Includes bibliography and index.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction -- Welfare state expansion and retrenchment -- The argument of this book -- Comparative strategy -- The Luxembourg Income Study -- The structure of the book -- X Political parties, games and income redistribution -- Traditional redistributive games: median voter, political business cycle -- and partisan model -- Advances in the theory of party politics -- Party goals: trade-offs and priorities -- Party competition: arithmetical particularism and Director's Law -- Party organisation: pivotal players, strategic disagreement, sequential -- elections and correlated strategies -- Conclusion: political slack and redistributive policies -- 2 Opposition effects, blackmail and u-turns under -- Pierre Elliot Trudeau -- Political background -- Social deavages and redistribution -- Electoral incentives for redistribution -- The New Liberals and expansionary policies -- Why the guaranteed annual income proposal failed -- The NDP challenge and the 1971 unemployment scheme -- The blackmail game -- The u-turn -- Income inequality: demography, markets and income transfers -- Conclusions -- 3 The arithmetics of politics under Margaret Thatcher -- Political background -- Electoral incentives for redistribution -- Explicit games and the antiegalitarian crusade -- Sequential elections -- Breaking the internal alliance on social security policies -- Income inequality: demography, markets and income transfers -- Conclusions -- 4 Right-wing ascendency, pivotal players and asymmetric -- power under Bob Hawke -- Political background -- Electoral incentives for redistribution -- Political renewal shapes social policies -- The Centre-Left as a pivotal player in redistributive games -- Two-stage game over redistributive policies -- The acquiescence of trade unions: consensus or imbalance? -- Asymmetric bargaining and social security reforms -- Income inequality: demography, markets and transfer policies -- Conclusions -- 5 The demise of the federal social safety net under Clinton -- Political background -- The evolution of policies towards low-income groups: electoral and -- institutional determinants -- Strategic disagreement and the stalemate of welfare reform, 1992-I994 -- The Paternalistic-Deterrence game -- 'Deserving and undeserving poor' -- Conclusions -- 6 Conclusions -- Comparative analysis -- The redistributive logic in liberal democracies -- Distributive elites, institutional context and opposition effects -- Comparing redistributive games -- Reassessing the party-policy link -- The future of redistribution -- Technical addendum -- Bibliography -- Index.