Development paths are constructed by
historians when they in retrospect, analyse what has happened. Cultural and historical heritages play a role but in what direction they affect actions is an open question. With a focus on politics and practices of immigration, the project explored the role of culture and traditions in the meeting with the immigrats, comparing how four national administrations developed practices in response to the same problem and the same rule-setting framework.
This project studied the dissolution of the full employment convention in the 1990s. The approach was centred on the conceptual and interpretive adjustment of societies in Europe to the dramatic structural changes taking place in the labour market since the 1970s. Questions dealt with how the historical and cultural heritage of the full employment convention has played in different national settings. Additionally, the redefinition of the obligations of the state, employer organisations and trade unions were examined.
This project explored the plan for a European Monetary Union, the Werner Plan, around 1970s. It discussed the backdrop of the launch of the plan and why it finally failed.
A point of departure for the CONDIS project, Bo Stråth's first major project, was the bias in modernisation theories dominant among comparative social scientists not long ago that economic growth is the ultimate cause of welfare state development, where all states were thought to be caught up in a universal and evolutionist logic of industrialisation. Such theories pay insufficient attention to the political structures and cultural/ideological processes through which highly varied responses to industrialisation come about. During the research process, a critical view of its own historical, sociological point of departure was developed, questioning perspectives of path dependency and intrinsic driving forces in historical processes.
