Small States in World Markets

Katzenstein maintains that democratic corporatism is an effective way of coping with a rapidly changing world—a more effective way than the United States and several other large industrial countries have yet managed to discover.

Peter J. Katzenstein is Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. His books include A World of Regions, Beyond Japan, and Cultural Norms and National Security, all from Cornell.

Even those who have reservations about the concept of 'liberal corporatism' and the approach of political economy will find that the framework is an instructive one for getting a comparative grip on what makes countries similar or different in how they grapple with a basic dimension of both sectoral and national economic viability.... Small States in World Markets is accessible and can constitute one component of even an undergraduate course on West European politics and policies.

Stephen D. Krasner, Department of Political Science, Stanford University:

Small States in World Markets is the best discussion I have seen of the complex relationship between state institutions and civil society in advanced industrial democracies. The 'democratic corporatism' of the small states of Europe, so elegantly analyzed by Katzenstein, may offer a model for larger countries increasingly enmeshed in the world economy. This study is a major contribution to our understanding of both comparative and international politics.