This book is intended to be an analog of sorts to Theda Skocpol's edited volume Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. The format is entirely different in that we organize it around method rather than author, focus it as much on specific policy theories as on general visions, and target it as much on methodological techniques as on designs. Yet the intent is the same – to introduce a broad range of methodological approaches to the comparative social sciences. In keeping with Charles Ragin's concept of synthetic analysis, we see this volume joining together an ample range of comparative, quantitative, and, indeed, historical methods. A mesh of methods enriches a field. We hope that our net is tight and broad enough to gather a rich new catch of insights about the welfare state.

This book began in the planning of a Southern Sociological Society session and then reached fruition in the “New Compass of the Comparativist” conference held at Duke University in 1991. Three sources in Durham, New York, and Washington, D.C., provided approximately equal funding to finance the conference on which this book is largely based. First, we would like to thank Edward Tiryakian, Director of the Center for International Studies at Duke University, for providing the seed funding that started the ball rolling on this project. Without his help, this project would probably not have gotten off the ground. Second, we would also like to thank Dr. Ioannis Sinanoglou and the Council for European Studies for their Western European Studies Workshop Grant.