This is the second of a two‐volume study of the adjustment of advanced welfare states to international economic pressures, in which leading scholars detail the wide variety of responses in 12 countries to the challenges to their employment and social policy systems in the period between the first oil‐price crises of the early 1970s and the increasing economic globalization of the 1980s and 1990s. Chapters in this volume provide in‐depth studies of countries’ adjustment experiences over three decades, beginning with a snapshot of the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state c.1970, then proceeding with a chronology of the successive external economic challenges and internal policy responses up until today, ending with a depiction of the new model or model in the making, and of what went right and what went wrong. The country studies include three welfare states representing the ‘Anglo‐Saxon’ model (the UK, Australia, and New Zealand), seven varieties of the ‘Continental’ welfare state (Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy), and two ‘Scandinavian’ welfare states (Sweden and Denmark). In addition, the volume includes analyses focusing on cross‐national differences in the labour‐market participation of women and of older workers, on the employment effects of service liberalization, and on international tax competition.