Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe

PETER TAYLOR-GOOBY directs the ESRC Social Contexts and Responses to Risk network and the EU Welfare Reform and the Management of Societal Change project. He has written a substantial number of books and articles on welfare state reform and on risk and public policy. He once worked on the social security benefits counter in Newcastle.

This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.The new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.