The 'welfare state', the object of a substantial amount of policy research over the last three
decades or so, is an ill defined entity. Definitions found in the literature tend to be based …

Reforms of public pension schemes, health care systems and labour market programmes
have been amongst the most salient political issues for some years. The reasons for …

Studies of welfare state reform2 have been booming in recent years. Today the literature in
the area offers a large number of theoretical arguments on what, for instance, causes cross …

Contemporary accounts of welfare state change have produced conflicting findings and
incompatible theoretical explanations. By discussing the most salient aspects of …

This chapter focuses on a particular dependent variable problem in comparative welfare
state research. It will assess the strengths and limits of comparative inquiries analysing …

Bold claims are often made about the current development of welfare states, both by critical
theorists of social policies and by the politicians that are reforming them. But characterizing …

This chapter summarises the difficulties of defining the term" welfare state". It focuses on the
theoretical discussion accompanying the so-called" established welfare states". The chapter …

The introduction of innovative macro-measures has been one of the preferred means to
account for identified limitations of traditional quantitative approaches in comparative …

Generally regarded as the main trigger for the 'welfare modelling business', Esping-
Andersen's (1990) The three worlds of welfare capitalism incidentally also heralded the so …

This chapter discusses three broad categories of approaches: quantitative, qualitative
comparative and single case studies, focuses on the most important methods available and …