Beyond the Welfare State?
The New Political Economy of Welfare
3. Edition November 2006
288 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Over the past decade, Beyond the Welfare State? has become established as the key text on the emergence and development of welfare states. It offers a comprehensive and remarkably well-informed introduction to the ever more intense debates that surround the history and, still more importantly, the future of welfare in advanced industrialised states.
Comprehensively revised and re-written, this third edition of the book embraces all of the most important theoretical and empirical developments in welfare state studies of recent years. Working within an explicitly comparative framework, the book draws on a wealth of international evidence to survey what are now the most pressing issues surrounding the future of welfare: among them, globalisation, demographic change, declining fertility, postindustrialism and immigration. It draws extensively on the explosion of work on welfare states that has emerged within the North American political science community over the past ten years as well as giving detailed attention to developments with the UK, continental and northern Europe and beyond.
Beyond the Welfare State? remains the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the complex of issues that surround welfare reform. It is required reading for anyone who wants to come to terms with what is really at stake in arguments about the future of welfare.
Introduction
1 Capitalism, Social Democracy and the Welfare State I: Industrialism, Modernization and Social Democracy
2 Capitalism, Social Democracy and the Welfare State II: Political Economy and the Welfare State
3 Capitalism, Social Democracy and the Welfare State III: New Social Movements and the Welfare State
4 Origins and Development of the Welfare State 1880-1975
5 After the 'Golden Age': From 'Crisis' to 'Containment'
6 Retrenchment and Recalibration
7 Beyond the Welfare State?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
"Students thirsty to understand the wider dimensions of welfare
state policy would do well to turn to Beyond the Welfare
State? Its sweep is wide, it is well-ordered and up to date.
Most welcome of all, it is clear."
Times Higher Education Supplement
Acclaim for this edition:
"Beyond the Welfare State? draws on a careful and
exhaustive review of both the theoretical literature and empirical
evidence on the contemporary Western welfare state and social
democracy. Pierson's overview of the forces that propelled
comparative welfare state development, crisis, and change is
masterful, critical, and balanced. Packed with fresh insights and
sharp reasoning, the book manages to pull together what it is
important to know in the field of comparative welfare state
studies. It is just about the best review of the literature
currently available - a perfect text for upper-level
university courses."
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Pompeu Fabra
University
"Given the complexity of modern welfare states and the plethora
of opinion surrounding them, attempting to give a theoretically
rich and empirically comprehensive accounting of both the state of
contemporary welfare states and the state of theory about them
seems an impossible task. Yet this is exactly what Christopher
Pierson has achieved. Combining a detailed multi-country historical
overview with a theoretical summary that is essential reading for
anyone wishing to understand the real "state" of the modern welfare
state, Beyond the Welfare State? is a tour de force of
comparative analysis."
Mark Blyth, John Hopkins University