The Work of Politics
Making a Democratic Welfare State

This theoretically innovative book shows how democratic social movements can use the welfare state to challenge domination in society.

Steven Klein (Author)

9781108745970, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 February 2022

220 pages, 2 tables
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.3 kg

'… The Work of Politics should be required reading for anyone interested in welfare politics from either a practical or theoretical perspective.' Thimo Heisenberg, Political Science Quarterly

The Work of Politics advances a new understanding of how democratic social movements work with welfare institutions to challenge structures of domination. Klein develops a novel theory that depicts welfare institutions as “worldly mediators,” or sites of democratic world-making fostering political empowerment and participation within the context of capitalist economic forces. Drawing on the writings of Weber, Arendt, and Habermas, and historical episodes that range from the workers' movement in Bismarck's Germany to post-war Swedish feminism, this book challenges us to rethink the distribution of power in society, as well as the fundamental concerns of democratic theory. Ranging across political theory and intellectual history, The Work of Politics provides a vital contribution to contemporary thinking about the future of the welfare state.

Introduction
1. Domination and the welfare state: direct, structural, and abstract
2. From calculation to domination: Max Weber on democracy and the welfare state
3. From value to world: Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and the politics of world-making
4. From world to emancipation: Jürgen Habermas, domination, and the welfare state revisited
Conclusion. Democratic theory and the future of the welfare state.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Social & political philosophy [HPS]