Leviathan Transformed : Seven National States in the New Century - Volume 9

This work is based on the premise that a national state is a particular type of organization and, at any given time and like any other organization, its performance can be evaluated with reasonable objectivity.

The authors, an international team of social scientists, examine the performance of seven states: Bulgaria, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

These nations pursue similar goals - union, justice, tranquillity, defence, welfare, liberty - which, in one form or another, are common to all democracies.

Using these goals as a checklist, the authors found that each of the seven states performs well in some areas and badly in others.

They discovered that all states approached these goals in a style shaped by their own history and, in particular, by how they have been affected by the troubles of the 20th century.

Their investigations offer an informative way of looking at these nation states and detail the social and political conditions in each state.