Growing Apart?: America and Europe in the 21st Century

Sven Steinmo

Nov 2007 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Many thought the 21st century would witness political, economic and even ideological convergence amongst the countries of the West. This has not happened. Today we see America 'growing apart' from her democratic allies and neighbors. Growing Apart shows how the social, political, and economic forces shaping advanced democratic states are pushing America in different directions from the rest of the democratic world and argues that these changes are not the product of any particular president or government. This volume brings together a set of leading scholars who each examine the evolution of different social, political, and economic forces shaping Europe and America. It is the first book to unite the international relations scholarship on transatlantic relations with the comparative politics literature on the varieties of capitalism. Taken together, the essays in this volume address whether the 'West' will continue to remain a coherent entity in the 21st century.

About the author

Jeffrey Kopstein is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany 1945–1989, and coeditor of Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in a Changing Global Order.

Professor Sven Steinmo holds the Chair in Public Policy and Political Economy at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. He is also a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an Honorary Professor at Odense University, Denmark. His writing includes Taxation and Democracy (Winner, 1994 Best Book Prize, Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association), Structuring Politics (coedited with Kathleen Thelen), and Political Evolution and Policy Change (coedited with Bo Rothstein).