This international collection studies how the financial crisis of 2007 and the ensuing economic
and political crises in Europe and North America have triggered a process of
change in the field of economics, law and
politics. Contributors to this book argue that both elites and citizens have
had to rethink the nature of the market, the role of the state as a market
regulator and as a provider of welfare, the role of political parties in
representing society’s main political and social cleavages, the role of civil
society in voicing the concerns of citizens, and the role of the citizen as the
ultimate source of power in a democracy but also as a fundamentally powerless
subject in a global economy.

The book studies the actors, the areas and the processes
that have carried forward the change and proposes the notion of ‘incomplete
paradigm shift’ to analyse this change. Its authors explore the multiple
dimensions of paradigm shifts and their differentiated evolution, arguing that
today we witness an incomplete paradigm shift of financial regulations,
economic models and welfare systems, but a stillbirth of a new political and
economic paradigm.