The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare

State 2nd Edition Daniel Béland

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-welfare-state-2nd-edition-
daniel-beland/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe (Oxford Handbooks)

Seager

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-daniel-
defoe-oxford-handbooks-seager/

The Oxford Handbook of W. B. Yeats Lauren Arrington

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-w-b-yeats-
lauren-arrington/

The Oxford Handbook of State Capitalism and the Firm

1st Edition Mike Wright

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-state-
capitalism-and-the-firm-1st-edition-mike-wright/

The Oxford Handbook Of Plato 2nd Edition Edition Gail

Fine

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-plato-2nd-
edition-edition-gail-fine/
Oxford Handbook of Respiratory Nursing 2nd Edition
Terry Robinson

https://ebookmass.com/product/oxford-handbook-of-respiratory-
nursing-2nd-edition-terry-robinson/

The Welfare State System and Common Security: A Global

Vision for a Common Future B. Vivekanandan

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-welfare-state-system-and-
common-security-a-global-vision-for-a-common-future-b-
vivekanandan/

The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics 2nd

Edition Ruslan Mitkov (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-
computational-linguistics-2nd-edition-ruslan-mitkov-editor/

The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, 2nd

Edition Dariusz Wójcik

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-new-oxford-handbook-of-
economic-geography-2nd-edition-dariusz-wojcik/

The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers

2nd Edition David B. Szabla

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-
organizational-change-thinkers-2nd-edition-david-b-szabla/
 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

THE WELFARE STATE

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

THE WELFARE
STATE

SECOND EDITION

Edited by
DANIEL BÉLAND
KIMBERLY J. MORGAN
HERBERT OBINGER
and
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in
certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2010
Second Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under
terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931011
ISBN 978–0–19–882838–9
eISBN 978–0–19–256347–7
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198828389.001.0001
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only.
Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website
referenced in this work.
In memory of Stephan Leibfried (1944–2018)
 Preface

THIS is the second edition of The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare

State, a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary and multi-author survey of
the state of the welfare state in its advanced capitalist homelands. It
is eleven years since the first edition was published, and much has
changed in the intervening period. This second edition fully reflects
those changes. All of the chapters that have been retained from the
first edition have been substantially rewritten to reflect what has
happened over the past decade. In addition, we have commissioned
five entirely new chapters, and a new conclusion, which focuses
upon the challenge that climate change poses for all future social
policy regimes. It is our expectation and our belief that this new
edition of the Handbook will reflect the breadth of issues and
experience in the welfare state today in just the way that the first
edition did in 2010. It is designed to tell a comprehensive story
about the comparative experience of advanced welfare states right
now.
There have been some significant changes of personnel since
2010. We have recruited a number of new authors, all of whom have
a proven expertise in the topics about which they write. Two of the
original editors—Jane Lewis and Frank Castles—have retired, though
their mark can still be seen upon the book in its revised form. Two of
the other editors—Herbert Obinger1 from the University of Bremen
and Christopher Pierson from the University of Nottingham—remain
on the editorial team. We have recruited two new and highly
experienced editors from North America, Professors Kimberly Morgan
(from George Washington University) and Daniel Béland (from McGill
University), who have brought new insight and expertise to the
editorial process. Very sadly, in the early stages of preparing this
second edition, Professor Stephan Leibfried, the mastermind of the
entire project (alongside Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press),
died. Stephan’s death was a terrible shock and a grievous loss to all
those who knew him. He was a very funny and generous man, who
took his work, including this project, extremely seriously and
ensured that things were always done and done right. He is
irreplaceable. We have retained his characteristically insightful and
off-centre essay on the postage stamps of welfare in this second
edition of the book, which we dedicate to his memory. Finally, we
also want to pay tribute to contributor Dennis Spies, who passed
suddenly away at age 40 shortly before this volume went to print.
support of the universities and research centres for which we
work. Special mention is due to the University of Bremen, to its
Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), and to
the associated Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (based in Delmenhorst,
Lower Saxony), which supported various members of the editorial
team during their visits to Germany. We are also grateful to Emma
Gasster for great editorial assistance. Dominic Byatt and a team of
editors and production staff at Oxford University Press have
overseen both editions from conception to publication. We are
grateful for all this support.
Assailed from almost every quarter, the welfare state is here to
stay. It remains what governments—local and central—do, most of
the time. It provides a key part of the infrastructure of our shared
lives—in health and education, for example. It is still an engine of
redistribution—of money, of life-chances, and of well-being. And it
helps support people in times of crisis, as we saw in the aftermath of
the 2008 financial crisis and, more recently, in the wake of the 2020
COVID-19 pandemic. But it faces a series of unprecedented
challenges: demographic, institutional, and (in the case of climate
change) existential. And it seems certain that COVID-19 and its
consequences will change the context for social policy profoundly
and for a long time to come. Given this, we do well to be armed with
the best possible guide to the welfare state as we have it right now.
That is what this second edition of the Oxford Handbook of the
Welfare State is designed to be.
 1 Herbert Obinger and all other authors of the University of Bremen thank the
German Research Foundation (DFG) for financial support (grant 374666841 - SFB
1342)
 Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Select List of Abbreviations
List of Contributors
A Note on the Jacket Illustration
STEPHAN LEIBFRIED
1 Introduction
DANIEL BÉLAND, KIMBERLY J. MORGAN, HERBERT OBINGER, AND
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON

PART I PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATIONS AND CRITIQUES

OF THE WELFARE STATE
2 Ethics
STUART WHITE
3 Intellectual Roots of the Welfare State
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON AND MATTHIEU LEIMGRUBER
4 The Critics of Welfare: From Neoliberalism to Populism
GERDA HOOIJER AND DESMOND KING

PART II HISTORY
5 The Emergence of the Western Welfare State
STEIN KUHNLE AND ANNE SANDER
6 Post-War Welfare State Development: The ‘Golden Age’
FRANK NULLMEIER AND FRANZ-XAVER KAUFMANN
7 Recent Developments: Social Investment Reform in the Twenty-
First Century
ANTON HEMERIJCK AND STEFANO RONCHI
 PART III APPROACHES
8 Research Methods
EDWIN AMENTA AND ALEXANDER M. HICKS
9 Public and Private Social Welfare
WILLEM ADEMA AND PETER WHITEFORD
10 Governance
DANIEL BÉLAND AND KIMBERLY J. MORGAN
11 Social Investment
JULIAN L. GARRITZMANN, SILJA HÄUSERMANN, AND BRUNO PALIER
12 Families, States, and Markets
MARY DALY
13 Disciplinary Perspectives on Welfare States
EINAR ØVERBYE

PART IV INPUT AND ACTORS

14 Needs and Risks in the Welfare State
JAN ZUTAVERN AND MARTIN KOHLI
15 Democracy and Capitalism
TORBEN IVERSEN
16 Unions and Employers
BERNHARD EBBINGHAUS
17 Parties
MANFRED G. SCHMIDT
18 Political Institutions
ELLEN M. IMMERGUT
19 Public Attitudes
STAFFAN KUMLIN, ACHIM GOERRES, AND DENNIS C. SPIES
20 Gender
ANN SHOLA ORLOFF AND MARIE LAPERRIÈRE
21 Religion
KEES VAN KERSBERGEN AND PHILIP MANOW
22 Migration and New Ethnic Minorities
 SIMONE SCARPA, STEPHEN CASTLES, AND CARL-ULRIK SCHIERUP
23 European and National Social Policy
MANFRED G. SCHMIDT
24 Intergovernmental Organizations
KLAUS ARMINGEON
25 Globalization
DUANE SWANK

PART V POLICIES
26 Social Expenditure and Welfare State Financing
HERBERT OBINGER
27 The Welfare State as Employer
KARIN GOTTSCHALL AND MARKUS TEPE
28 Old-Age Pensions
KARL HINRICHS AND JULIA F. LYNCH
29 Health
HEINZ ROTHGANG
30 Long-Term Care
AUGUST ÖSTERLE AND HEINZ ROTHGANG
31 Work Accident and Sickness Benefits
OLLI KANGAS
32 Disability
MARK PRIESTLEY
33 Unemployment Insurance
OLA SJÖBERG, EERO CARROLL, AND JOAKIM PALME
34 Employment Promotion
LANE KENWORTHY
35 The Regulation of Employment
PATRICK EMMENEGGER AND PAUL MARX
36 Social Assistance
THOMAS BAHLE AND CLAUS WENDT
37 Family Benefits and Services
 NAOMI FINCH AND JONATHAN BRADSHAW
38 Housing
TONY FAHEY AND MICHELLE NORRIS
39 Education
MARIUS R. BUSEMEYER AND RITA NIKOLAI

PART VI POLICY OUTCOMES

40 The Social Rights of Citizenship
JOHN D. STEPHENS
41 Inequality and Poverty
PETER SAUNDERS
42 Macroeconomic Outcomes
ISABELA MARES AND CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
43 Gendered Outcomes
JENNIFER HOOK AND LEAH RUPPANNER
44 Welfare Retrenchment
JONAH D. LEVY

PART VII WORLDS OF WELFARE

45 Models of the Welfare State
PHILIP MANOW
46 The Nordic Countries
MIKKO KAUTTO AND KATI KUITTO
47 Continental Western Europe
BRUNO PALIER
48 The South European Countries
MAURIZIO FERRERA
49 The English-Speaking Countries
FRANCIS G. CASTLES AND CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
50 Central and Eastern European Countries
LINDA J. COOK AND TOMASZ INGLOT

PART VIII PROSPECTS

51 From Welfare States to Planetary Well-Being
IAN GOUGH

Name Index
Subject Index
 List of Figures

7.1 Employment rate, equality, and welfare spending (the size of

the pie charts) in selected OECD countries (averages 2010–
2015)
7.2 Total employment rates (squares) and female employment
rates (triangles) in the late 1990s and 2018 in twelve OECD
countries
9.1 Pension and health care are the largest public social spending
items. Public social expenditure by broad social policy area by
% GDP, in 2015–2017 or latest year available.
11.1 Social investment and social compensation in thirty-five
advanced economies, 2010
11.2 Welfare legacies and the politicization of social investment
16.1 Trade union density, social expenditure, and bargaining
coverage, 1980 and 2000
26.1 Total tax revenue, % GDP, 1965 vs 2015
26.2 Tax-to-GDP, 2015 and income inequality, 2017 (Gini post taxes
and transfers)
26.3 Tax wedge and public social spending, 2015
26.4 Share of social contributions as a percentage of public social
expenditure, 2015
27.1 General government employment expenditure and size
27.2 Female and immigrant employment share in the public and
private sectors
27.3 Public–private wage differentials
28.1 Typology of pension systems
28.2 Pension spending as a share of total non-health social
expenditure
31.1 The sequential introduction of social insurance laws in
different continents and in OECD-18 (OECD-18 countries
 excluded from their continents)
31.2 Generosity (net benefit/net wage) and coverage
(insured/labour force) of sickness benefits in OECD countries
in the 2010s
34.1 Employment rates, 1989 and 2017
34.2 Jobs with equality
35.1 Development of job security regulations in Western Europe,
1950–2013
35.2 Changes in the regulation of dismissal protection in the case
of open-ended contracts (black circles) and temporary
employment (grey circles), 1985–2008
35.3 Percentage of temporary contracts among workers twenty-
five–thirty-four years in five countries, 2000–2018
36.1 Extent and generosity of social assistance, OECD countries,
1992
36.2 Rate of social assistance beneficiaries, 2007 (as % of total
population)
36.3 Rate of social assistance beneficiaries, 2007 (as % of
population twenty–sixty-four and sixty-five plus)
36.4 Net income on social assistance, couple with two children,
OECD countries, 2015 (as % of median income)
36.5 Net income on social assistance, couple with two children and
single parent with one child, EU countries, 2012 (as % of
median income)
37.1 Percentage of children living in a lone-parent family, 2014
37.2 Spending per child in percentage of spending per older
person, 1990–2013
37.3 Child benefit package for couple with two children, one earner
by level of earnings. Ranked by average earnings: percentage
extra over a childless couple on the same earnings.
37.4 Fertility rate, 2014 by family spending by % GDP, 2013
37.5 Maternal employment rate by % GDP spent on family services
37.6 Child poverty rates of single parents before and after
transfers, 2014
37.7 Overall child well-being by percentage GDP devoted to family
benefits and services, 2013
38.1 Real house price trends in 14 western countries, 1870–2010
38.2 Housing costs as percentage of household income at different
income levels in England and Wales, 1961–2016
38.3 Housing costs as percentage of household income among
poor and non-poor, EU 28, 2017
38.4 Poverty rates on all income and on residual income after
housing costs
39.1 The relationship between public education and social
spending by % GDP, 2015
39.2 Variation on education in spending, 2015
41.1 The relationship between income inequality and social
expenditure in OECD countries
41.2 The relationship between poverty and social expenditure in
OECD countries
50.1 Total social expenditure in CEE states by % GDP
51.1 A safe and just space for humanity to thrive in
51.2 The impact of a consumption-based view on emissions by
country
51.3 Global distribution of consumption-based emissions
 List of Tables

4.1 The critics on the welfare state

5.1 Overview: establishment of first statutory social security
schemes in selected ILO member countries down to 1945
8.1 Causal research according to methodological approaches
8.2 Welfare programme consolidation in early democracies and
proto-democracies, 1920
9.1 From gross to net social spending: social expenditure by %
GDP at market prices
9.2 The income accounting framework
12.1 Constellation of factors animating state policy towards families
14.1 Socio-economic drivers of new social needs and risks
14.2 Selected risk and need profiles: employment
14.3 Selected risk and need profiles: family
16.1 Ideal-typical modes of labour relations and their institutional
affinities
17.1 Social policy positions of major families of parties in Western
democracies since the mid-1950s
23.1 Social policy’s degree of Europeanization, 1957–2017
26.1 Trends in social expenditure, 1980–2015
26.2 Programme-related public spending by % GDP, 2015
26.3 Revenue from main tax categories as a percentage of total
tax revenue, 2016
28.1 Funding and types of pension scheme
31.1 Characteristics of work accident and sickness benefit schemes
throughout the world in the late 2010s
33.1 Years of introduction of first laws providing for unemployment
benefits at the national level among 18 OECD countries
33.2 Net replacement rates and coverage in labour force (all in %)
for eighteen countries: averages for the periods 1930–1939,
 1947–1970, and 1975–2015
37.1 Child well-being in the OECD dimension, c. 2013
38.1 Schematic illustrations of inflation-adjusted accumulated
wealth flows associated with mortgage-financed home
purchase in the United Kingdom for selected mortgage terms
38.2 Decline of owner occupation of housing in the English-
speaking world
40.1 Social rights generosity (decommodification) indexes by
welfare state regime
40.2 (Quasi) social rights indicators of services and gendered
policies
42.1 Average unemployment in advanced industrialized political
economies: cross-national and temporal trends, 1960–1975
and 1976–1995
46.1 Public social expenditure and tax revenue in the OECD
countries, 1995–2015
46.2 Expenditure in services and social investment in the OECD
countries, 1995–2015
46.3 Selected social policy outcomes in the OECD countries, 1995–
2015
49.1 Liberal regime characteristics according to Espin-Andersen
(1999) and English-speaking family of nation characteristics
according to Castles and Obinger (2008)
49.2 Shares and progressivity of cash benefits and household taxes
in household disposable income in English-speaking and
selected other OECD countries, mid-2000s
49.3 Measures of the dispersion of components of social
expenditure, child poverty, and inequality in eighteen OECD
countries, mid-2000s
50.1 Selected welfare indicators, 2016
 Select List of Abbreviations

ADLs Activities of daily living

AEI American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC (1943 ff.; http://www.
aei.org)
AFDC Aid to Families with Dependent Children, USA (1935–1997; now TANF)
ALMP Active labour market policies (1990s ff.)
ATTAC The international anti-globalization network ATTAC (1998 ff.; Action
pour une Taxe Tobin d’Aide aux Citoyens ¼ Association for the
Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens;
http://www.attac.org/)
BRIC Brazil, Russia, India, & China
CCT Conditional cash transfer programme
CEE Central and Eastern European
CEPAL Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, Santiago, Chile
(¼ ECLAC; 1948 ff.; http://www.eclac.org/)
CPF Central Provident Fund, Singapore (1955 ff.; http://mycpf.cpf.gov.sg)
CPS Centre for Policy Studies, London (1974 ff.; http://www.cps.org.uk/)
CV Coefficient of variation CWED Comparative Welfare Entitlements
Dataset (http://www.sp.uconn.edu/ ~scruggs/wp.xhtml)
DC Defined contribution
DRG Diagnosis related group
ECJ European Court of Justice, Luxembourg (1952 ff.;
http://curia.europa.eu)
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago,
Chile (¼ CEPAL; 1948 ff.; http://www.eclac.org/)
ECM Error correction models
EFTA European Free Trade Association, countermovement to founding the
EEC [EU] in 1957 (1960 ff.; http://www.efta.int/)
EITC Earned Income Tax Credit, USA (also EIC; 1975 ff.; in UK: Working Tax
Credit)
EPL Employment protection legislation
ESA Event structure analysis
ESF European Social Fund, Brussels (EU; 1957 ff.;
http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/esf/index_en.xhtml)
EU European Union as of Maastricht Treaty 1992, Brussels (EEC [European
Economic Community] or EC [European Community]; 1957–1992;
 http://europa.eu/index_en.xhtml) OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINALS,
3/8/2012, SPi
EUR The Euro currency (also !; accounting currency 1999–2001; in
circulation as of 2002, 2009 in 16 Member States) Eurostat Statistical
Office of the European Communities [European Union], Luxembourg
(1953 ff.; http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat)
GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services (1995 ff.; under WTO; see
http://www.wto.org/)
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1947 ff.; see now WTO
http://www.wto.org/)
GDP Gross domestic product
GNP Gross national product
GP General (medical) practitioner, UK
GPA Global Program on AIDS, UN (but see also WHO; 2001 ff.;
http://www.un.org/ga/aids/ungassfactsheets/html/fssgcall_en.xhtml
and http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)
HMO Health Maintenance Organization, USA
HRS Health and Retirement Study, USA (http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/)
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ¼ World Bank
(WB),Washington, DC (1946 ff.; with IMF one of the two BrettonWoods
institutions founded in 1944; http://www.worldbank.org/)
ICSID International Center for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes,Washington, DC (1966 ff.; WB founded arbitration institution
devoted to investor-state dispute settlement;
http://icsid.worldbank.org/ICSID/)
IDA International Development Association,Washington, DC (1960 ff.;
grantmaking or interest free credit-providing branch of the WB; via
http://www.worldbank.org/)
IEA Institute for Economic Affairs, London (1955 ff.;
http://www.iea.org.uk/)
IFC International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC (1956 ff.; member
of WB Group, financing investment in private sector in developing
countries; http://www.ifc.org/)
IFI International financial institutions
IGO International governmental organizations
ILO International Labour Organization [and Office], Geneva, Switzerland
(1919 ff.; http://www.ilo.org/)
IMF International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC (1944 ff.
http://www.imf. org/)
INGO International non-governmental organizations
IO Intergovernmental organizations
ISI Import substitution industrialization
ISSP International Social Survey Programme (1984 ff.;
http://www.issp.org/)
KMT Kuomintang, China
LDC Less developed country
LDP Liberal Democratic Party, Japan
LIS Luxembourg Income Study, Luxembourg (1983 ff.;
http://www.lisproject. org/)
LTC Long-term care
MIGA Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency,Washington, DC (1988 ff.;
WB Group; http://www.miga.org/)
MLSG Minimum Living Standard Guarantee, China (and South Korea)
NDC Notional defined contribution
NHI National health insurance
NHS National Health Service, UK (1948 ff.; http://www.nhs.uk)
NICS Newly industrialized countries
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris (1961
ff.; dates back to Marshall Plan 1948–1951; http://www.oecd.org)
OMC Open Method of Coordination, EU (Lisbon Strategy; 2000 ff.)
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Vienna (1960 ff.;
http://www.opec.org)
PAYG Pay as you go
PPP Purchasing power parity
QCA Qualitative comparative analysis
SCIP Social Citizenship Indicators Programme
(http://www.snd.gu.se/sv/catalogue/series/55)
SD Standard deviation
SERPS State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme, UK (1978–2002; replaced
2002 by State Second Pension)
SHARE Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
(http://www.shareproject. org/)
SOCX Social Expenditure Data Set (OECD;
http://www.oecd.org/els/social/expenditure)
SOE State-owned enterprise
TANF Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, US (1997 ff.)
TRIPS Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (1994 ff.; under
WTO; see http://www.wto.org/)
TSCS Time-series cross-section
UN United Nations, New York (1945 ff.; http://www.un.org)
UNDP United Nations Development Program, New York etc. (1965 ff.;
http://www.undp.org/)
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris
(1946 ff.; http://portal.unesco.org/)
USD US Dollars (US$)
WB World Bank; Washington, DC (1946 ff.; see also IBRD; with IMF one of
the two Bretton Woods institutions founded in 1944;
http://www.worldbank.org/)
WHO World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (1948 ff.;
http://www.who.int/en/)
WTC Working Tax Credit, UK (2003 ff., predecessor 1999–2003 WFTC with
‘F’ standing for families; see also EITC, USA)
WTO World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (1993 ff.;
http://www.wto.org)
US AID United States Agency for International Development, Washington, DC
(1961 ff.; originates with Marshall Plan 1948–1951;
http://www.usaid.gov/)
 List of Contributors

Willem Adema is Senior Economist in the OECD Social Policy

Division in Paris.
Edwin Amenta is Professor of Sociology at the University of
California, Irvine.
Klaus Armingeon is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
University of Bern and associated researcher at the University of
Zurich.
Thomas Bahle is a Senior Researcher at the Department of
European Societies and their Integration at the Mannheim Centre for
European Social Research (MZES).
Daniel Béland is James McGill Professor of Political Science at
McGill University.
Jonathan Bradshaw is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the
University of York.
Marius R. Busemeyer Professor of Political Science and Speaker of
the Excellence Cluster “The Politics of Inequality” at the University of
Konstanz. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the WSI in
Düsseldorf.
Eero Carroll is an analyst at the Swedish Agency for Public
Management in Stockholm.
Francis G. Castles is Professor Emeritus at the University of
Edinburgh and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the Research
School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.
Stephen Castles is an Honorary Professor of Sociology at the
University of Sydney.
Linda J. Cook is Professor Emerita of Political Science and Slavic
Studies at Brown University and Academic Supervisor, ILSIR, Higher
School of Economics Moscow.
Mary Daly is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the
University of Oxford.
Bernhard Ebbinghaus is Professor of Social Policy at the University
of Oxford.
Patrick Emmenegger is Professor of Political Science at the
University of St. Gallen.
Tony Fahey is Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at University
College Dublin Ireland.
Maurizio Ferrera is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Milan.
Naomi Finch is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of York.
Julian L. Garritzmann is Professor of Political Science at the
University of Frankfurt/Main.
Achim Goerres is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Duisburg-Essen.
Karin Gottschall is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Bremen.
Ian Gough is Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of
Bath and Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, Centre for
the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE).
Silja Häusermann is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Zurich.
Anton Hemerijck is Professor of Political Science at the European
University Institute in Florence.
Alexander M. Hicks is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Karl Hinrichs is a Senior Research Fellow (ret.) at the University of
Bremen.
Gerda Hooijer is Assistant Professor of Comparative Political
Economy at University College London.
Jennifer Hook is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Southern California.
Ellen M. Immergut is Professor of Political Sciences and
Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence
and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Tomasz Inglot is Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of
Political Science in the Department of Government, Minnesota State
University-Mankato.
Torben Iversen is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of
Political Economy at Harvard University.
Olli Kangas is Professor of Practice at the Department of Social
Research, University of Turku and Director of the Equal Society
program, Strategic Research at the Academy of Finland.
Franz-Xaver Kaufmann is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the
University of Bielefeld.
Mikko Kautto is Managing Director of the Finnish Centre for
Pensions.
Lane Kenworthy is Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in
Social Thought at the University of California-San Diego.
Kees van Kersbergen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus
University.
Desmond King is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American
Government and Fellow, Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.
Martin Kohli is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the European
University Institute in Florence.
Stein Kuhnle is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Politics at the
University of Bergen and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Social
Policy at the Hertie School, Berlin.
Kati Kuitto is Senior Researcher at the Finnish Centre for Pensions.
Staffan Kumlin is a Professor of Political Science at the University
of Oslo.
Marie Laperrière is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Sociology at Northwestern University.
Matthieu Leimgruber is Professor of History at the University of
Zurich.
Jonah D. Levy is Professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Julia F. Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Philip Manow is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Bremen.
Isabela Mares is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at
Yale University.
Paul Marx is Professor of Political Science and Socio-Economics at
the University Duisburg-Essen and a part-time professor at the
Danish Center for Welfare Studies, University of Southern Denmark.
Kimberly J. Morgan is Professor of Political Science and
International Affairs at George Washington University.
Rita Nikolai is Professor of Comparative Education at the Faculty of
Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Augsburg.
Michelle Norris is Professor and Director the Geary Institute for
Public Policy at University College Dublin Ireland.
Frank Nullmeier is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Bremen.
Herbert Obinger is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Bremen.
Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology, Gender Studies and
Political Science at Northwestern University.
August Österle is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the Vienna
University of Economics and Business.
Einar Øverbye is Professor of International Social and Health Policy
at Oslo po Metropolitan University.
Bruno Palier is CNRS Director of research in Political Science at
Sciences Po, Paris.
Joakim Palme is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Uppsala.
Christopher Pierson is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the
University of Nottingham.
Mark Priestley is Professor of Disability Policy at the University of
Leeds.
Stefano Ronchi is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of
Social and Political Science, University of Milan.
Heinz Rothgang is Professor of Health Economics at the University
of Bremen.
Leah Ruppanner is Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of Melbourne.
Anne Sander is a Research Associate at the Hertie School, Berlin.
Peter Saunders is Emeritus Professor in the Social Policy Research
Centre at the University of New South Wales.
Simone Scarpa is Associate Professor at the Department of Social
Work, Umeå University.
Carl-Ulrik Schierup is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for
Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping
University.
Manfred G. Schmidt is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
the University of Heidelberg.
Ola Sjöberg is Professor of Sociology at the Swedish Institute for
Social Research at Stockholm University.
Dennis C. Spies was Professor of Political Science at the University
of Düsseldorf.
John D. Stephens is the Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr. Distinguished
Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the
Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill.
Duane Swank is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Markus Tepe is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Oldenburg.
Claus Wendt is Professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen.
Stuart White is University Lecturer in Politics and Tutorial Fellow in
Politics at Jesus College at the University of Oxford.
Peter Whiteford is Professor in the Crawford School of Public
Policy at the Australian National University and an Adjunct Professor
at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South
Wales.
Jan Zutavern is a team leader at the University of Luxembourg a
???
 A Note on the Jacket Illustration

STEPHAN LEIBFRIED

IN order to highlight the comparative, international nature of this

volume’s chapters, we wished to illustrate the book jacket with
symbols of welfare states from all over the world. The welfare state
has received little, if any, notice on most national icons such as flags,
state seals, coins, and banknotes, but many nations have issued
postage stamps that honour welfare state founders or champion
social policies and ideals. Perhaps tellingly, most, if not all, of these
are special commemorative stamps, rather than regular-issue
stamps: even in countries whose welfare states developed hand-in-
hand with nationhood—in Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and
Uruguay—welfare motifs were not chosen for the core national
icons.
While hunting for stamps to adorn the book jacket, I noticed that
the welfare motifs used fall into five distinct categories, roughly
corresponding to the types of protagonists in welfare state
development. First, international welfare motifs have appeared on
many nations’ stamps, often in recognition of some event, like the
World Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, or a United Nations
special observance, such as the International Women’s Year, the Year
of Older Persons, or the Year for the Eradication of Poverty. The
United Nations also issues its own postal stamps with these themes,
as do the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World
Health Organization (WHO). The latter has been especially
successful in popularizing its yearly health themes, and its members
also tend to issue their own stamps for the WHO’s yearly campaigns.
welfare state founders and reformers, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his Secretary of Labour, Frances Perkins, are both
honoured on US stamps. And of the post-Second World War
reformers and founders, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer appears on
German stamps, Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen on Norwegian
ones, and Tommy Douglas, who founded the Canadian health
system, is honoured on Canadian stamps. Interestingly, though we
associate the welfare state with these leaders, many of them are
also known for nation building or post-Second World War economic
reconstruction, and the stamps—with the exception of a single
Roosevelt stamp—do not specifically recognize their contributions to
social policy. Notably missing from the line-up of founders’ stamps
are William Beveridge—recognized as the father of the National
Health Service in the United Kingdom—and New Zealand’s first
Labour Party Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, who introduced
a comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare state in the 1930s and
served as inspiration for the post-war welfare state reform on the
other side of the world [ILO (International Labour Organization),
1949; Systems of Social Security. New Zealand. Geneva: ILO].
Fourth, examples of other individuals whose work has had far-
reaching consequences for welfare state cultures include the German
protestant minister, Johann Hinrich Wichern; reformist doctors such
as Arvo Ylppö, who founded childcare clinics in Finland, and Julius
Tandler, who introduced industrial hygiene in Austria; agitators for
social reform such as the unionist Ferdinand Hanusch and the
Catholic reformer Karl Freiherr von Vogelsang in Austria; and the
American unionist Samuel Gompers, who was instrumental in setting
up the International Labour Organization. Most of these figures are
recognized only in the nations where they worked, but there are a
number of Catholic heroes of social welfare, such as the Albanian
nun, Mother Theresa, who are honoured on stamps around the
world.
Non-state instruments of social policy comprise the fifth and most
varied category of postage stamp motifs that I identified. There are
stamps that pay tribute to children’s clinics, hospitals, medical
associations, nurses, accident prevention and protection measures,
and, of course, the International and National Red Cross. In Finland,
even day care centre anniversaries, women’s support groups, and a
novel have commemorative stamps. (The novel is Vāinō Linna's
trilogy Under the North Star (1959–1962), which helped set the
stage for the introduction and acceptance of a Scandinavian type
welfare state in Finland). In China, where near-universal health
insurance is now being introduced, there is a series of stamps
depicting the barefoot itinerant doctors who have long served the
rural poor. Another series indirectly highlights China’s default policy
of individual savings in lieu of a comprehensive pension system:
these stamps celebrate the one-child family planning policy, which
has led to an ageing population that can no longer rely on traditional
means—family—but has a savings rate that is 50 per cent of GDP.
Public awareness campaigns have also made use of postage stamps
to call attention to social and health issues such as child and youth
welfare, AIDS, cancer, polio, and tuberculosis. Controlling the spread
of tuberculosis was one of the first grand successes of public health
and the theme appears frequently on stamps from various countries,
but for some reason it completely dominates Finnish stamps
between 1946 and the mid-1970s.
In comparing stamps from different nations, I also noticed that
they reflected some of the major regional differences in welfare
state cultures. Education and housing are prevalent stamp themes in
Southeast Asia and China, where social policies emphasize these
aspects of welfare more than in twentieth-century Western welfare
states (Rieger and Leibfried, 2003. Limits to Globalization: Welfare
States and the World Economy. Cambridge: Polity: 255 ff.). Since the
1990s, the countries of Eastern Europe have produced far fewer
welfare state commemorative stamps than any other region of the
world, perhaps because welfare provision was part of the communist
system that these countries rejected and they have not had time to
reconstruct (but see Chapter 50). One does, in fact, find stamps
celebrating a return to pre-communist social insurance systems in
some Eastern European countries (e.g. Lithuania, 2006). In Latin
America and Southern Europe, as well as parts of Eastern Europe,
the stamps frequently depict Saint John Bosco or other Catholic
saints who were known for their work with the underprivileged and
epitomized the church’s formal and informal contributions to national
welfare states. Scandinavia’s stamps have a strong focus on the
provision of health and other services, whereas stamps from
continental Western Europe are more likely to focus on welfare state
institutions and funds and on their founders. Worker protection and
industrial hygiene was a starting point for many countries’ welfare
states, and, accordingly, seems to be a common early theme for
stamps around the world. Regional treatments of more recently
recognized welfare state issues such as gender, race, age, or other
types of discrimination that might produce unequal life chances are,
however, quite varied.
Historically, relations between nation states have played a
significant role in the development of many welfare states and this is
also evident in some of the stamps. Both Switzerland and tiny
Lichtenstein issued commemorative stamps for the fifty-year
anniversary of their pension insurance systems (AHV), as
Lichtenstein had adopted it from the Swiss. Uruguay, with its large
population of Italian immigrants, has a commemorative stamp for
the Ente Nazionale Assistenza Sociale, an Italian welfare programme
for expatriots around the world. Ireland honoured the centennial of
the founding of its pension system—in the United Kingdom—with a
commemorative stamp in 2008. This created some controversy in
Britain, where the centennial was not similarly recognized, and there
were outcries of discrimination from the Welsh community, as the
founder of the pension system, Prime Minister Lloyd George, was a
Welsh statesman. We might note, however, that the British postal
system has generally done little to honour the founding of its model
welfare state, with the notable exception of a four-stamp series
issued to celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of the National Health
Service in 1998. (A 50 pence commemorative coin was also issued
for the occasion.) Neither William Beveridge, who designed the
system, nor Aneurin Bevan (another Welshman), who insured its
enactment, are acknowledged with their own stamps, though
Beveridge appears on a first-day cover for the 1998 NHS stamps.
states’ welfare policies (see Chapter 23) and might well benefit
from public awareness of that role, none of the member states have
issued stamps that attest it and the European Union itself is not
authorized to issue stamps.
 My brief sojourn into the world of stamps revealed a colourful,
international array of welfare state themes and icons—too many to
be included in the jumble portrayed on the book jacket of this
Handbook. Stamps with such themes appear to have been on the
increase since the 1960s—an increase that, ironically, has continued
uninterrupted through the 1990s and 2000s, a period when welfare
state expansion in most regions stopped and threats of
retrenchment dominated political rhetoric (see Chapter 44). During
this period, postal services in some countries were privatized,
perhaps weakening the role of stamp imagery as a statement of
national sentiment. And yet, the societal consensus that built the
effective welfare states of the 1950s and 1960s is still honoured, and
the treatable ills of hunger, poverty, discrimination, lack of education,
inadequate housing, and ageing societies is maintained in the public
eye by the images chosen for postage stamps.
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
DANIEL BÉLAND, KIMBERLY J. MORGAN, HERBERT OBINGER, &
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON

The Scope of this Handbook

THE twentieth century is often portrayed as one of extremes

(Hobsbawm 1994). Its first half witnessed the rise of totalitarian
regimes, two world wars, and more than a few genocides. The
second half was characterized by the spread of democracy,
unprecedented economic wealth and, in consequence, a degree of
well-being and a guarantee of social rights arguably unknown in
human history. In retrospect, however, this is largely a ‘Western’
story, because war, starvation, dictatorship, and impoverishment
remained the norm throughout the twentieth century and beyond for
millions of people living in other parts of the world (Cornia 2004).
This bifurcated development has many causes. Unquestionably,
though, one of the major reasons for the successful Western
trajectory is connected to a mostly European invention of the late
nineteenth century, which today is referred to as the welfare state—
or Sozialstaat, l`État providence, verzorgingsstat, estado providencia
or sociale or del bienestar or social de derecho, stato sociale or del
benessere, estado de bem-estar-social, folkhemmet, fukushikokka
(社会福利国家), shèhuì fúlì guójiā (Pinyin simplified characters 社会
福 利 国 家 , traditional characters 社 會 福 利 國 家 )—but which
developed to its fullest extent after the Second World War.
All of these terms for the welfare state invoke something different
—folkhemmet is definitely not the same as l`État providence—and
the term ‘welfare state’ itself is radically undetermined. At its
narrowest, it may simply describe a given country’s arrangements for
income maintenance. At its broadest, it is a descriptor for the full
range of economic, social, political, and even cultural traits of a
given polity. This can generate confusion. In this volume, the focus
is upon policies and outcomes, though these go well beyond income
maintenance (to include, e.g. health, education, and housing), and
the idea of the welfare state as a particular political economy is an
ever-present background condition, sometimes brought to the fore.1
At all times, our survey of the ‘state of the welfare state’ adopts a
comparative perspective, a perspective vital for demonstrating the
huge variability of welfare state forms and trajectories, providing a
methodology for understanding the factors contributing to that
variability, and understanding the corridors laid out to bound such
variability in the many Atlantic and other Crossings (Rodgers 1998)
of reform ideas in academia and politics. The Handbook is designed
to cover all the relevant aspects of the modern Western welfare
state2 and to summarize the state of the art in contemporary welfare
state research. In eight Parts, it sheds light on the philosophical
justifications underlying the welfare state; the approaches, methods,
and disciplinary perspectives of comparative social policy research;
the historical development and driving forces of the welfare state;
and its past achievements, contemporary challenges, and likely
future developments.
Such a comprehensive endeavour inevitably requires an
international and interdisciplinary division of labour. This volume
consists of fifty-one chapters written by scholars from diverse
disciplinary backgrounds. The fact that the welfare state is, in
essence, a European invention (Flora 1986–87: vol. 1, xii) and has
experienced its greatest proliferation and expansion in north-western
Europe explains the strong presence of European scholars in
contemporary welfare state research. In contrast with the
dominance of US-based scholars in political science and other social
science disciplines, this volume brings together scholars from many
countries and achieves a balance between the English-speaking and
continental European worlds of scholarship.
 Origins of the Welfare State

The origins of the Western welfare state (Part II) date back to the
final quarter of the nineteenth century and are closely associated
with the deep societal, economic, and political transformations
taking place at that time. This Great Transformation (Polanyi 1957
[1944]) included industrialization and the rise of capitalism,
urbanization, and population growth. On the one hand, these
fundamental changes undercut the traditional forms of welfare
provision offered by family networks, charity organizations, feudal
ties, guilds, and municipalities, as well as churches and led, in
consequence, to a massive pauperization which was so impressively
described by Friedrich Engels in his analysis of the situation of the
working class in England (Engels 1975 [1845]), and is captured in
nineteenth-century fiction from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist
(1849/50) to Victor Hugo’s Les misérables (2008 [1882]). On the
other hand, the gains in productivity resulting from industrialization
provided the resources necessary to cope with the emerging ‘social
question’. In political terms, the second half of the nineteenth
century witnessed the formation of nation-states, secularization—
with fierce conflicts over jurisdiction in social and educational affairs
between the Catholic Church and liberals in continental Europe, an
unusually long period of peace, and, finally, the spread of civil rights
and mass democracy, putting in place the institutional basis for the
political articulation of ever-increasing social needs (Rimlinger 1971;
Alber 1982). Political and economic ideas also underwent substantial
change, with liberalism developing a strand more ready to accept
legislation designed to enable the individual to reach their potential
and an increasingly wider body of economic theory ready to admit
the possibility of raising taxes in order to permit state spending on
social programmes (broadly, for national variants on these themes,
see Rimlinger 1971: 35 ff.). The countermovement to Polanyi’s Great
Transformation (1957[1944]) gave rise to collective organization,
initially along class lines, and fashioned a growing labour movement,
which itself became an important driver of welfare state
consolidation.
While all the countries of Western Europe—and a few European
offshoots in North America and the Antipodes—were affected by
these fundamental transformations, the political responses to these
common challenges and the moral purposes in providing more or
less ‘welfare’ differed in many ways. Thus, we find remarkable
diversity with respect to the timing of welfare state consolidation;
policy goals (whether to provide a safety net for a few, to work
towards optimal provision for all, or simply to maintain the status
quo); the precise institutional solutions in terms of financing
mechanisms, programme type and administration, and the public–
private mix; the type of intervention (provision of transfers vs
regulatory social policy); and national trajectories of welfare state
building, i.e. whether social programmes were enacted from the top
down (as in the authoritarian monarchies in Europe) or emerged
from the bottom up (as in the democracies of the New World plus
Switzerland).
This diversity can be attributed to significant differences in
national political contexts that have, in their turn, been shaped by
different legacies in terms of state and nation building (Rokkan
1999); distinctive national political cultures, particularly in terms of
the degree of trust in the state and its capacity to solve problems;
differences in societal cleavage patterns and actor-constellations;
and differences in the pressure of socio-economic problems.
However, even this list of factors explaining the emergence and
diversity of the welfare state is far from exhaustive. Peter Baldwin
(1990: 36–37) has noted that there is hardly a variable which has
not been regarded as influential in this respect: ‘Industrialisation,
free trade, capitalism, modernisation, socialism, the working class,
civil servants, corporatism, reformers, Catholicism, war—rare is the
variable that has not been invoked to explain some aspect of its
development.’ In fact, there is neither a specific configuration of
socio-economic variables triggering welfare state consolidation, nor
is welfare state building related to a particular group of actors.
Rather, the countermovement against unregulated capitalism
consisted of actors from across the entire political spectrum (Polanyi
1957: 147).
Looking back at this founding period of the welfare state from the
vantage point of the early twenty-first century, what stands out is
that these early beginnings of state social policy coincided with what
we now recognize as the ‘first era of globalization’, commencing in
the 1870s and brought to an abrupt end with the declaration of war
in 1914 (see James 1996: 1–26; Bayly 2004). Creating a social
insurance system for blue-collar workers in the 1880s was perceived
by welfare state founders such as Bismarck as providing Germany
with a competitive advantage over England through what we might
now describe as a programme of social investment aimed at
promoting ‘endogenous growth’. The British bought into this view,
feeling that their former position as ‘workshop of the world’ was
profoundly challenged by developments elsewhere in Europe
(Hennock 2007).
It is not surprising then, that welfare state theorizing has mainly
been inductive and that the welfare state was almost at the peak of
its development by the time that modern welfare state theories
identifying the inputs and actors consequential for welfare state
growth (see Part IV) were formulated from the 1950s onwards.
There is, however, one exception to this rule that theorizing had to
await the mature development of the welfare state, and it is,
arguably, no coincidence that the first (functionalist) generation of
modern welfare state theories strongly built on this tradition of
reasoning. Even at the time of its inception, numerous social
scientists attributed the emergence of the welfare state to the
fundamental changes in society and economy brought about by
industrialization. Amongst them, German economist Adolph Wagner,
a leading Kathedersozialist, argued in 1893 that the far-reaching
changes in economy and society would generate increasing levels of
state intervention and rising public expenditure. On this basis, he
predicted the transformation of the nineteenth-century night
watchman state into a ‘Cultur- und Wohlfahrtsstaat’ (Wagner 1893).
Wagner’s law of a ‘growing public’ sphere (Lindert 2004) turned
out to be a powerful prediction. The rise of the welfare state during
the course of the twentieth century was impressive, as was the
concomitant growth and transformation of the public sector. In the
nineteenth century, the state had been substantially a warfare state,
with military spending amounting to 25 per cent of total public
expenditure. Public social expenditure, by contrast, was a residual
spending item equivalent to only about 5 per cent of public
expenditure, or less than one per cent of gross national product
(GDP) in most countries (Lindert 2004: 171–172; Cusack 2007:
105). By the second decade of the twenty-first century, however,
spending priorities had been entirely turned upside down. Today, on
average, in the long-standing Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) member states, more than half
of total public expenditure is absorbed by the welfare state, while
the military now occupies a residual position similar to that of the
welfare state in the late nineteenth century.
However, this growth in the size of the state, in terms of both
spending and the numbers of people it employs, together with its
more interventionist role, occurred in spurts and assumed quite
different trajectories in different countries. Governments may finance
social provision, directly provide welfare services as well as cash
benefits, and/or regulate provision made by the third or private
sectors. Different countries have committed to different roles for the
state at different periods in time. A first period of expansion
occurred between the two world wars (Rimlinger 1971; Alber 1982).
The devastating social repercussions of the First World War were a
triggering event (Obinger et al. 2018), but the transformation also
had important political sources. Democratization followed the
collapse of the imperial empires in Europe. Extensions to the
franchise provided underprivileged sections of society with a voice
and gave the parties of labour and an emergent Christian presence
in party politics access to the corridors of power for the first time.
And first efforts to internationalize social policy were already
underway, with the establishment of International Labour Office
(ILO) in 1919. In many countries, the Great Depression put an end
to this first phase of welfare state expansion. In some of them, such
as Britain and Australia, this represented merely a conservative turn,
but in others the effects were cataclysmic. Against a backdrop of
dramatic economic slowdown, some of the countries of continental
Europe made major benefit cutbacks, reinforcing political crisis, and,
in a number of cases, contributing to the downfall of democratic
regimes. In a few countries, however, economic stagnation was an
impetus to social policy transformation. In the United States and
New Zealand, the crisis was the prelude for welfare state take-off,
while, in Scandinavia, the same economic events were the precursor
of a move towards a new—and, arguably, more advanced—stage of
welfare state development.

Post-Second World War Development

The Second World War once again made the warfare state the first
priority, but, like its dreadful First World War predecessor, the end of
the war impelled further social policy expansion (Obinger and
Schmitt 2019). But note that, for the first time, it was also a war in
which the idea of welfare was presented as part of the casus belli
and as a reason why the war should be seen as a just war. Two of
the eight war aims in the Atlantic Charter of 14 August 1941, which
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on in Ship Harbour, Newfoundland,
concerned social welfare, specifically ‘securing, for all, improved
labor standards, economic advancement and social security’ (point
5) and ‘that all men in all the lands may live out their lives in
freedom from fear and want’ (point 6). ‘Social security’ now became
the grand international slogan (Kaufmann 2003). The Beveridge Plan
of 1942 is justly famous as one of the founding documents of the
modern welfare state, but much less well known is the fact that
there were also Nazi counterplans for a new kind of welfare state
after assumed victory (Recker 1985; Kott and Patel 2018). At this
tipping point of European history, the warfare and the welfare state
were ideologically fused into one.
The catastrophe of war and the subsequent commitment to
establish a new and internationally sanctioned order which would
protect peace and security had a major impact on post-war welfare
state development and social outcomes, such as income inequality
(Piketty 2014). War itself can be a ‘locomotive of change’, enhancing
and building new forms of social solidarity (Titmuss 1958; Goodin
and Dryzek 1995) and making state intervention and the funding to
finance it more acceptable in the ensuing peace (Scheve and
Stasavage 2016; Obinger et al. 2018). Moreover, the need for
economic reconstruction after the Second World War was a profound
stimulus to economic growth and provided resources for welfare
state expansion on an unprecedented scale. And the ‘Cold War’,
starting in 1947, if not even in 1945, instigated a competition of
economic systems and further supported ambitions to outcompete
the Eastern Bloc in terms of welfare performance (Obinger and
Schmitt 2011; Petersen 2013). This is the period which, in
retrospect, has sometimes been described, with a mixture of
hindsight and nostalgia, as a ‘Golden Age’ both of economic and of
welfare state development. War and the economic displacement it
caused had once again created enormous social needs, to which
countries were now better able to respond, given the centralization
of tax powers enacted during wartime and the sustained economic
growth initiated by post-war reconstruction. Moreover, a
commitment to prevent war ever again causing such physical,
economic, and social destruction was a driving force for European
integration, which was promoted in the initial post-war period as a
mechanism for preventing future conflicts through increased
economic integration and trade.
Although increased trade integration was the leitmotif of future
European economic development, the massive growth of the welfare
state during the so-called trentes glorieuses (1945–74) took place
against the backdrop of relatively closed economies. Because exit
options for mobile factors of production were low in the initial period
of the post-war settlement, there was considerable room for
redistribution, and this was exploited by governments of all partisan
complexions. ‘Liberalism’ could then be ‘embedded’, mostly in a
lasting fashion—and even the United States could see itself, at first,
as catching up with the European Joneses, and not, as in the period
from the 1980s onwards, as standing against the European welfare
tide in a kind of principled ‘exceptionalism’ (see Glazer 1998). The
experience of war and depression paved the way for the emergence
of a Keynesian consensus (however brittle in some countries),
justifying policies that promoted high levels of employment and high
tax and expenditures levels, as well as nourishing the notion that
government intrusion in economic and social affairs was imperative
for stabilizing demand and the business cycle in capitalist economies.
Distributional conflicts were mitigated by a comparatively
symmetrical balance of power between the interest organizations of
labour and capital and by exceptionally high rates of economic
growth. Partisan competition, as well as system competition in a
world now divided by an Iron Curtain, further fuelled welfare state
expansion. Under these circumstances, social benefits were
everywhere significantly raised, existing programmes were extended
to cover new groups of beneficiaries, and entirely new schemes
adopted (see Part V, describing trajectories of development of
expenditures and revenues, as well as a wide range of separate
social programmes). As a consequence, welfare state coverage, as
well as spending levels, rose dramatically, with important impacts on
policy outcomes, including a decrease in inequality and poverty, the
guarantee of social rights, and strong macroeconomic performance
(see Part VI).
Despite this massive expansion, however, the institutional
differences laid down in the era of welfare state consolidation
persisted or were transformed into new ones. Hence, Western
countries took different routes to and through welfare state
modernity (Therborn 1995; Castles 1998). In contrast to the claims
of functionalist accounts in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the mid-
1970s (Wilensky 1975), no marked convergence occurred as these
countries became wealthier. This holds true for social expenditure
and welfare state institutional patterns alike. Thus, the United States
remained a residual direct provider of public welfare, preserving
insurance-based benefits for particular groups deemed to be
deserving (in the main older people), using tax subsidies and
regulation to encourage private welfare provision and eschewing the
development of major state services (particularly health care)—the
latter leading to ever deeper conflict and recurring attempts at
health insurance reform (Oberlander 2016). At the other end of the
spectrum, the Scandinavian countries developed a full range of tax
and insurance-based benefits and public services. In light of these
persisting cross-national dissimilarities, welfare state research has
devoted a substantial intellectual effort to identifying the character
of these variations and their sources. Among the various
classifications suggested in the literature, Esping-Andersen’s (1990)
typology of welfare regimes is unquestionably the most important.
The historical origins, achievements, and vulnerabilities of these
welfare regimes, as well as of other ‘families of nations’ both within
and without the OECD area, constitute the topic of Part VII.

Critiques and Challenges

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the ‘Golden Age’ of welfare capitalism
began to falter, and the ‘Silver Age’ began to dawn (Taylor-Gooby
2002; Chapter 6 below). Deteriorating economic performance in the
wake of the oil shocks and the failure of many governments to cope
with emergent stagflation led to a (renewed) scepticism concerning
the role of the state in society and economy. As a consequence, the
welfare state was increasingly critiqued from almost every point on
the political spectrum. Conservatives complained about
ungovernability in general (Crozier et al. 1975), while liberals
lamented inefficiencies and paternalism. Certainly, though, the most
influential critiques—in terms of real-world political consequences—
were those articulated by theorists of neoliberalism and a newly
morally engaged conservatism (see Chapter 4 below), the ideas of
which gained more and more importance over time. In influential
conservative (‘New Right’) critiques of US attempts to address the
issue of poverty in the post-war era, Charles Murray (1984) launched
a powerful attack on the moral hazard of welfare policies, making a
case for the abolition of welfare benefits in the United States, while
Lawrence Mead (1986) also attacked the provision of welfare, but
argued for much greater conditionality in their administration—the
beginnings of the idea of ‘welfare-to-work’. In these accounts, and in
a pincer movement of both economists and political scientists, some
inspired by the neoliberal ideas of Hayek (1944) and Friedman (1992
[1962]) and others persuaded by the logic of rational choice
theories, who cast doubt on who really benefited from social
policies, state intervention was increasingly seen as part of the
problem, rather than as a tool for overcoming macroeconomic
imbalances or for social amelioration (documented and confronted
by Goodin 1988). Post-materialists argued that a growing welfare
state bureaucracy undermined individual autonomy and the
institutions of civil society (Beck 1999), while feminists perceived the
welfare state as an institution underpinning and freezing traditional
gender relations (Fraser 1994). Marxists, as they had at previous
stages of capitalist development, identified an emergent
contradiction, arguing that capitalism had ceased to be viable
without the welfare state but that, at the same time, the very
growth of the welfare state undermined the logic of capitalist
accumulation, producing a so-called ‘crisis of crisis management’ to
cite Gough (1979; see also Offe 1984; O’Connor 1973).
Arguably, though, the most influential critique—in terms of its real-
world political consequences—was that articulated by theories of
neoliberalism (see Part I), the ideas of which gained greater
importance over time. An ideological climate change was in the
making (Le Grand 1997): commentators and politicians in many
countries urged that more attention should be paid to the
responsibilities as opposed to the rights of individuals, particularly
the responsibility to engage in paid work. Such calls resulted in
policies that often were punitive in the United States, while Western
Europe developed more enabling ‘activation’ strategies, even though,
in the Nordic countries, the welfare state had been built firmly on
conditionality and the work/welfare relationship. Two decades of
unrelenting intellectual attack along these lines increasingly
challenged the optimistic faith in the beneficial effects of big
government on which the post-war welfare state consensus had
rested. Increasingly, the aspiration was to replace states with
markets—or, where that was not possible, with ‘quasi-markets’ (Le
Grand 1999). With the first moves being made in the English-
speaking countries, neoliberal ideas soon spread across the globe.
This process was accelerated and reinforced by international
organizations such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund and triggered a major rethinking of the role of the
state in economic and social affairs (Deacon et al. 1997), minimally
counterbalanced by international social institutions such as the ILO
and the World Health Organization, and by UN World Social Summits
as in 1995. ‘Rolling back the state’ to its core functions was
increasingly seen as offering major comparative advantages in an
international political economy which had undergone a fundamental
transformation (Scharpf 2000). This transformation had occurred in
several stages. The collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system
and the economic slowdown resulting from the two oil price shocks
in the 1970s began the process. The 1980s witnessed deregulation
and internationalization of capital markets and ever-increasing trade
liberalization. The collapse of communism in 1989 was a geopolitical
event that seemed to confirm the neoliberal view that public
intrusion in economic affairs leads to inefficiencies. The 1990s
witnessed the emergence of a truly ‘global’ economy and could build
on significant progress in European integration with the formation of
the Single European Market and later European Monetary Union,
with a European ‘common currency’ from 2002. Finally, eastwards
enlargement of the European Union (EU) from 2004 onwards
anchored a considerable disparity in wealth across EU member
states and created new opportunities to remove business and capital
to low wage countries.
Taken together, these external changes had far-reaching
consequences for advanced welfare states. The deepening of
European integration not only imposed constraints on fiscal and
monetary policy, which precluded the practice of traditional
Keynesian macroeconomic policies at the national level, but also
created ‘semi-sovereign’ welfare states which became embedded in
an emerging multi-level social policy regime (Leibfried and Pierson
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
We cut her open and found the dame that was the cause of all this.
What shall I do now?"

"My better instincts say to slug her. The stuff I was taught at my
mother's knee says to spare the violence. Keep her there until I get
finished at 6."
"She insists on going to the main office."
"Y'might let her," said McBride thoughtfully, his voice slightly sour with
distaste.
"Gosh, boss, you can't do that."
"I know. Well, she can't get out of the lock without your assistance.
Unless I'm mistaken, all of you are far too busy to bother with a
headstrong female."
The phone was silent for a few seconds, and the sounds of a light
scuffle came over the line. Then a cool contralto came.
"I'm Sandra Drake," it said with a world of impertinence. "No man is
going to tell me where I can't go!"
"Sister," snapped McBride, "you keep that up and we'll jolly well tell
you where you can go!" McBride hung up and redoubled his efforts
on the charge-reversal generator. "Women," he snarled, twisting the
generator controls as though he had the Drake woman by the throat.
Ten minutes before they landed at 6, McBride picked up the phone
and called 1. He spoke to his apartment. "Hello Enid," he said.
"John! What's all the shouting about?"
"La Drake tried to run her crate through the lens. She broke it."
"Who's la Drake?"
"Some dame. Look, Enid, what do you do to handle a headstrong
female? Besides giving her enough rope to commit self-destruction?"
"What's her purpose in life?" asked Enid McBride.
"Proving that men are inferior animals."
"I won't answer that one," chuckled McBride's wife. "Look, John,
where is this man-killer?"
"At 10."
"That's negative, isn't it?"
"Bright woman, yes," laughed McBride.
"Well, I'm no space-warp expert. How would I know?"
"Look, dear," said McBride patiently, "you divide them by two, as I've
said before a million times, and if they come out with nothing left over,
they're negative."
"But we're on 1—and you can't even divide one by two—"
"I know. One's positive anyway, Enid. Look, kiddo, leave things like
screwdrivers and volt-meters and calipers to me and you continue
with the can opener as your only tool. What are we going to do to
Drake?"
"You stop on your way back and pick her up. I'll take care of Drake.
What did you say her first name was?"
"I didn't, but it's Sandra."
"Oh! You mean Sandra Drake, the novelist-adventuress?"
"I mean Sandra Drake, the she space-barnacle on the hull of
progress."
"Oh, I've heard of her. And, John, I'll take care of her!"
"O.K., Enid. I'll see you when I get there."
"'By."

Six was as silent as the proverbial tomb. They breached the lock from
the outside and went in slowly, to find the station a shambles. Fred
Atlock, the superintendent of 6, they found after some search. He
was unconscious, suffering from superficial shock, and he had a four-
inch cut on his shoulder which was slowly seeping blood from a large
clot. Dan Wilkins, the only other man on that station, they discovered
in the generator room, clinging speechlessly to the output terminals of
the alphatronic power supply. McBride cut the switch, which was one
of the few that hadn't welded shut, and the generator stopped
immediately, permitting Wilkins to free himself. "Great Lord," he
gasped. "I've been sitting there for nine years!"
"By actual count, it's been one hour and twenty-three minutes,"
McBride told him. "How do you feel?"
"O.K.," said Wilkins in a matter-of-fact tone, and with a slight eye-
brow-raising look of surprise on his face that anyone should ask.
"After all, anything under twelve hundred alphons merely paralyzes all
of the voluntary muscles. The involuntary muscles are as good as
gold up to that figure. I just feel a little stiff, like I'd been sitting in one
position for an hour and better—which I have. I did everything but
explode when that phone rang, but I couldn't will myself loose. When
you're across one of those things, you can't even wink an eye at will,
but must wait until the involuntary nervous system winks it for you.
And, funny thing, you can't even stop your own breath; you just go on
breathing automatically, since that's what the involuntary system
demands."
"O.K. Where's the gang from 4 and 8?"
"I dunno. Are they coming?"
"Coming? I thought they were here by now."
McBride found the telephone and called 8. "Jimmy? Where is that
gang you were going to send to 6?"
"Sorry, Mac," answered Jimmy. "They were needed here to do a
heavy job, and so I kept them for a bit. They're on their way now."
"O.K., as long as they're on their way."
McBride's call to 4 was less productive. "Pete? Where is your crowd
for 6?"
"Can't send more than one," returned Pete. "Still want him?"
"Why didn't you contact me?"
"Line was busy."
"O.K., send one man. The gang at 6 was indisposed, that's all, and
Dan can work now. Fred is going to be out of commission for the
duration, but he can still direct as soon as we get him patched."
To Wilkins, he said: "Dan, we're going to trot. There'll be help out here
soon. Tommy and I are needed on 10."
The flitter took off again and began to cross the lens for 10.
Allison, at 2, called and said: "McBride? Good news. Two and 3 are
ready for service."
"Swell," said McBride. "Now look, call the stations and ask who needs
help. You and Fellowes go out and assist."
"Right."
McBride hung up the phone, and it rang almost immediately.
"Mac? This is Caldwell."
"Yes, Doc?"
"Look, Carlson is in bad shape."
"Can you jack him up? Not now, but say in three hours?"
"Probably, but not more than a few minutes. He'd be better in twenty-
four hours."
"Gad, Doc, Pluto'll be forty-eight degrees colder in that time! Knock
forty-eight degrees off of the temperature on any planet, and you'll
probably knock the whole thing for a loop. Better patch him up, Doc,
because he's one of the mainsprings that'll be needed when we're
about to restore the lens."
"O.K.—and say, John, you don't mind my making a hospital out of
your lab?"
"Go ahead. How's the casualty situation?"
"Nothing fatal. Mostly an assortment of cuts, bruises, fractures, and
shock. I've been checking the stations, and we've been calling all bad
injuries in here for treatment. Takes a little longer, but I can keep my
eye on more men if they come than I could if I went traveling. Never
can tell what'll happen."
"Have you contacted the after stations? They got a shaking up, but I
don't believe that it was anything compared to the fore element
stations."
"No, most of the trouble in the back was due to being hit by slowly
moving objects of high inertia. They're mostly annoyed, back there.
The front system got it, though, what with flying spots of molten
metal, electrical discharges that convulsed muscles, and burns from
the alphatrons when they went load-free. A few of the boys got hurt
when the mechano-gravitic generators collected the full load of the
power sources and let them have anything from 10 to 15-G until the
gravity-switches cut out. That did more than haul the men to the floor;
it also hauled a lot of what would have been light stuff down on top of
them at weights from ten to fifteen times normal. That's what hurt the
most of them."
"What fell, mostly?"
"Light fixtures, and ceiling equipment. The busbar hangers on 7 gave
way and dropped a bus line on one fellow, breaking both legs.
Eleven's mechano-gravitic generator misfocused and hauled
everything slaunchwise into a corner of every room. The men picked
themselves out of a pile of material; everything from loose generators
to odds and ends of wire. The latter didn't hurt, but the heavy
machinery did."
"Fine business, Doc. Keep 'em patched!"
"That's my business," said Caldwell. McBride could hear him
muttering as the doctor hung up.

McBride's flitter landed at 10, and inside of the lock, he was met by a
picturesque red-headed woman of extreme beauty. There was green
fire in her eyes, and her anger possibly made her more beautiful.
McBride took everything from her expensively-shod feet to her
exquisitely coiffed hair in one sweeping glance and decided
immediately that it was a shame that a woman like Sandra Drake
should have been a stinker.
"Mr. McBride, I assume?" she said in that contralto voice.
"Dr. McBride," he corrected, standing upon his dignity for the first time
in seven years.
"Doctor?" said Sandra scornfully. "Doctor of what?"
"Doctor of Philosophy, major in sublevel energies including the
gravitic spectrums; electro, magnetic, and mechanical. Master of
Mathematics, Bachelor of Arts, and Doctor of Language and
Literature Honorary. Is that sufficient weight to gain me a modicum of
respect?"
"I have no respect for someone who stands in my way!"
"I see that. Nor anything, either. Do you know what stopped you?"
"No, but—"
"Your precious Dr. Holmann is an old goat who is still living in the
past. But even he should have known that you can't ram a space-ship
made of cupralum alloy through a magneto-gravitic space warp.
Permalloy, or alnico, or anything diamagnetic will zip through such a
warp and pick up velocity on the way—probably enough in this case
to crush you flat against the bottom of your ship. But a paramagnetic
alloy such as cupralum has about as much penetrative power as a
forty-five caliber slug of wet soap against tungsten-carballoy. But at
your velocity, not only did you stop in something short of nothing flat
—God knows what your deceleration added up to—but you fractured
the space warp, too."
"A man will do anything to prove his point," snapped Sandra. "And I
have no doubt that you would do anything, too. What did you use on
the Lady Luck?"
"Nothing."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't give a care! You want to go to Station 1? Then come along!"
"You lead in your ship, I'll drive the Lady Luck," said Sandra.
"Not on your life. You're going to leave the Lady Luck right here."
"I don't see why—or do you intend to steal my ship?"
McBride gritted his teeth. "Look, beautiful and senseless. This is
Station 10. It is electronegative. One is electropositive. You haven't
got a charge-reversal generator in that crate of yours, because I know
darned well that the only place where they have 'em is right here in
the lens itself. It's the only place they're needed. Now, Miss Drake,
the lens is twenty-two million miles in diameter. It is that size because
a disk of that diameter subtends the same arc as the sun does when
viewed from Terra. Since the lens is situated halfway between Sol
and Pluto, the magnification amounts to the projection of the sun on
Pluto equal to the sun on Terra. Or don't you understand the simpler
mathematics of optical systems?
"Now, out across six and a half million miles of space, from here, are
Stations 9 and 1, both electropositive. It so happens, Miss Sandra
Drake, that if the density of matter in space were as high as the
atmosphere of Terra at twenty thousand feet, the difference in charge
between Station 9 and this one, 10, would be high enough to cause
an ionization discharge! Now put that in that jade cigarette holder and
choke on it! Can you possibly—is that microscopic mind of yours
large enough—conceive of the effect upon contact? Sister, you'd not
only be electrocuted, but you'd light up the sky with the electronic
explosion to a degree that would make some Sirian astronomer think
that there was a supernova right in his back yard. Now quit acting like
the spoiled brat you are, and come along."
"Nice, high-sounding, technical words," sniffed the red-headed girl. "I
presume that you have such a thing in that little can of yours? I mean
something that will change the charge on it while in flight?"
"I wouldn't have survived the first crossing if I hadn't," snapped
McBride.
"And pray tell, how do you detect the change in the electronic charge
from within?"
"The electronic charge is so great that a heavy active atom such as
bromine will, under the positive charge, lose enough of the outer ring
electrons as to inhibit the formation of the more complex atoms, while
under the negative charge there will be such an excess of electrons
that a heavy element of the zero group, such as xenon, will actually
be forced to accept an additional planetary electron and will then
combine with some of the more active elements. So when xenon
bromide forms, we know we're highly electronegative, while the
chemical dissolution of tetrachlorodibromomethane indicates a
hellishly high positive charge. When we approach the station, we use
a little gadget known as an electrostatic gradient indicator which is
useful over short distances, and with which we adjust our charge-
difference to a sane value. Pluto and the solar system in general can
thank their stars that the carbon-chain molecules that go into the
human system are stable enough to resist dissolution. We are able to
maintain the lens on less than enough charge to kill us all, though the
boys in the odd-numbered stations report a lower metabolism than
those in the even numbered ones."
McBride paused. "And if you're worried about that space-warp-
wrecked can of yours, I'll be more than glad to give you a receipt for
it. Coming? I've got to go."
Sandra Drake was still skeptical, but she followed in spite of it.
John McBride was met at the space lock of Station 1 by one of the
lesser casualties from 3, Douglas Whitlock. McBride said: "How's the
arm, Doug?"
"Broken, but on the mend. Doc will put a stader on it in a couple of
days and I'll be able to use it again."
"How's 3?"
"Not too bad. But, brother, there's a million miles of loose wire floating
around the place. Tonk and Harry are rewinding the alphatron leader-
coils which developed a shorted turn down near the core."
"How are they doing that?" asked McBride.
"It was tricky, all right. And this'll slay you. They're using the nine-inch
lathe!"
"Huh?" McBride was thunder-struck.
"Well, as Tonky said, it was an emergency. So they used the
acetylene torch to cut the lathe bed off right before the headstock.
They moved the rest of the bed back about twelve feet and welded it
to one wall of the room. Now, there's room to get that big core in the
lathe. The lathe is ruined, of course, or rather the bed is, but the
alphatron will be ticking them off in another couple of hours." Whitlock
looked at the girl and asked McBride: "Where did you find her?"
"This," said McBride, "is Miss Sandra Drake."
"Oh yes," said Whitlock brightly, "Drake, the human cannon ball ... or
is it screwball?"
"And what happened to you?" asked Sandra caustically. "Did you
step into an open port in the dark?"
"Frankly, I was hit by a falling busbar—"
"Probably the real cause of this whole failure."
There was fire and blood in Whitlock's eye as he looked at Sandra
Drake. Actual bloodshed was averted by a very scant margin when
Enid McBride entered and stepped before Sandra, cutting off any
attempt of Whitlock's to advance upon the red-headed female with
intent to inflict damage.
Enid McBride was three or four years older than the other woman,
and it must be reluctantly admitted that she was not the four-alarm
all-out beauty that was capable of matching looks with Sandra. On
the other—and most important—hand, Enid had the ability to make
men and women like her; in her less boisterous way, Enid's charm
and personality made itself felt even before she spoke to Sandra.
"You're needed," she told Sandra quietly.
"For what?" asked the Drake girl, and her cool contralto sounded
scratchy in contrast.
"We've a number of hurt men here and we need help. You're elected."
"I've never helped a man in my life."
"You are getting no younger," said Enid with a short laugh. "I'd say it
was about time you started."
"Oh men!"
Enid looked at McBride, and with that almost telepathy that seems to
exist between husband and wife, John understood that he was to
leave this to Enid. He thought with a smile: Enid's smaller, but I'll bet
she packs a better wallop! Then he motioned to Whitlock, and they
left as Enid said: "You're a complete washout, my dear, and your not
knowing that makes you even more complete. Why don't you get
smart?"
"Are you trying to tell me how to manage my life?"
"It's time someone did. Obviously you aren't capable of managing it."
"I do all right."
"Nuts. If this is a sample of your brilliance, I say, 'bring back the good
old days!' Look, Sandra, what are you trying to prove?"
"That I'm as good as any man."
"Spinach. Ask any man and he'll probably admit it. What you're trying
to prove is that you're better than all men, isn't that it?"
"Well—"
"And since you are superior to men, no doubt you'd prefer legal
protection for them—marriage laws designed to assist and protect the
weaker and inferior male; labor restrictions so that grasping women
may not take advantage of them; protection so that avaricious women
will not be able to take advantage of his lesser experience?"
"Why that's ridiculous!"
"Is it? A few hundred years ago, men set up such laws to protect
women because they realized that there were among their own sex,
men who would think nothing of taking advantage of an unwary
woman. As soon as the women decided that they were equals, men
reluctantly removed that protection. Now, Sandra, if you are equal or
superior to men, you should be civic-minded enough to want to
protect the weaker."
"Bah! You talk like a man!"
"Nonsense. I'd scream like a stuck pig if any man decided that I
couldn't take care of myself. But I have enough sense to realize that
all of the courtesies that men offer me are tokens of their affection
and not gestures toward someone who cannot get in out of the rain
without help. As for the weak, what would you say to a man who
slugged a woman and then ran off and left her to suffer?"
"He's a rat!"
"How about the dame who does the same to a man?"
"That's—"
"Be careful, Sandra Drake. The girl I'm speaking of is you!"
"Well—" Sandra let the sentence die in midstream.
"Think it over, lady wrestler. And when you make up your mind, come
on in and help."
Enid left Sandra standing in the room. She went to the improvised
hospital and began to work. Her touch was gentle, but within her,
Enid burned. To Enid, Sandra Drake was as representative of the
female sex as poison ivy is representative of the plant family.

John McBride faced the men in his office. "Give it to me in rotation,"

he said. "Starting with Station 1."
"We're down to the ruined relays and a few hundred feet of burned
cable. A half hour with help."
"Two is running O.K. on test power. She can stand a little sprucing,
but that can wait."
"Three is ready for test power, or will be within the next ten minutes or
so."
"Four will be O.K. as soon as we get the space-warp generator tuned.
We managed to repair the input circuits."
"Five is running on test power."
"Six is ditto."
"Seven is still cleaning up some of the mess, but can go on test
power as soon as the time is ripe."
"Eight is O.K. except for some burned cable and some messiness.
We never were in really bad shape."
"We're still cleaning relay contacts with files. Take another hour at
least, and we've got so much help that the boys on the upper panels
are standing on the shoulders of the men working on the lower
panels. Also, they're so close together that they need a hortator to
beat time so their elbows won't clash. That's how we stand on 9."
"Ten's in shape for test."
"Eleven needs a new alphatron, which is being hooked into place
right now."
"Twelve is ready to go on test, according to Ben, who called just
before you came."
McBride smiled wearily. "That's the fore element," he said. "They tell
me that the rear element is all ready and waiting. So all we need now
is Carlson. Give orders to have the propulsion operators start aligning
their stations. And get me Doc Caldwell."
The phone rang and McBride picked it up. "This is Doc," said the man
on the other end. "Look, Mac, can you come over to my office?"
"Sure," answered McBride. To the men in the room, he said: "Fight it
out among you. Give help to any station that still needs it. We're
going back in service as soon as we can—in an hour, I'd estimate.
That's if Carlson is capable of handling his end."
McBride went to Doc's office. Caldwell smiled bleakly. "He's
conscious. He insists on talking to you."
"Is he O.K.?"
"He's weak, but he'll be all right for a few minutes."
"Look, Doc, I don't want to kill anybody by making him work when
he's likely to keel over, but we need Carlson if we ever needed any
man. Darn it, why are there so very few men with supersensitive
balance?"
"It's hereditary, and the human race is still mongrel by its own law,"
said Doc with a smile. "By which I mean that it is illegal to marry your
own brother—or sister."
McBride laughed, and then went in to see Carlson.
"Carl," said McBride, "how do you feel?"
"Wobbly."
"How wobbly?"
"Not too bad. How're things?"
"We've been running around like waltzing mice for the past few hours,
but we'll be ready for business in a few hours."
"I'll be needed."
"In an hour."
"I'll be up."
"He'll be up," said Doc. "How long will he be needed?"
"Perhaps an hour."
"He won't be up that long."
"What can we do?"
"Get everything ready. If he can hold out, or if you can set things so
that the warp can be established in a shorter time, we're in. You
couldn't hold a partial warp for any length of time?"
"Not a chance. It's one of those yes or no things. You can't stand still
while building a space warp. You must either build up or let fall."
"If you could use something less than perfect, supersensitive balance,
I could buck him up with a bit of dope and he'd last longer."
"Why not stand by with the needle? Or could you give him something
that will wear off in a half hour and sort of increase that balance as
the time passes—giving him the buck-up at the first and saving that
strength for later?"
"Might work, but I sort of hate to take finely-cut chances like that,"
said Caldwell. "We'll try it!"

The last report was in, and all stations were ready and operating on
test power. McBride spoke into the broadcast communicator, so that
the superintendents of all stations could hear him simultaneously.
"Rear element, fore stations, set up primary warp."
Generators whined up the musical scale in the twelve stations that
circled the junction between the fore and aft elements. Slowly and
ponderously, the stations began to fall into a true plane, and as they
began to align, the electro-gravitic generators began to work more
efficiently.
Before the warp had started to form, McBride called: "Rear element,
rear stations, set up secondary warp!"
The rearmost twelve began to fling their power across the circle, and
the space between the two regular polygons began to take lenticular
shape. As it formed, it thickened, and the massiveness of the space
between the warps set the stations more firmly in place. They
oscillated gently back and forth, in a damped cycle and would be
moving in gentler and smaller excursions for days before they came
to total rest.
"Fore ring, set up magneto-gravitic warp!"
The heavy alphatrons began to fill the space between the fore
stations with alpha particles. Circling in ever-decreasing spirals, the
particles set up a super-powerful magnetic field parallel to the axis of
the lens. As they reached the center of the lens, the alpha particles
lost velocity and with their lost speed, they also lost their effect. They
died out, and to all effects, disappeared.
The space between the electro-gravitic warp and the magneto-
gravitic warp decreased as the fore warp thickened, and then with a
sickening swell on the part of the stations themselves, the center of
the fore warp touched the center of the aft warp.
Cohesion took place, and the fore warp, not completely formed,
snapped back against the electro-gravitic warp, drawing the fore
stations back a few miles with it. Their mass made them pass the
point of balance, and then the overly-convex surface exerted
pressure against the stations, and they moved forward into damped
oscillation. The oscillation continued for four long, slow swings, and
then McBride decided that they were stable enough for continued
action.
"Doc," he yelled. "Get Carlson, take the surface flitter, and keep an
eye on him while he keeps an eye on the lens!"
Out across the fore surface of the magneto-gravitic warp went the
surface flitter. Out across the firm surface of warped space went the
flitter, running on the way of magnetic power where pseudo-gravity
was made at will. It ran across the lens to the center, and Carlson
seated himself in a stiff chair and put his head against a niche in the
hard back. Before his mouth a microphone was placed, and every bit
of motion was stopped in the flitter. Even the doctor sat quiet in order
that he would not disturb Carlson's perfect balance.
"We're thick on the 5 edge," he said, and McBride turned and spoke
to Station 5.
"Decrease alphatron output," he said.
"Now about one quarter that amount on 6."
The adjustments were made, and Carlson's perfect balance told him
whether or not the optical axis of the lens was correct by its pull upon
the semicircular canals of his inner ear. A half hour passed, during
which the power output of the various stations were adjusted, and
after each adjustment, there was a period of waiting as the new
output demanded a new positioning of the station to meet the curve
of the lens. Then Carlson said, in a tired voice: "Mac, they're O.K., I
think. Circle 'em!"
"How's he, Doc?" asked McBride.
"O.K., but weak. He'll last another fifteen minutes."
"Make him rest for that time. We'll need him then."
McBride gave the signal, and the three rings began to rotate; the fore
and aft rings going clockwise and the center ring moving in the
opposite direction.
Then, fifteen minutes later, when the rings had gained their orbital
velocity, Carlson resumed his post.
For ten minutes he sat stiffly in the chair, his eyes closed and his
every nerve straining to catch imperfections in the thickness of the
gravitic warps. He was the key to success, and he had no equal. For
the strength of the pseudo-gravities and the power of the magnetic
field that coupled with the fore element prevented any of the more
intricate machinery from functioning. Only man, whose nervous
system was not interrupted by magnetic fields, and whose chemistry
and physical attributes were not overly disturbed by electronic
charges, could have established the correction of the lens.
Carlson and Dr. Caldwell sat out in the center of a magneto-gravitic
field that would have destroyed the finest of balance-mechanism, and
above an electro-gravitic field that would have prevented the
operation of an instrument sensitive enough to detect imperfections in
gravitic alignment.
Always there would be men with Carlson's gift of super-perfect
balance, and they would find their life work in maintaining the life-
giving lenticular warp in space.
Carlson slumped wearily in his chair and smiled tiredly. "O.K.," he
said. Caldwell started the crude drive and the surface flitter started to
cross the lens to Station 1.

On Pluto, the first sign of renewed life was a flash of light in the sky. It
started as an expanding pinpoint and burst out over a quarter of the
sky before it diminished to a safe value. The scintillating fingers that
darted from the twelve-scalloped sun were still. Then, as the
magneto-gravitic warp was established, the color of the sun changed
slightly, as the compounded lens removed harmful radiations by
controlled chromatic aberration. The size of pseudo-sol expanded
and contracted, and then settled down to a familiar size. The long
fingers of light, that were leakages through the interstices between
the stations, began to change as the stations took up their orbital
movement. Then the streamers began to spread outward from the
sun, detaching themselves as they reached maximum length and
dying as their inner ends crept out to meet the far extension of the
streamer. Between them, other streamers started to grow.
The pattern became familiar, and the men and women of Pluto
ceased to look at the wonder of their returned sun.
Then they returned to their everyday lives.
THE END.
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIRCLE OF
CONFUSION ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of
this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept
and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and
may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the
terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of
the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE