Herbert Obinger is Professor of Comparative Public and Social Policy, University of Bremen. His research focuses on comparative welfare state research and comparative political economy. His publications include The Political Economy of Privatization in Rich Democracies (with Carina Schmidtt and Stefan Traub, OUP, 2016), The Welfare State as Crisis Manager (with Peter Starke, Alexandra Kaasch, and Franca van Hooren, Palgrave 2013), and The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (co-edited with Francis G. Castles, Jane Lewis, Stephan, Leibfried, , and Christopher Pierson, OUP, 2010).
Klaus Petersen is Professor of Welfare History and Director of the Danish Centre for Welfare Studies, University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses on welfare state history, the Nordic model of welfare, and on contemporary Danish history. He has published in a number of leading journals including Journal of European Social Policy and the British Journal of Political Science.
Peter Starke is Associate Professor at the Danish Center for Welfare Studies, University of Southern Denmark. His research is in comparative welfare state research, qualitative and mixed methodology and political economy. His publications include Radical Welfare State Retrenchment (2008) and The Welfare State as Crisis Manager (2013), as well as articles in journals such as Policy Studies Journal, the Journal of European Public Policy, and Politics & Society.