The authors, using these goals as a checklist, found that each of the seven states performs well in some areas and badly in others. They discovered that all states approached these goals in a style shaped by their own history and, in particular, by how they have been affected by the troubles of the twentieth century. Their investigations offer a new, informative way of looking at these nation states and detail the social and political conditions in each state. Contributors include Theodore Caplow, Salustiano Del Campo (Royal Academy of Political and Social Science, Madrid), Nikolai Genov (Bulgaria Academy of Sciences), Karl-Otto Hondrich (Goethe University), Simon Langlois (Université de Laval), Alberto Martinelli (University of Milan), and Henri Mendras (OFCE, Paris).

Soc, U of Virginia

Theodore Caplow's profile page

"A penetrating, provocative analysis of transformations grounded in seven very informed and highly contextualized descriptions of the transformations in question ... Caplow lays out some rather remarkable insights about what has changed in the second half of the twentieth century and the essay by Langlois is excellent." Gary Caldwell, Independent Scholar "A very interesting contribution to the field of social reporting ... it is a fresh and uncomplicated step toward portraying whole societies and comparing them by the use of basic constitutional values." Wolfgang Glatzer, Department of Social Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main