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This critique of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century summarizes and comments on the main tenets of the author’s principal theory. The author's aim is to point out the book’s contributions to a critical debate around social and economic issues, while giving special emphasis to its theoretical and epistemological relevance for management science.

Based on a careful reading of the book, in the original French and English translation versions, the author explores Piketty’s arguments and proposals and attempts to place his “scholarly discourse” in relation to Marx’s “worldview” as well as the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

The book’s potential impact over the long run is extremely high, ostensibly enough to make it as important as Marx’s work, but relying on a decidedly different method and philosophy. The author also considers the strong complementariness between this work and that of Pierre Rosanvallon in the field of political science. Some similarities with Fukuyama’s approach are also considered, but on a much lesser note.

The question of unemployment, which is given little attention in Piketty’s work, is not addressed here.

In contrast with Piketty’s book, this paper intends to find social application only within the microcosm of the scholarly community.

The author hopes to draw a link between the book’s contribution to economic thinking and its philosophical underpinnings, that is by presenting a reading that is both a positivist assessment and an attempt to decipher underlying assumptions.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature on the policy impact of ideas and related cultural and discursive processes by exploring the historical embeddedness of the idea of solidarity in French social policy debates.

This paper adopts a qualitative, historical approach that traces the development of – and the relationship between – policy ideas and social programs over time.

First, exploring the work of reformer and politician Léon Bourgeois, the paper investigates the emergence of this concept in nineteenth and early twentieth century France. Second, analyzing the work of centrist scholar and intellectual Pierre Rosanvallon, the paper studies the French debate on solidarity and welfare state reform in the late 1980s and 1990s.

At the broadest level, this paper shows that contemporary social policy debates are grounded in long‐term historical as well as cultural processes and repertoires. Policy ideas that acquire the status of culturally resonant “keywords” can have a long history, and tracing their development is necessary to illuminate the role of ideas in contemporary social policy change.

This chapter enquires into the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its narrative of the nation under attack. For two reasons, the AfD is a particular interesting case. Since its foundation in February 2013 the AfD was constantly extraordinarily successful in state, federal as well as European elections. The support garnered in their first elections is without precedent in German post-war history. What is more, no other populist party ever gained a similar backing in Germany. In contrast to other European countries, political culture in Germany for a long time entailed an anti-populist consensus which significantly curbed the outlook of populist parties. The rise of the AfD maybe indicates the erosion of this consensus. The chapter is based on the systematic analysis of all official party documents 2013/14.

Social scientists continue to invest a great deal of effort in constructing superior measures of democracy without arriving at any consensus. Reflections on this state of affairs frequently refer to an essay of more than a half-century ago in which the philosopher W. B. Gallie analyzed the characteristics of what he called “essentially contested concepts.” Gallie’s account of the properties of these concepts, however, is inadequate. It looks more promising to explore the contestants and the contests and especially the dynamic roles played by social movements in the history of democracy. Gallie’s focus on a debate among philosophers needs to be incorporated within a larger a larger field of social conflict.

The trajectory of François Perroux across the Vichy regime poses about all possible range of methodological issues to the historian of ideas: individual versus collective biography, ideational versus ideological reading, internal versus external analysis, etc. The chapter outlines key elements about Perroux’s trajectory showing the entanglements and boundaries of science and politics in the transition from democratic to authoritarian rule and vice versa. A particular emphasis on uncertainties and adjustments shows, against the tendency to a teleological explanation induced by a linear interpretation of his career, that different paths were considered by Perroux, but that his choices were nevertheless constrained by the forces of both the scientific and political fields.