Americans lack a sense of the state for many understandable historical reasons. Yet the specific organizational forms that state activities have taken in the United States from the time of the Constitution to the present have profoundly affected the social cleavages that have gained political expression and influenced the sorts of public policies that governments have – and have not – implemented. As an alternative or supplement to theoretical perspectives emphasizing the causal primacy of industrialization, national values, or class politics, this state-society perspective can illuminate patterns of American social policy, from distributive social benefits in the nineteenth century to bifurcations between social insurance and public assistance since the New Deal. These American policy patterns are contrasted with the more comprehensive and nationally uniform policies characteristic of certain Western European welfare states.

In most economically developed societies at present there is an active debate about the implications of the growing proportion of their populations who are elderly. In most such countries the changing age structure is seen in almost entirely negative terms. This paper argues for a less pessimistic approach. The transition to an older population will be gradual enough to allow time to plan. The importance of the shift in the so-called ‘dependency ratio’ is exaggerated because ‘dependency’ is unsatisfactorily defined. Nor is there clear evidence that as more people live to be older health and social service costs will rise accordingly: people are remaining fit to later ages and there is strong evidence that they can continue to make a positive contribution to the economy as workers and as consumers until relatively late ages. Social services can also be redesigned to maximize the independence of the elderly while minimizing costs. Since the ageing of society is unavoidable we should seek ways to treat the elderly as a resource rather than viewing them as a burden.

The paper looks at the outcomes of nuclear technology policies in five advanced Western industrialised countries which have developed major nuclear construction industries. The genesis, development and dissemination of thermal nuclear reactors is examined and found to be influenced by a range of non-technical factors. Various concepts of ‘political styles’ are explored. Different styles of technological development are identified with reference to the networks of actors relevant to the development of thermal reactor technology, taking particular account of the resources of different actors and their interrelationship. Three distinctive styles are found, associated with three different technological outcomes, two of which are associated with policy success. We conclude that political styles do make a difference, but that their applicability to the explanation of outcomes of technology policy is dependent on the resources of individual actors and the specific demands set by the technological, economic and political context.

Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser's ‘An Economic Theory of Alliances’ has been described as ‘the best known application of the theory’ of collective (or public) goods. In that article, Olson and Zeckhauser advanced the claim that America's Western European Allies (and by implication, Japan as well) are all, more or less, ‘free riders.’ Yet, more than twenty years later, the meaning of this claim remains very much in doubt. This article outlines Olson and Zeckhauser's basic argument and conclusions and the evidence against their argument; explains how application of the ‘free rider’ thesis to the problem of collective security can be revised in the light of contemporary thinking about the provision of collective goods; presents some preliminary tests of this formulation; and suggests a few of the implications of this analysis for the formulation of United States defense policy.