This course examines the comparative politics of several industrial societies by looking at how these countries have responded to economic crises and serious threats to their prosperity and stability. The focus is on three major economic powers in Western Europe Germany, Britain, and France as well as the United States. (Somewhat less attention is paid to the U.S. in recent decades.) Occasionally, a small country like Sweden will be drawn into the comparison when its policies, institutions, and social arrangements carry a significance out of proportion to that countrys size. This constellation four big trans-Atlantic countries plus a small Scandinavian welfare state has also been chosen for a more timely reason: The two Anglo-American and the two Continental European countries have lately been on opposite sides (though sometimes also on the same side) of disputes about how to recover from the current economic crisis and how to reform financial markets. The three big European countries (two of which are members of the European Monetary Union, one of which is not) are also cooperating and quarrelling with each other on these issues within the framework of the European Union, whose rotating Presidency is chaired by Sweden through the rest of 2009.
