This Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of transformations of the state, from its origins in different parts of the world and different time periods to its transformations since World War II in the advanced industrial countries, the post-Communist world, and the Global South.

Leading experts in their fields, from Europe and North America, discuss conceptualizations and theories of the state and the transformations of the state in its engagement with a changing international environment as well as with changing domestic economic, social, and political challenges. The Handbook covers different types of states in the Global South (from failed to predatory, rentier and developmental), in different kinds of advanced industrial political economies (corporatist, statist, liberal, import substitution industrialization), and in various post-Communist countries (Russia, China, successor states to the USSR, and Eastern Europe). It also addresses crucial challenges in different areas of state intervention, from security to financial regulation, migration, welfare states, democratization and quality of democracy, ethno-nationalism, and human development.

The volume makes a compelling case that far from losing its relevance in the face of globalization, the state remains a key actor in all areas of social and economic life, changing its areas of intervention, its modes of operation, and its structures in adaption to new international and domestic challenges.

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Stephan Leibfried is a Research Professor at the University of Bremen and at Jacobs University Bremen, who often worked as visiting professor in the US and UK. At the University of Bremen he has co-founded the Center for Social Policy Research (1988), the Collaborative Research Center on Transformations of the State (2003-2014), the Bremen International Graduate School of the Social Sciences (2007 ff.), a joint school with Jacobs University. Evelyne Huber is Morehead Alumni Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studied at the University of Zurich and received her Ph.D. (1977) from Yale University. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bern in 2010. John D. Stephens is Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the Center for European Studies, European Union Center of Excellence at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. (1970) from Harvard University and his Ph.D. (1976) from Yale University. His main interests are comparative politics and political economy, with area foci on Europe, the Antipodes, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Frank Nullmeier is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bremen and Head of the Department "Theory and Constitution of the Welfare State" at the Centre for Social Policy Research (CeS), University of Bremen. His work focuses on welfare state theory, social policy and political theory. His most recent work examines the transformation of democratic legitimation. Matthew Lange is Associate Professor of Sociology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His work focuses on states, development, colonialism, and ethnic violence. Jonah D. Levy is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. He received his A.B. (1984) from Harvard University and his Ph.D. (1994) from MIT. His work focuses on state transformations, economic and social policy, and the politics of the affluent democracies, most notably France.

"This magnificent collection takes stock of what modern social science tells us about state transformations in a variety of periods, locales and levels. The editors have succeeded in the hardest of tasks, providing a robust framework that guides the essays of leading scholars. This Handbook is both a long-awaited, indispensable compendium and an enduring testimony to exceptional scholarship."

--Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies Cornell University