Governing Social Risks in Post-Crisis Europe

How can a capitalist system reconcile its need to combine workers on uncertain incomes and conditions with consumers confident that they can spend? The approaches of different national economies to this conundrum have had varying degrees of success, as well as diverse implications for social inequality. Through the study of European societies, and comparisons with experience from the rest of the world, Colin Crouch scrutinizes this diversity, and looks at how the 2008 global financial crisis has impacted it.

Crouch identifies three broad approaches that countries adopt in response to this central dilemma of a capitalist economy, and examines these across three different contexts: time, place, and the role of inclusion and exclusion. This primarily statistical study embraces all except the smallest European countries, with comparative material on Japan, Russia and the United States. Countries are grouped according to differences found in them in the roles of governance by market, state, and community.

This important book will appeal to academics, policy makers and others interested in comparative employment relations, European political economy and social policy. Undergraduate and postgraduate students alike will also find this a compelling, jargon-free insight into social policy and the 2008 global financial crisis in Europe.

Colin Crouch, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, UK, Fellow of the British Academy and External Scientific Member, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany