Transformation of the Welfare State
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$25.00 (01)Description
How much has really changed in the world of welfare? A great deal, according to Neil Gilbert, one of our most deeply engaged and thoughtful analysts of social welfare policy. In this panoramic inquiry, Gilbert spans the globe to assess, in provocative yet dispassionate fashion, what welfare looks like in a free market world. From Sweden to the U.S., Gilbert finds a fundamental transformation in the welfare state--a turn away from broad-based entitlements and automatic benefits to a new, "enabling" approach defined by policies designed to promote privatization and labor force participation. He provides tangible evidence of how these new systems promote work and responsibility over protection and how they thicken the glue of civil society by diluting the pervasive role of government.Reviews
"A stimulating overview of contemporary social policy reform. This accessible, well-written, and concise book is a provocative contribution to debates that often transcend purely academic considerations to address one of the most crucial political issues of our times: the future of economic solidarity and social proctection in advanced industrial societies." --Comparative Politics
"[A] worthy contribution to welfare state scholarship.... Transformation of the Welfare State deserves commendation for its fascinating, detailed descriptions of welfare retrenchment..."--Social Forces
"This is a book of great interest and profound scholarship from one of the country's leading thinkers on socal welfare issues. It makes a major contribution to the social policy literature and deserves not only to be widely read but widely discussed. Hopefully, it will provoke an extensive debate on how an enabling state can transcend a commitment to promote market solutions to human ills and be worthy of the term's connotation."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
"... persuasive....Gilbert says something valuable about a social reality as complicated as the welfare state: that its development, as is true of any human institution, is anything but geological."--The New Republic
Product Details
224 pages; 10 line illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-517657-5ISBN10: 0-19-517657-XAbout the Author(s)
Neil Gilbert is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare and Social Service at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include: The Enabling State: Modern Welfare Capitalism in America and, most recently, Welfare Justice: Restoring Social Equity.
