Torben Iversen is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Contested Economic Institutions: The Politics of Macroeconomics and Wage Bargaining (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and co-editor of Unions, Employers and Central Bankers: Macroeconomic Coordination and Institutional Change in Social Market Economies (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He is also the author or co-author of articles in such journals as the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Public Choice, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and World Politics, as well as numerous edited volumes.

• Part I. Welfare Production Regimes: 1. A political economy approach to the welfare state; 2. A brief analytical history of modern welfare production regimes; Part II. Political Foundations of Social Policy: 3. Explaining individual social policy preferences; 4. Social protection and elections; Part III. Forces of Change: 5. Coping with risk: the expansion of social protection; 6. New tradeoffs, new policies: challenges of the service economy; Bibliography.

'… a truly excellent book … provides a wealth of understanding … provides a useful degree of coherence and reality that enriches the theorizing.' SEER