics-and-political-change-37ig9r9dlq.pdf

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

This article provides an overview of recent developments in historical institutionalism. First, it reviews some distinctions that are commonly drawn between the ihistoricali and the irational choicei variants of institutionalism and shows that there are more points of tangency than typically assumed. However, differences remain in how scholars in the two traditions approach empirical problems. The contrast of rational choiceis emphasis on institutions as coordination mechanisms that generate or sustain equilibria versus historical institutionalismis emphasis on how institutions emerge from and are embedded in concrete temporal processes serves as the foundation for the second half of the essay, which assesses our progress in understanding institutional formation and change. Drawing on insights from recent historical institutional work on icritical juncturesi and on ipolicy feedbacks,i the article proposes a way of thinking about institutional evolution and path dependency that provides an alternative to equilibrium and other approaches that separate the analysis of institutional stability from that of institutional change.

/pdf/historical-institutionalism-in-comparative-politics-3vixp29gwt.pdf

Historical institutionalism in comparative politics

The paper is concerned with spatial clustering of economic activity and its relation to the spatiality of knowledge creation in interactive learning processes. It questions the view that tacit knowledge transfer is confined to local milieus whereas codified knowledge may roam the globe almost frictionlessly. The paper highlights the conditions under which both tacit and codified knowledge can be exchanged locally and globally. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, the learning processes taking place among actors embedded in a community by just being there dubbed buzz and, on the other, the knowledge attained by investing in building channels of communication called pipelines to selected providers located outside the local milieu. It is argued that the co-existence of high levels of buzz and many pipelines may provide firms located in outward-looking and lively clusters with a string of particular advantages not available to outsiders. Finally, some policy implications, stemming from this argumen...

/pdf/clusters-and-knowledge-local-buzz-global-pipelines-and-the-29bsuyvekg.pdf

Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation

The adoption of the White Paper on Completing the Internal Market (1985) and the passage of the Single European Act (1986) revitalized the European Community and marked a new stage in the European integration process. The new enthusiasm in the Community awoke grand integration theory from a long slumber as scholars—some new, some veterans of former debates—attempted once again to explain what was happening in Europe. They initially focused their attention on the decision to create a single market and to revise the Treaty of Rome to expedite the process. Ultimately, they were trying to explain why, after years of stagnation, the integration process was suddenly moving forward again. These scholars drew on neofunctionalism and a number of other approaches derived from international relations and ec decisionmaking to provide answers to their theoretical questions.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0043887100010893

1992: Recasting the European Bargain

Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy

Governments, markets, and growth

This paper is concerned with approaches to growth theory that argue for historically created, institutionally rooted national development trajectories. There are varied ways of organizing market economies, and there is more than just one kind of capitalism. The institutional approach begins with the observation that markets, embedded in political and social institutions, are the creation of government and politics. Indeed all economic interchange takes place within institutions and groups. Markets do not exist or operate apart from the rules and institutions that establish them and that structure how buying, selling and the very organization of production takes place. Consequently there are multiple market capitalisms, and in a global economy international competition among members must be understood as an interplay of these various national market systems. Focus is on the historically rooted national institutions which frame the choices of individuals and structure the terms on which issues such as agency problems and contract problems are confronted. The approach proposed in this paper is a necessary complement to an institutionalism more familiar in economics. This historical institutionalism frames problems and provides answers to puzzles that concern _ microeconomic-based institutionalism. The particular historical course of each nation's - development creates a political economy with a distinctive institutional structure for ~ governing the markets of labor, land, capital and goods. The institutional structure | induces particular kinds of corporate and government behavior by constraining and by z laying out a logic to the market and policy-making process that is particular to that s political economy. These typical strategies, routine approaches to problems and shared~o decision rules create predictable patterns in the way governments and companies go v about their business in a particular national political economy. The paper then applies 1 these notions to the debate about national systems of innovation. Empirically there is | evidence of distinct national technological trajectories. The questions are why the j trajectories exist and why they have particular form. National systems arguments need \ an institutional theory that would permit us to apply both evolutionary and new | growth arguments about economic development to particular national cases.

/pdf/how-institutions-create-historically-rooted-trajectories-of-kwor6l9rhy.pdf

How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth

The gap is wide between the implications of climate science and the achievements of climate policy. Natural sciences tell us with increasing certainty that climate change is real, dangerous, and solvable; social sciences report that key constituencies largely support action. But current and planned policy remains weak and will allow a long-term increase in temperature of 3.6°C ( 1 ). How can we address the gap between science and policy? From the political successes of climate policy leaders, we identify key strategies for building winning coalitions for decarbonization of domestic economies. Green industrial policy provides direct incentives for growth of green industries, which builds political support for carbon regulation.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/349/6253/1170.full.pdf

John Zysman

Papers

1992: Recasting the European Bargain

Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy

Governments, markets, and growth

How Institutions Create Historically Rooted Trajectories of Growth

Winning coalitions for climate policy