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. The authors seek to integrate a historical examination of individual case studies with the structural analysis that emerges from a comparative approach. In so doing they produced an authoritative statement on the developments and dilemmas of central areas of public life in the modern state.