This three-volume compendium reproduces all the key texts on the welfare state - its rise and fall, its varying rationales and instrumentalities, its different forms in different periods and different places. Political history and social theory are interspersed with sociology and economics, and neo-liberal analyses sit alongside socialist and feminist ones. Anglo-American experiences are contrasted not only with German and Scandinavian but also with Japanese and Taiwanese, Italian and Hungarian, Austrian and South Asian, thus highlighting the many distinct styles of welfare states and the...