As a partial antidote to the otherwise rather despairing tone that runs through this exchange, I would like to devote a few paragraphs to some rays of hope that emerge from both of these books—even for the “hardest” case of the United States. They have to do, first, with the institutions associated with the more egalitarian varieties of capitalism, and second with the political coalitions underpinning them.

On the institutional front, the analysis in my book contains plenty of bad news for liberal market economies like the United States. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak, because it also points to possibilities for policy innovations that do not rely on a country having inherited from the past particular structural features associated with the more “coordinated” variety of capitalism that in the “Golden Era” of postwar capitalist development was associated with the highest levels of social solidarity. One bit of good news, then, is that once we disentangle “coordinated” and “egalitarian” capitalism, we can see new possibilities for achieving more egalitarian outcomes even in “liberal” political economies. Rather than exclusively a matter of institutional prerequisites, these outcomes are a matter of politics and political coalitions—which leads me to the second point.

Is there any reason for hope on the political front? Since I write this from Germany, I answer with the equivocal “jein.” Certainly the current political polarization and the resurgence of a business community committed to a neoliberal agenda does not inspire hope. On the other hand, some of the developments Jake Rosenfeld describes are not entirely foreboding. The shift in the composition of the labor movement that he describes for the United States—away from blue-collar manufacturing toward more educated salaried and public sector employees—is, if anything, more advanced in the more egalitarian social democratic countries of northern Europe. In that context, some of these groups (particularly public sector workers—and I would add, crucially, working women) are core constituencies of social democracy. These are groups that defend a universal welfare state—even if, as Jane Gingrich and Silja Häusermann have pointed out, they often increasingly embrace a different variety of universalism, one that emphasizes individual development, internationalization, meritocracy, and gender equality (“The Decline of the Working Class Vote, the Reconfiguration of the Welfare Support Coalition and Consequences for the Welfare State,” Journal of European Social Policy [forthcoming]).

If the experiences in these other countries are any indication, government policy (e.g., in areas such as education and training) will be crucial in forging links between these groups and the less privileged segments of the labor force. This is, of course, problematic in a country like the United States, marked by gridlock and associated policy drift. But Rosenfeld’s book itself also reminds us of advances, including at the state level, as well as historical examples in which inspired leaders have been able to overcome racial and other divisions to forge alliances across groups that are otherwise very differently situated in the labor market.

Grounds for unbridled optimism? No. But sufficient reason to keep trying anyway.