This book challenges the popular thesis of a downward trend in the viability of welfare states in competitive market economies.
With approaches ranging from historical case studies to cross-national analyses, the contributors explore various aspects of the relationships between welfare states, industrial relations, financial government and production systems. Building upon and combining comparative studies of both the varieties of capitalism and the worlds of welfare state regimes, the book considers issues such as:
*the role of employers and unions in social policy
*the interdependencies between financial markets and pension systems
* the current welfare reform process.
It sheds new light on the tenuous relationship between social policies and market economies and provides thought-provoking reading for students and scholars of Comparative Politics, Public Policy, the Welfare State and Political Economy.

1. Introduction: Studying Varieties of Welfare Capitalism
Part I: The Origins and Development of Welfare Capitalism
2. Business Coordination, Wage Bargaining and Welfare State: Germany and Japan in Comparative Historical Perspective
3. Strategic Bargaining and Social Policy Development: Unemployment Insurance in France and Germany
4. When Labour and Capital Collude: the Political Economy of Early Retirement in Europe, Japan and the USA
Part II: Industrial Relations and Welfare State Regimes
5. Welfare State Regimes and Industrial Relations Systems: the Questionable Role of Path Dependency Theory
6. Social Partnership, Welfare State Regimes, and Working Time in Europe
7. The Governance of the Employment - Welfare Relationship in Britain and Germany
Part III: Pension Regimes and Financial Systems
8. Between Financial Commitment, Market Liquidity and Corporate Governance: Occupational Pensions in Britain, Germany, Japan and the USA
9. The Forgotten Link: the Financial Regulation of Japanese Pensions Funds in Comparative Perspective
Part IV: The Political Economy of Welfare State Reform
10. The Experience Negotiated Reforms in the Dutch and German Welfare States
11. The Challenge of De-industrialisation: Divergent Ideological Responses to Welfare State Reform
12. Employment and the Welfare State: a Continental Dilemma
Part V: Conclusions
13. The Politics of Elective Affinities: a Commentary
14. Varieties of Welfare Capitalism; an Outlook on Future Directions of Research

Bernhard Ebbinghaus, Philip Manow