This chapter compares the development of pension regimes in Sweden and Denmark to demonstrate how variable political and economic constraints shaped social democratic policy choices. Social democratic parties in both countries have tried to pursue broadly similar policy strategies (tax-financed basic pensions; state-run, earnings-related pensions with publicly controlled pension funds). Swedish social democrats prevailed, at least for several decades, while their Danish counterparts turned to collective bargaining to pursue worker influence on the investment of pension capital when the legislative route was blocked. These trajectories demonstrate the role of learning and compromise by social democratic parties. In neither country were social democrats able to achieve a parliamentary majority, so legislative success required bargaining with other parties and with their trade union allies. Moreover, social democratic parties faced dilemmas concerning unanticipated pension policy legacies. Swedish social democrats had to compromise with other parties in the 1998 reform to address weaknesses in the ATP pension system. Danish social democrats faced tougher electoral constraints and have been unable to match the electoral performance of their Swedish counterparts. With the legislative route closed off, Danish social democrats lined up behind capital-funded, earnings-related pension solution based on collective bargaining.

The chronicle of European social democracy is often told from the perspective of the party leader. If the party triumphs at the polls, it is surely because the leader is a visionary. If, on the other hand, the party loses elections, weak leaders are held responsible for that misfortune. Clearly, leadership matters but perhaps not in the top-down manner it used to. Drawing on the literature on political leadership and the Europeanisation of public policy, this chapter argues that the collaborative approach to statecraft deployed by the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa in the period 2015–2019 paved the way for a period of political stability and electoral victory of the Socialist Party. Using the method of process-tracing to analyse official documents, parliamentary debates, and media reports, the chapter shows that collaborative statecraft enabled Costa to get four budgets approved, to complete a four-year mandate while leading a minority government, and to win the elections of 2019. The chapter also shows that the abandonment of collaborative statecraft in the period 2019–2023 resulted in greater political uncertainty and contributed to the socialists’ defeat at the 2024 elections.

This chapter explores the friendship practices of midlife men and women in long-term couple relationships in the UK. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eighteen adults aged forty to fifty-nine, it examines how friendship is shaped by, and often subordinated to, the couple norm, an ideal that centers monogamous, cohabiting relationships. Although friendship is increasingly celebrated in cultural discourse, it remains routinely deprioritized in midlife. Friends offer emotional support, companionship, and moral guidance, yet their contributions are often undervalued or constrained by normative expectations. At times, emotionally significant friendships were perceived as disruptive to the primacy of the couple bond. The contemporary ideal of friendship as autonomous, equal, and elective, sits uneasily alongside the institutional authority of coupledom. This chapter argues that friendship and couple relationships are not discrete domains but are relationally entangled. By tracing how intimacy is organized through these entanglements, it calls for a critical rethinking of friendship’s role in contemporary personal life.

This chapter focuses on a family story. Ivete’s family life guides us through a world where migration from Salvador meets hunger and the struggle for protection and social mobility in São Paulo. After following her family for fourteen years, the author shows how disjunctive patterns of understanding ‘crime’ and ‘work’ differ within the family as time has passed. Second and third generations split the family into two different social ascension projects: one where children work legally, and the other where the world of crime is seeing as a possibility. Capoeira, hairdressing and private security meet drug trafficking, robbery and incarceration at home. Money and violent deaths appear after some years of clash and association between brothers and sisters.

Chapter 1 outlines the various constraints on Obama – the separation of powers/constitutional constraints, the size and scope of the federal government bureaucracy, the ‘opportunity costs’ of presidential actions/initiatives and public opinion. A theory is advanced with three considerations that President Obama had to take into account as he crafted his agenda. Those insights will help to frame the discussion of the rest of the book and help to put the Obama record— and black voter reaction to that record— into context. It introduces a normative theory of race and presidential representation and synthesises the presidential power and ‘deracialisation literatures’ to make the claim that presidents are structurally constrained in their ability to address a host of issues of concern to blacks. As a result, they tend to address issues of race symbolically. Barack Obama, as the first black president and a black politician who rose to power by using deracialisation, or a more race-neutral campaign strategy, will be particularly susceptible to resorting to more symbolic means of racial representation.This theory is then tested by examining both the racially substantive policies that have been implemented by the Obama Administration and by charting key indicators of black well-being relative to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

This chapter presents the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in São Paulo. This criminal group rose to the position of legitimate normative regime among a minor but relevant part of the residents of the city outskirts. Mapping alternative ‘courts’ performed by criminals in São Paulo, in three different levels of conflict, including a ‘debate’ via cell phone conference in seven of São Paulo’s prisons, the chapter argues that these mechanisms are central factors explaining the drop in homicide rates in São Paulo during the 2000s. Claimed publicly by the state’s government and military police, these courts themselves became important sources of legitimacy for the PCC’s expansion in Brazil.

This chapter explores the first defining moment in Mancunian football, the 1904 FA Cup success, and its impact on the city’s footballing culture, considering how Manchester’s footballing identity became established during this period. Manchester City established a successful sporting heritage for the city at a time when those connected with Newton Heath recognised the significance of utilising the Manchester name. The identity of Manchester’s football clubs became fixed at this time as Newton Heath became Manchester United. Success helped to establish civic pride and marked a turning point in the way the game was viewed locally and, as a result, Manchester started the process of becoming established as a major centre for the game at all levels. Manchester became a footballing city.

The growth of football in Manchester saw clubs such as Manchester Football Club, the ‘absolute pioneers’ of rugby in the region, established in 1860, with several other clubs also being founded, mostly in the then wealthier residential areas of the conurbation, such as Broughton, Didsbury, Sale, Whalley Range and Old Trafford. The prominent members of these clubs appear to have been from the upper class or from respected middle-class occupations, and many were former public school boys. The major focus of this chapter is a detailed analysis of Hulme Athenaeum and its development as an association football club. This informs a discussion on the influence of class, public schools and communities on the propagation of the sport. When considering longue durée thinking, it is evident that Hulme Athenaeum’s influence was felt from 1863 through to the establishment of the Manchester County Football Association in the mid-1880s and on to the professional game. Manchester’s first trophy successes came at a time when John Nall, Hulme’s first football secretary in 1863, was still an active member of the conurbation’s footballing community.