Students will be equipped with skills necessary for advanced research of welfare systems:

The class focuses on the crucial interface between theory-building and concept formation on the one hand and comparative empirical inquiry of welfare state development on the other. In doing so, it addresses the following questions:
•How have comparative welfare state researchers conceptualized variation among European welfare state?*
•What are the main explanatory approaches accounting for this variation?*
•How have comparative welfare state researchers produced theoretical and empirical knowledge about the various European welfare states; how have they arrived at generalization about welfare state development?
•What is the rationale of theory-building, concept-formation and empirical inquiry in the following variants of comparative welfare state research:
a.Comparative case studies of countries and national “models”, “regimes”, or “varieties”
b.Overarching trends of welfare state development in large-n studies of the long-term development of OECD-countries’ welfare states
c.In depth inquiry in institutional and political dynamics in single-case studies of countries and policy fields in countries
d.Theory and research below the nation state: Comparisons across policy fields, regions, or instances of major social reform
e.Galton’s problem and globalization: How can one study international interconnectedness?
f.Temporality in the study of comparative welfare state development: studying institutional change as path dependent development or through comparisons across time

* These two questions will be addressed in merely a short recap-session, as they are also subject of the course "C2 Theories of Welfare States - Extension Module"

Introduction during the COSOPO Intensive Programme in Tampere; then independent study, using methods of distance learning: Students will read examples of the different kinds of comparative inquiry and interrogate the theory-empirics-interface in each of them. Preparation of a seminar paper.

Only for students of the Cosopo master's programme.