The Politics of Social Risk
Business and Welfare State Development

Evaluates the role played by business in the development of the modern welfare state.

Isabela Mares (Author)

9780521827416, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 August 2003

342 pages, 17 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.8 cm, 0.593 kg

"This is an ambitious, provocative, and impressive book." American Journal of Sociology

The book provides a systematic evaluation of the role played by business in the development of the modern welfare state. When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers for various employment-related risks? What factors explain the variation in the social policy preferences of employers? What is the relative importance of business and labor-based organization in the negotiation of a new social policy? This book studies these critical questions, by examining the role played by German and French producers in eight social policy reforms spanning nearly a century of social policy development. The analysis demonstrates that major social policies were adopted by cross-class alliances comprising labor-based organizations and key sectors of the business community.

1. The Welfare State: a world against employers?
2. Interests and coalitions in the formation of the modern welfare state
3. Workplace accidents as 'social risk': employers and the development of accident insurance
4. Is unemployment insurable? Employers and the development of unemployment insurance
5. Unified or occupationally-fragmented insurance? Political reforms during the Postwar Years
6. Risk redistribution in mature welfare states: the politics of early retirement
7. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Labour economics [KCF], Political science & theory [JPA], Welfare & benefit systems [JKSB]