The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe

Silja Häusermann is Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. She has been a visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She was awarded the Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Prize of the European Politics and Society section of the American Political Science Association, the Jean Blondel Ph.D. Prize of the European Consortium for Political Research, the Junior Scientist Award by the Swiss Political Science Association, and the Young Researcher Prize by the Journal of European Social Policy and the European Social Policy Analysis Network. She has published articles on comparative welfare state analysis, public opinion and welfare states, and the Europeanization of national politics, in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, the Socio-Economic Review, European Societies, the Journal of European Social Policy, and the Journal of European Public Policy.

• 1. Introduction: 'eppur si muove' - welfare state change despite institutional inertia; 2. Modernization in hard times: the post-industrial politics of continental welfare state reform; Part I. Pension Reform in Continental Europe: A Framework of Analysis: 3. A new reform agenda: old age security in the post-industrial era; 4. Changing alliances: conflict lines and actor configurations; 5. Reform outputs: strategies of coalitional engineering; Part II. Determinants of Successful Pension Reform in Continental Europe: 6. France - trade union fragmentation as reform opportunity; 7. Germany - institutional obstacles to multidimensional reform politics; 8. Switzerland - recalibration as an enabling mechanism of pension compromises; 9. Conclusion: reform outputs and political implications.

'This outstanding book both challenges and advances existing theories of policy processes in industrial democracies. Through the very important case of welfare policy, Häusermann shows that policy change does occur (thus the challenge to the immobility view), and that social structural shifts drive policy change (thus the challenge to the primacy of institutions view). She does this with rigorous methodology and data to show how governments can lead in forming strategies of political exchange and coalition building, grounding the importance of leadership and choice in the context of social influences over time. This result is a model of political analysis that reaches beyond the specific country and issue area to a general analysis of political processes. To be read by everyone!' Peter Gourevitch, University of California, San Diego