Statecraft and Liberal Reform in Advanced Democracies

Nils Karlson is Founding President and CEO of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm and Associate Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden.

“From an in-depth comparison between the Swedish experience and the Australian one - another success story of reform – the author develops the best theory yet on how to understand – and pursue - reforms.” (Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, martenscentre.eu, February, 2018)“Karlson provides a lucid inventory of the barriers to reforming the welfare state, all of which will be familiar to public-choice economists. … Karlson has written a fine book, one that needed to be written. He has traveled far toward understanding how liberal reforms happen and thus how they might happen again.” (John Samples, Cato Journal, Vol. 38 (2), 2018)“Nils Karlson makes an important contribution to the economics of institutions by providing stimulating theoretical insights and two interesting case studies. … this is a thought-provoking book, which I recommend to a wide audience of readers – including non-economists – and which opens new research agendas in at least three different respects.” (Enrico Colombatto, The European Journal of Comparative Economics EJCEm, Vol. 15 (01), 2018)

• 1: Introduction.- 2: Barriers to Reform.- 3: Two Reform Countries.- 4: Explaining Institutional Change.- 5: Reform Cycles and Reform Strategies.- 6: The Swedish Reform Process.- 7: The Australian Reform Process.- 8: Modern Statecraft.- 9: Summary and Conclusions.