The Welfare State in Capitalist Society: Policies of Retrenchment and Maintenance in Europe, North America, and Australia

Barbara Lenes McLennan is a graduate economics student in Edmonton.

In The Welfare State in Capitalist Society, Mishra, a professor of
social policy at York University presents a readable account of the
current welfare of the Keynesian welfare state in many industrialized
Western countries. First, he defines its three national objectives: (1)
regulating the market economy to maintain a stable level of high
employment; (2) providing a range of universal social services
(education, income security, medical care, housing, etc.); and (3)
meeting exceptional need or alleviating poverty through a safety net of
assistance services. He then details the status of these objectives
since the watershed crisis of stagflation in the late 1970s:
retrenchment in neo-conservative Britain and the United States;
maintenance and co-operation between labor and capital in
social-corporatist Sweden and Austria; and partial retrenchment and
co-operation in Canada and Australia, respectively. Mishra hopes to
establish a global context in which to place specific countries, as well
as contribute to the development of models for future policy-making. The
volume, part of Harvester Wheatsheaf’s Studies in International Social
Policy and Welfare series, contains an extensive bibliography and
economic tables. It is a good starting point for the reader interested
in the titanic clash of values contained in the deficit versus social
spending debate.