This book looks at the public policy profiles of eight advanced capitalist states and asks what makes them distinctive. The volume also examines national policies comparatively by exploring the extent to which each nation fits into patterns established in cross-national literature.

Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Puzzles of Political Economy (Francis G Castles) 2. Social Protection by Other Means: Australia's Strategy of Coping With External Vulnerability (Francis G Castles) 3. Learning from Catastrophes: West Germany's Public Policy (Manfred G Schmidt) 4. The Comparative History of Public Policy in Israel (Michael Shalev) 5. `Pillarisation' and `Popular Movements' Two Variants of Welfare State Capitalism: The Netherlands and Sweden (Gordan Therborn) 6. Japan's Creative Conservatism: Continuity Under Challenge (T J Pempel) 7. The United Kingdom: Paradoxes of an Ungrounded Statism (Patrick Dunleavy) 8. Taking Exception: Explaining the Distinctiveness of American Public Policies in The Past Century (Edwin Amenta and Theda Skopol) Notes on Contributors.