Can the Welfare State Compete? : A Comparative Study of Five Advanced Capitalist Countries

The authors examine how the USA, Great Britain, France, Sweden and Germany have responded to the increasing challenge of international competition since the mid-1970s. Apart from in Sweden, the pursuit of competitiveness has undermined economic and social citizenship rights, and this has, in Britain and the USA, engendered an assault upon the idea of the welfare state. Solidarity and social discipline will be severely tested if the welfare state is to remain economically and politically viable in a highly competitive modern world.

Ian Gough is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath and Editor of the Journal of European Social Policy.

Alfred Pfaller was managing editor of the International Politics and Society journal from 1994 to 2003. He is currently project-manager for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Bucharest, Romania.

Goran Therborn is Professor of Sociology at the University of Goteborg, Sweden. His previous books include "The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology "(1980), "Why Some Peoples are More Unemployed than Others "(1986) and "Can the Welfare State Compete?" (with A. Pfaller & L. Gough, 1991). He is a former President of the Nordic Sociological Association.