Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T22:34:52.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2015

Martin Powell  and
Armando Barrientos
Martin Powell
Affiliation:
Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham E-mail: [email protected]
Armando Barrientos
Affiliation:
Brooks World Poverty Institute, School of Environment, Education, and Development, University of Manchester E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Gosta Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism has become one of the most cited works in social policy (over 20,600 Google Scholar citations; 20 October 2014). This path-breaking work, with its identification of three distinct forms of welfare capitalism in high income countries, has become the basis for a whole academic industry described as the Welfare Modelling Business (Abrahamson 1999; Powell and Barrientos 2011). According to Headey et al. (1997: 332), it has become a canon in comparative social policy against which any subsequent work must situate itself. Abrahamson (1999) notes that, since the publication of the book, every welfare state scholar has referred to Esping-Andersen's tripolar scheme. Scruggs and Allen (2006: 55, 69) remark that it ‘is difficult to find an article comparing welfare states in advanced democratic countries (or a syllabus on social policy) that does not refer to this seminal work’, and ‘it is hard to overstate the significance of the impact of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC) on comparative studies of the welfare state’. Its seminal status is evidenced by the extent to which it continues to be cited in articles on comparative welfare states. It also remains required reading for most (graduate) students of comparative political economy and social policy (Scruggs and Allen, 2008). Kröger (2011) claims that, with few exceptions, comparative social policy research is shaped by welfare regime analysis. Arts and Gelissen conclude that TWWC is a defining influence upon the whole field of comparative welfare state research (2010: 569). Danforth (2014) writes that the ‘three worlds’ typology has become one of the principal heuristics for examining modern welfare states. In short, TWWC is a ‘modern classic’ (Arts and Gelissen, 2002).

Type
Themed Section on Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 241 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamson, P. (1999) ‘The welfare modelling business’, Social Policy and Administration, 33, 4, 394–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arts, W. and Gelissen, J. (2002) ‘Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism or more?’, Journal of European Social Policy, 12, 2, 137–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arts, W. and Gelissen, J. (2010) ‘Models of the welfare state’, in Castles, F., Liebfried, S. and Lewis, J. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 569–83.Google Scholar
Bambra, C. (2006a) ‘De-commodification and the worlds of welfare revisited’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16, 1, 73–80.Google Scholar
Bambra, C. (2006b) ‘Defamilisation and welfare state regimes: a cluster analysis’, International Journal of Social Welfare, 16, 74, 326–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danforth, B. (2014) ‘Worlds of welfare in time: a historical reassessment of the three-world typology’, Journal of European Social Policy, 24, 2, 164–82.Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, B. (2012) ‘Comparing welfare state regimes: are typologies an ideal or realistic strategy?’, 10 Years of ESPAnet – The Anniversary Conference, University of Edinburgh, 6–8 September.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999), The Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ferragina, E. and Seeleib-Kaiser, M. (2011) ‘The welfare regime debate: past, present, futures?’, Policy and Politics, 39, 4, 583–611.Google Scholar
Ferragina, E., Seeleib-Kaiser, M. and Tomlinson, M. (2013) ‘Unemployment protection and family policy at the turn of the 21st century: a dynamic approach to welfare regime theory’, Social Policy and Administration, 47, 7, 783–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodin, R. (1988) Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, P. and Soskice, D. (eds.) (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Headey, B., Goodin, R., Muffels, R. and Dirven, H.-J. (1997) ‘Welfare over time: Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in panel perspective’, Journal of Public Policy, 17, 3, 329–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, C. (2008) ‘Worlds of welfare services and transfers’, Journal of European Social Policy, 18, 2, 151–62.Google Scholar
Kröger, T. (2011) ‘Defamilisation, dedomestication and care policy’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 31, 7/8, 424–40.Google Scholar
Orloff, A. S. (1993) ‘Gender and the social rights of citizenship: the comparative analysis of state policies and gender relations’, American Sociological Review, 58, 3, 303–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orloff, A. S. (2009) ‘Gendering the comparative analysis of welfare states: an unfinished agenda’, Sociological Theory, 27, 3, 317–43.Google Scholar
Powell, M. and Barrientos, A. (2004) ‘Welfare regimes and the welfare mix’, European Journal of Political Research, 43, 1, 83–105.Google Scholar
Powell, M. and Barrientos, A. (2011) ‘An audit of the welfare modelling business’, Social Policy and Administration, 45, 1, 69–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scruggs, L. and Allan, J. (2006) ‘Welfare-state decommodification in 18 OECD countries: a replication and revision’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16, 1, 55–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scruggs, L. and Allan, J. (2008), ‘Social stratification and welfare regimes for the twenty-first century’, World Politics, 60, 4, 642–64.Google Scholar
Stoy, V. (2014) ‘Worlds of welfare services: from discovery to exploration’, Social Policy and Administration, 48, 3, 343–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar