Where now for welfare?

Towards a Post-Fordist Welfare State?
ed Roger Burrows and Brian Loader
Routledge, 1994, £13.99

The last 15 years have seen every institution of the welfare state, from council housing to social security, come under sustained attack and undergo major reorganisations and reform. It has been easy to blame all this on the cold and heartless policies of successive Conservative governments, but sadly such simple sloganeering has obscured the deeper and more disturbing forces at work. Almost every developed western nation has seen a breakdown of the post-war welfare consensus and a retrenchment of state welfare services.

This book, based on papers given to an academic conference, attempts to go beyond the limitations of mainstream social policy analysis and outlines a more comprehensive explanation of the changes to the welfare state based on recent ideas in economics, political science and state theory.

Its central argument is that there have been important changes in the organisation of the economy, with a shift from a Fordist economy marked by mass production and consumption, standardised goods and services and full-employment to a post-Fordist economy based on flexible manufacturing, niche markets, increased product specialisation and a rise in part-time work. This sea change in the organisation of production, consumption and work has in turn precipitated major changes in the state’s role in both the economy and the provision of welfare services.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first part the basic theoretical argument is set out and critically examined; the second section discusses post-Fordism and the local welfare state, and the final essays are on flexibility, consumption and the future of welfare.

While each of the 11 contributors are sympathetic to the overall theoretical project, many have serious reservations about the post-Fordist thesis. Some of the problems with both the general idea of post-Fordism and a number of the chapters in this collection are the rather abstract and general nature of the argument and the lack of detailed empirical evidence to support such an ambitious theory.

Despite the inevitable shortcomings of a multi-author collection, the book has real strength in its diversity. The chapters range across a wide area, with discussion of resistance to the poll tax, changes in social services and urban planning, increased flexibility in education and the labour market, and new patterns of consumption. Overall they demonstrate the utility of the post-Fordist framework and provide a good introduction to the issues. This is a valuable contribution to the debate over the future of welfare and should be read by anyone with a serious interest in social policy.

Paul Martin