Chicago, the Leverhulme Trust (for an emeritus fellowship awarded to Maurice Kogan which enabled a particular part of the English study to be completed) and to the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation which provided funds assisting us with the last stage of the project and its dissemination. The list of names of the editorial team on the cover of this book in no sense exhausts the account of its authorship or of those responsible for the contr- utory country studies. Our equal partners in the whole exercise have been Steve Hanney (England), Berit Askling and Susan Marton (Sweden), and Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø (Norway). The names of individual authors are to be found at the beginning of each chapter. Throughout the five years of our project we have enjoyed an intellectual camaraderie which enabled the expe- ence of different cultures and systems to flow into our research. We are also indebted to Tom Kogan for expert copy editing of the first v- sion and to Deana Parker for producing a camera ready version of this second edition. Our first publishers, on selling out the first edition, arbitrarily took the book out of print. We have been fortunate in finding new publishers, Springer, for this second edition which has given us the opportunity to update our macro data about changes in systems and advance further some of our arguments.