Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility

Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility. By Neil Gilbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 224p. $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper. For more than a decade, students of social policy have debated the argument that welfare state development is a path-dependent process that makes radical change difficult (see Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? [1994]). From this perspective, existing policy legacies create powerful constraints for policymakers seeking to enact retrenchment measures or to alter the functioning of the welfare state. As a result, most reforms tend to reinforce existing institutional patterns instead of changing them in a strong way. In recent years, authors such as Neil Gilbert have challenged this view. In Transformation of the Welfare State, he challenges Pierson's argument through a broad analysis of social policy development in the United States and Western Europe during the 1980s and 1990s.