Description
Book Synopsis* Third edition of an established key text on the welfare state. * Offers comprehensive and remarkably well-informed introduction to classic and contemporary debates, as well as the future of welfare. * Draws on an international range of examples and literature, including US, continental and northern Europe.
Trade ReviewAcclaim for previous edition:
"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
Table of Contents
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- CONTENTS
- Acknowldgements
- Introduction
- 1 Capitalism, Social Democracy and the Welfare State I:
- Industrialism, Modernization and Social Democracy
- 2Capitalism, 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
- 4Origins 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
