chapter 20
...................................................................................................................................................THEWELFARESTATE
...................................................................................................................................................jacob s. hacker
In the last two decades, students of public aVairs have taken an increasingly keen
interest in the welfare state—the complex of policies that, in one form or other, all
rich democracies have adopted to ameliorate destitution and provide valued social
goods and services. Leading scholarly journals are awash with analyses of social
welfare policy, and a number of books and articles on the topic now stand as
modern classics (notably, Cameron 1978 ; Esping-Andersen 1990 ; Heclo 1974 ;
Skocpol 1992 ). Contemplating this non-stop rush of academic commentary, one
prominent social policy expert (Taylor-Gooby 1991 , xi) invoked the lament of
Ecclesiastes: ‘‘Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a
weariness of theXesh.’’
As natural as this state of aVairs has come to seen, it was not always so. In 1974 ,in
one of theWrst political analyses of social policy, Hugh Heclo observed that ‘‘for
anyone interested in the human terms of politics, perhaps the most fundamental
change that is taken for granted is the growth of modern social policy’’ (Heclo 1974 , 1 ).
Indeed, what is striking in retrospect—not to mention, in light of the huge share of the
economy that social spending consumes—is precisely howfewscholars concerned
themselves with the welfare state in the years before Heclo’s words were penned.
What happened? The simple answer is that the welfare state leapt into the head-
lines. Once protected by a real, if uneasy, postwar consensus, the welfare state came
under increasing political and economic strain in the post- 1970 s period, making it a
subject of debate as it had not been for decades. Ironically, while the two to
three decades after the Second World War featured dramatic welfare state expansion,