The Moral Economy of Welfare States: Britain and Germany Compared

Extract

The Moral Economy of Welfare States: Britain and Germany Compared. By Steffen Mau. New York: Routledge, 2003. 248p. $114.95.

As postwar welfare state accords unraveled in the 1970s, welfare state scholarship grew rapidly, with most scholars aiming to identify the determinants of policy variation and growth. Scholars typically debated the relative roles of economic and demographic factors, political configurations, and national attitudes and preferences. In subsequent decades, many researchers turned their attention from the determinants of welfare state development to the effects of social policies on varied social, economic, and behavioral outcomes. At the same time, a number of scholars moved away from social expenditures as the primary measure of welfare state effort and aimed instead to analyze the institutional features, or the architecture, of public provisions. Furthermore, scholars began to argue that the welfare state's causes and effects were, in fact, multidirectional. Welfare state features shape socioeconomic outcomes, political alliances, and preferences, and in turn are shaped and maintained by their own effects.