Peter A. Swenson is Yale’s C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science. He specializes in the comparative political economy of labor markets and social welfare in Europe and the United States. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the economic, political and social foundations of social policy and market regulation in developed capitalist democracies.

Among other things, Swenson is the author of two books, Fair Shares: Unions, Pay and Politics in Sweden and West Germany (1989) and Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden (2002), which received honorable mention for the APSA Luebbert Prize for best book in Comparative Politics. He was awarded the APSA’s Follett Prize for best article in politics and history for “Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden” (Studies in American Political Development, 2004).

Swenson’s current project, The American Medical Disorder: A Century of Health Politics, turns to the history and political economy of medical reform and medical progress. It covers subjects like medical education and research, public health, pharmaceutical regulation, the financing, organization, and control of health care delivery through private and social insurance, and the movement for evidence-based medical decisions for cost-effective health care. This is part of a larger long-term comparative research project analyzing the shifting interests and coalitions of organized provider, business, and labor groups in the evolution of national health care systems. A piece of the comparative work has been published as “Good Distribution, Bad Delivery, and Ugly Politics: The Traumatic Beginnings of Germany’s Health Care System,” in Shapiro, Swenson, and Donno, eds., Divide and Deal: The Politics of Distribution in Democracies (2008).