Preface.

This section presents the preface of the book Survival of the European Welfare State, edited Stein Kuhnle. Contributions to this book are mainly based on papers especially prepared for the roundtable in Bergen in September 1997. Chapters 8 and 12 are revised versions of papers first presented at a panel on Rethinking the Welfare State that the editor convened during the World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in August 1997. Chapter 7 was later commissioned to achieve a more balanced coverage of empirical developments in all the four major types of (West) European welfare states during the 1990s. The contributions in this book embody a range of views and interpretations of recent and current developments of national welfare states in Europe, but analyses of crises, challenges, successful reforms and unsuccessful reform efforts all relate to the survival-thesis. The aim of the book is to provide a more informed empirical basis for interpretations of welfare state development in a historical and comparative perspective, and thus also a better basis for theorising about the European welfare states. The book would not have been possible without support of various kinds.