Corruption, crime, economic inequality, religious fundamentalism, financial crises, environmental degradation, population ageing, gender inequality, large-scale migration... This book tackles many of the most pressing problems facing societies today. The authors demonstrate that similar social mechanisms lie behind many of these seemingly disparate problems. Indeed, many societal problems can be traced back to behaviours that are perfectly rational and often well-intended from an individual perspective. Yet, taken together these behaviours can – paradoxically – give rise to unintended and undesirable outcomes at the society level. In addition to addressing the causes of societal problems, the book explains why some problems rank higher on the public agenda than others. Moreover, it is shown how government intervention may sometimes provide a cure, yet other times exacerbate existing problems or create new problems of its own. This book includes an extensive amount of data on trends and geographic variation in the prevalence of different problems, as well as telling examples – both recent and historical – from a variety of countries to support its key arguments. Employing a bold multidisciplinary approach, the authors draw on insights from across the social sciences, including sociology, economics, anthropology, criminology, and psychology. Throughout the book, students are introduced to analytical concepts such as free-riding, herding behaviour, principal-agent relations and moral hazard. These concepts are essential tools for better understanding the roots of many societal problems that regularly make headlines in the news. This improved understanding will, in turn, be critical for ultimately finding solutions to these problems.

A major question for liberal politics and liberal political theory concerns the proper scope of government. Liberalism has always favored limited government, but there has been wide-ranging dispute among liberals about just how extensive the scope of government should be. Included in this dispute are questions about the extent of state ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth and income through the tax code and transfer programs, and the extent of government regulation. One of N. Scott Arnold's goals is to give an accurate characterization of both modern liberalism and classical liberalism, explaining along the way why libertarianism is not the only form that classical liberalism can take. The main focus of Arnold's book, however, concerns regulation--specifically, the modern liberal regulatory agenda as it has taken shape in contemporary American society. This is the set of regulatory regimes favored by all modern liberals and opposed by all classical liberals. It includes contemporary employment law in all its manifestations, health and safety regulation, and land use regulation. The heart of the book consists of a systematic evaluation of arguments for and against all the items on this agenda. It turns out that there are good arguments on both sides for most of these regulatory regimes. Because of this, and because someone's vision of the proper scope of government will ultimately prevail, some procedural requirements that all liberals could agree to must be satisfied for one side to impose legitimately its values on the polity at large. These procedural requirements are identified, argued for, and then applied to the elements of the modern liberal regulatory agenda. Arnold argues that many, though not all, of these elements have been illegitimately imposed on American society.

22 out of the 26 Chapters will be available Open Access on Elgaronline when the book is published. The Handbook of Sociological Science offers a refreshing, integrated perspective on research programs and ongoing developments in sociological science. It highlights key shared theoretical and methodological features, thereby contributing to progress and cumulative growth of sociological knowledge.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Deviance is by definition a social problem. Since deviant behavior violates the normative expectations of a given group, deviance must be regarded as a problem for that group, since all groups of people want their norms to be enforced. Many modern societies place considerable value on personal liberty, so much so that interference with personal choices to deviate from group norms can be justified only in terms of the potential damage that particular kinds of behavior might do to the legitimate interests of others. Sociological research suggests that the social problem associated with deviance is often the behavior of individuals who violate norms cannot be justified in terms of basic values of liberty, social order, or justice. In other kinds of deviance, though, the social problem is that people or, in a more organized way, social institutions, interfere with individual liberty and self-realization. Each selection in this volume has been chosen to cover a full range of substantive problematic issues, a range of social science perspectives that can be brought to bear on issues of all kinds, and a range of social science methodologies used in studying modern society. Deviance and Liberty is divided up into thirty-nine contributions and five main parts ranging from "Modern Perspectives on Deviance and Social Problems"; "Deviant Exchanges: Gambling, Drugs, and Sex"; "Deviant Personal Control: Illness, Violence, and Crime; Deviance, Identity, and the Life Cycle"; and "Moral Enterprise and Moral Enforcement". It is a welcome addition to the libraries of those interested in the study of deviance or society as a whole.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Awareness of the need to deepen the method and methodology of legal research is only recent. The same is true for comparative law, by nature a more adventurous branch of legal research, which is often something researchers simply do, whenever they look at foreign legal systems to answer one or more of a range of questions about law, whether these questions are doctrinal, economic, sociological, etc. Given the diversity of comparative research projects, the precise contours of the methods employed, or the epistemological issues raised by them, are to a great extent a function of the nature of the research questions asked. As a result, the search for a unique, one-size-fits-all comparative law methodology is unlikely to be fruitful. That however does not make reflection on the method and culture of comparative law meaningless. Mark Van Hoecke has, throughout his career, been interested in many topics, but legal theory, comparative law and methodology of law stand out. Building upon his work, this book brings together a group of leading authors working at the crossroads of these themes: the method and culture of comparative law. With contributions by: Maurice Adams, John Bell, Joxerramon Bengoetxea, Roger Brownsword, Seán Patrick Donlan, Rob van Gestel and Hans Micklitz, Patrick Glenn, Jaap Hage, Dirk Heirbaut, Jaakko Husa, Souichirou Kozuka and Luke Nottage, Martin Löhnig, Susan Millns, Toon Moonen, Francois Ost, Heikki Pihlajamäki, Geoffrey Samuel, Mathias Siems, Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde, Catherine Valcke and Matthew Grellette, Alain Wijffels.

In the history of science "paradoxes" are not only amusing puzzles and chal lenges to the human mind but also driving forces of scientific development. The notion of "paradox" is intimately related to the notion of "contradiction". Logi cal paradoxes allow for the derivation of contradictory propositions (e.g. "Rus sell's set of all sets not being members of themselves" or the ancient problem with propositions like "I am lying" 1), normative paradoxes deal with contradic tions among equally well accepted normative postulates (Arrow's "impossibility theorem", Sen's "Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal") and "factual" paradoxes refer to conflicts between conventional opinion based on an accepted empirical theory and contradictory empirical evidence (e.g. the "St. Petersburg paradox" or the "Allais paradox" in decision theory2). Paradoxes, either logical, normative or factual, also contradict our intui tions. The counter-intuitive property which seems to be a common feature of all paradoxes plays an important part in the empirical social sciences, particularly in the old research tradition of scrutinizing the unintended consequences of pur posive actions. Expectations based on naive theories ignoring interdependencies between individual actions are very often in conflict with "surprising" empirical evidence on collective results of social behavior. Examples are numerous reach ing from panic situations, the individual struggle for status gains resulting in collective deprivation, the less than optimal supply of collective goods etc. to global problems of the armament race and mismanagement of common resources.

Written from a distinctly Canadian point of view, Understanding Social Problems, Fourth Canadian Edition, examines how the structure and culture of societies contribute to social problems and their consequences. This text has strong pedagogical features and is comprehensive in its coverage, progressing from micro to macro levels of analysis. It focuses first on problems of health care, drug use, and crime, and then broadens to the widening concerns of population, health and welfare, science and technology, large-scale inequality and environmental problems. Known for its inclusive approach, Understanding Social Problems, Fourth Canadian Edition, explores powerful stories of real life people struggling with the challenges society and its problems have thrust upon them.