Jonathan C. Beck (PhD Candidate, UW Political Science) will discuss his dissertation research on the politics of welfare state retrenchment and privatization, and specifically on reforms to higher education funding in England, Germany, and the United States. Beck's dissertation aims to bridge theoretical insights from comparative welfare state scholars and sociolegal
scholars, exploring not only historical institutional dynamics and their causal influence on opposition to reform from civil society, but also the types of strategies that members and groups of civil society employ within given institutional, legal, and political opportunity structures.