The Withering of the Welfare State

The post-war decades of prosperity and increased public expenditure on the comprehensive provision of public welfare services to all citizens went into reverse from the 1970s. The capacity to satisfy the demand for socially protective public services declined, along with the will to impose the redis [...]
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The post-war decades of prosperity and increased public expenditure on the comprehensive provision of public welfare services to all citizens went into reverse from the 1970s. The capacity to satisfy the demand for socially protective public services declined, along with the will to impose the redistributive taxation to pay for them. The regression from the high standards achieved is examined in this volume by considering the shifting balance between state and societal intervention in people's lives. The contributors also assess the ways in which governments have adapted their aims and practices to deal politically and administratively with their changed roles. The intrusive impact of national and international market and environmental pressures is analyzed along with the interstate fate of human welfare and the way it competes with military expenditure for increasingly scarce resources. Managing orderly retreat has been a challenge to statecraft and is comparatively evaluated.