National Politics and Global Ideas? Welfare, Work and Legitimacy in Norway and the United States

This paper is a discussion of the link between national welfare debates at the one hand and theories of globalisation at the other. Briefly, one can assume that by analysing how different arrangements are being discussed in different political contexts one is also able to «unveil» deep-rooted values in these contexts. What then when, apparently, ideas and arguments over social policy increasingly are travelling among welfare states, despite their belongings to different «regimes»? How is this travelling to be explained, does it influence nation states´ policy and autonomy and does it affect traditional typologies. My argument goes that a critical approach to theories of globalisation and internationalisation as well as the concepts in general, can offer ways to understand and interpret such travelling. Still it is important to note that despite being common; ideas can be transformed into quite different arrangements. This variation is to a great extent to be explained by (national) differences in political cultures and structures, and this dual process of the cross-national at the one hand and the national at the other, requires special consideration in further analyses