Karen M. Anderson received her PhD in political science from the University of Washington and is currently Universitaire Docent in the Public Administration Department at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her current research focuses on the political economy of welfare state reform in Europe as well as the role of the left in processes of welfare state restructuring. She has published several book chapters and articles on welfare state reform in Sweden, and her most recent work investigates the politics of pension reforms in Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.


Daniel Béland is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary. A political sociologist working on social policy from an historical and comparative perspective, he has published one book and more than fifteen peer-reviewed articles on welfare state politics in countries like Canada, China, France, and the United States. His most recent projects include a SSHRC-funded research on national identity and social policy (with André Lecours), a theoretical analysis of state protection in the context of globalization, and collaborative work on pension reform and on the public-private dichotomy in public policy


Paul Bernard is a professor of sociology at the Université de Montreal. Research and teaching on labour and social inequality, and on epistemology and methods. Recent work on contingent work, job quality, living arrangements of young people, family unemployment, social cohesion, and social indicators. Involved in policy making: member of the National Statistics Council of Canada, former Chair of the Research Data Centres National Coordination Committee, leader of the ESSIL project for the construction of a household panel survey with the Institut de la statistique du Québec.


Peter Dwyer is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Leeds, England UK. His research is centred on three main areas, social citizenship, welfare reform and migration and welfare. He has published a number of journal articles around these themes. His three books to date; Welfare Rights and Responsibilities: Contesting Social Citizenship (2000), Senior Citizenship? Retirement, Mobility and Welfare in the European Union (with L. Ackers, 2002) and Understanding Social Citizenship: Themes and Perspectives for Social Policy, (forthcoming May 2004) are all published by Policy Press in Bristol, UK.


In 2001, Jane Jenson was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Governance at the Université de Montréal, where she is professor of Political Science and Director of the Université de Montréal/McGill University Institute of European Studies. Since June 1999, she has been the Director of the Family Network of Canadian Policy Research Networks, Inc., a policy think tank located in Ottawa. She is also Editor of Lien social et Politiques, a social policy journal. Her work in recent years has focussed on social policy. She is the co-author of Who Cares? Women’s Work, Child Care and Welfare State Redesign (University of Toronto Press, 2001). For further information see www.cccg.umontreal.ca


John Myles is Canada Research Chair and Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and Visiting Research Scholar at Statistics Canada. His recent research has focused on themes related to income security and public policy in Europe and North America. With colleagues at Statistics Canada, he also has on ongoing program of research on topics related to income inequality and poverty.


Susan Prentice is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba. She works in the area of feminist sociology, focussing on family issues, public policy and social change. Her main area of research speciality is contemporary and historical childcare policy and advocacy. She also researches and writes about systemic discrimination and post-secondary education. Her most recent book is Changing Child Care: Five Decades of Child Care Policy and Advocacy in Canada (2001, Fernwood).


Sébastien St-Arnaud is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto. His current area of research is on the political sociology of subnational variations within Western welfare states. He recently co-authored 'Convergence or Resilience? A Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of the Welfare Regimes in Advanced Countries', Current Sociology, 2003 (Reprint in French in Sociologie et Sociétés, 2003).


François Vergniolle de Chantal holds a PhD. in political science from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. He is currently an Assistant Professor of American Studies (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon) and a Research Fellow for the CFE (Centre Français sur les Etats-Unis) at the IFRI (Institut Français des Relations Internationales) in Paris. His research interests are US federalism, US social policy, and, more recently, religion and politics in the United States. He coordinated the October 2003 issue of Critique Internationale (n°23) on “Federalism and Citizenship in Europe and the US.”