Columbia Global Centers - Paris, in partnership with Columbia University Press  and Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po will host a book presentation for Democracy and the Welfare State: The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity, edited by CSSD project director Alice Kessler-Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna. 

After World War II, states on both sides of the Atlantic enacted comprehensive social benefits to protect working people and constrain capitalism. A widely shared consensus specifically linked social welfare to democratic citizenship, upholding greater equality as the glue that held nations together. Though the "two Wests," Europe and the United States, differ in crucial respects, they share a common history of social rights, democratic participation, and welfare capitalism. But in a new age of global inequality, welfare-state retrenchment, and economic austerity, can capitalism and democracy still coexist?

Panelists:  

Nicolas Delalande (Sciences Po, Paris) 

Christian Lammert (Free University of Berlin)

Vincent Michelot (University of Lyon2)

Birte Siim (University of Aarlborg)

Mario Del Pero (SciencesPo,Paris)

Comments by the editors: Alice Kessler Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna

Reception to follow

“Democracy and the Welfare State: The Two Wests in the Age of Austerity,” is edited by Alice Kessler-Harris, project director for CSSD working group Social Justice After the Welfare State. The research of CSSD working group Social Justice After the Welfare State inspired the creation of this book.

This event will be held at the Columbia Global Centers - Paris
Columbia Global Centers l Paris
4,Rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris