In The Story of Scandinavia, political scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European p...

Van de Vikingen tot de sociaaldemocratie: de geschiedenis van ScandinaviëHet Scandinavië zoals we dat nu kennen is een recente uitvinding. Voor een groot gedeelte van de geschiedenis waren Denemarken en Zweden, en in zekere mate ook Noorwegen, namelijk aartsvijanden. Die sentimenten zijn nog steeds voelbaar onder de bevolking van de verschillende landen. Onder het oppervlak van samenwerking, veiligheid, gezondheid, welvaart en beschaving schuilt nog altijd een verleden van haat, ...

Times have not been kind to democracy. This book is in its defense.In the new century, the triumph of democracy at the end of the Cold War turned to retrenchment. The core democracies, in America and Britain, succumbed to polarization and misrule. Dictatorships, such as China, made themselves assertive. New democracies in Central Europe turned to muddled ideologies of "illiberal democracy." In this book, Stein Ringen offers a meditation on what democracy is, the cha...

In this provocative book, Stein Ringen argues that the world's democracies are failing to live up to their ideals--the United States and Great Britain most especially. The core value of democracy, he contends, is freedom, the freedom to live a good life according to one's own choosing. Yet he shows that democracy's freedom is on the decline. Citizens are increasingly distrustful of political systems weighted by money, and they don't participate in political affairs as they once did. Ringen...

In The Story of Scandinavia, political scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European p...

Modern families are economic institutions of great productivity. They contribute as much to a society's economic well-being as does worker productivity in formal markets. In Citizens, Families, and Reform, Stein Ringen shows how long-standing inequalities of income and class are flexible and changing in post-industrial societies. Such inequalities respond to structural changes such as social mobility and to public policies such as those of the welfare state. His book is a study of...

The Possibility of Politics explores the power of political reform, specifically reform of the modern welfare state. Can reform be effective if limited to cautious and piecemeal interventions that avoid radicalism and revolution? Can it also avoid unwanted consequences? Will the welfare state survive in the future?Stein Ringen views the welfare state as a large-scale experiment in political reform. To ask if the welfare state works is to ask if political reform is possible at all. By its n...

Oxford University political theorist Stein Ringen offers a thought-provoking meditation on the art of democratic rule: how does a government persuade the people to accept its authority? Every government must make unpopular demands of its citizens, from levying taxes to enforcing laws and monitoring compliance to regulations. The challenge, Ringen argues, is that power is not enough; the populace must also be willing to be led. Ringen addresses this political conundrum unabashedly, using th...

First published in 1999, this volume is the fifth in a series on international studies of issues in social security. The series is initiated by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS). One of its aims is to confront different academic approaches with each other, and with public policy perspectives. Another is to give analytic reports of cross-nationally different approaches to the design and reform of welfare state programs.

Discusses important aspects of the development of the welfare state in the Scandinavian countries and Iceland since the mid-1970s. It focuses on societal changes during a period of modest economic growth. Topics include labour market benefits, education and social mobility, class and inequality, income distribution and trajectories and health.

Michelangelo Buonarroti war mehr als ein Bildhauer, Maler und Architekt – er war ein Mensch, der im Stein das Göttliche suchte. Dieses Buch folgt seinem lebenslangen Streben nach Vollkommenheit, seinem Glauben an die schöpferische Kraft des Menschen und seinem inneren Konflikt zwischen göttlicher Berufung und irdischer Last. Von der David-Statue bis zur Sixtinischen Kapelle, von Florenz bis Rom, entfaltet Michelangelo und die Sprache des Steins die Geschichte eines Genies, das die Kunst de...