Normative Foundations of the Welfare State: The Nordic Experience

‘This is an important book as a valuable resource for policy makers who want to study and maybe appropriate the Nordic welfare model. Its in-depth material transmits the message that such a transformation is not straightforward. But it does provide the information to assess such a process.’ – Yitzhak Berman, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research

‘The collection as a whole will be an invalueable resource for Scandinavianists and comparative welfare state researchers, especially the editors own introductory essay on The Nordic Welfare Model and the Idea of Universalism, which is quite simply the best chapter-length treatment of that topic I know. – Political Studies Review

Nanna Kildal is a Researcher at Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen. Her current research interests are normative studies of welfare policies and studies of policy transfer. She has written a number of articles on the 1990s welfare reforms in Europe and USA.Stein Kuhnle is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. Among his recent publications in English are (ed.) Survival of the European Welfare State (Routledge, 2000); The Nordic welfare state in a European context: dealing with new economic and ideological challenges in the 1990s, European Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 379-398 (2000); and Democracy and Productive Welfare: European and Korean Welfare Policy Development in Perspective, and The Journal of the Korean Economy, Vol. 3, No. 1, 59-83 (Spring 2002).