Margarita Estevez-Abe is currently Associate Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. She has also taught at the University of Minnesota, served as a research associate at Keio University in Japan, and worked for a senior Japanese policy advisor. She co-authored Social Protection and the Formation of Skills: A Reinterpretation of the Welfare State, in Peter Hall and David Soskice eds., The Varieties of Capitalism (2001) and Japan's Shift Toward A Westminster System, in Asian Survey (2006). She is also the author of Negotiating Welfare Reforms: Actors and Institutions in Japan, in Sven Steinmo and Bo Rothstein eds., Institutionalism and Welfare Reforms (2002) and State-Society… Partnership in Japan: A Case Study of Social Welfare Provision, in Susan Pharr and Frank Schwartz eds., The State of Civil Society in Japan (2003).