The three political economies of the welfare state

Abstract

The protracted debate on the welfare state has failed to produce conclusive answers as to either the nature or causes of welfare state development. This article has three aims: 1) to reintegrate the debate into the intellectual tradition of political economy. This serves to put into sharper focus the principal theoretical questions involved; 2) to specify what are the salient characteristics of welfare states. The conventional ways of measuring welfare states in terms of their expenditures will no longer do; 3) to "sociologize" the study of welfare states. Most studies have assumed a world of linearity: or spending. This more or less power, article insists industrialization that we understand welfare states as clusters of regime-types, and that their development must be explained interactively.