Lessons from Europe?: What Americans can Learn from European Public Policies

What can American policymakers learn from the experiences of European democracies in confronting our common policy challenges? We can look to our own history and to the ideas emanating from our own public sphere, but by looking abroad, we can learn how our European allies have dealt with such issues as rising healthcare and pension costs, large-scale immigration, childcare and work-life balance, and climate change. Simply put, we can learn lessons from European policies that have proven both successful and from approaches that have failed. The contributors in this volume ask whether such policies might prove effective in the U.S. context, as well as what pitfalls we might avoid. Chapters have been written by policy area experts and are geared for an upper-level undergraduate audience and set up as a series of engaging case studies. At just 180 pages, this is an ideal supplemental volume for comparative public policy courses and would add an ideal comparative component to upper-level U.S. public policy courses.