Kathleen Thelen explains the historical origins of important cross-national differences in four countries (Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan), and also provides a theory of institutional change over time. The latter is considered a frontier issue in institutionalist analysis, of which there are several varieties emerging from economics, political science, and sociology. Thelen's study contributes to the literature on the political economy of the developed democracies that focuses on different institutional arrangements defining distinctive models of capitalism.

Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT, Permanent External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. Currently President-Elect of the Comparative Politics Section of the APSA, Thelen also served as Chair of the Council for European Studies (2002-2006), as President of the APSA Organized Section on Politics and History (2007-2008), and as President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (2008-2009). She is Assistant General Editor for the Cambridge University Press Series in Comparative Politics, and an appointed member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and of the Board of Trustees of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. In 2009 Thelen was elected to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She currently serves on the steering committee of the Center for European Studies at Harvard and co-chairs the Boston Area Research Workshop on History, Institutions and Politics.