Welfare States and Capitalist Markets

In spite of an impressive expansion predominant welfare state research suffers from five important weaknesses: a linear conception of welfare state growth, a neglect of welfare state efficiency, an excessive quantification of variables, a Social Democratic bias, and an underdevelopment of theory. While the first four are held to be untenable undercurrent societal cir cumstances, the paper concentrates on theoretical problems Welfare states are conceptualized as social systems of human reproduction, and a theory of market failures and market conflicts is sketched to account for the development of welfare states. A combination of economic and sociological theory is used to lay out a theory of welfare states as providers of public goods and of different kinds of private goods. Economic theory and socio- political theory are used to outline determinants of the supply and demand for state contributions to human reproduction.