In this three-volume collection Leibfried and Mau have gathered together the most vital articles about the welfare state and its 'reformation' written since the mid-1970s. Their choices and organizing principles bring coherence and additional insight to these articles which, together, provide a comprehensive presentation of all the key empirical, conceptual and normative issues. Volume I, Analytical Approaches, comprises a history of welfare state theory, with essays on modernization, functionalism and the industrialization thesis, neo-Marxist theories, the power resources approach, managing and sharing risk, and polity-centred and institutional approaches. Volume II, Varieties and Transformations, begins with articles defining varieties of welfare states and then proceeds with essays on welfare state retrenchment and its roots, globalization, post-industrialism, Europeanization, and global social policy. Volume III, Legitimation, Achievement and Integration addresses the issues and challenges of the contemporary welfare state: its justification, economic results and entanglements, human public motivations and attitudes, multiculturalism, gender,the generational contract.

Welfare States: Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction unites the work of some four generations of the most pre-eminent scholars of the welfare state in one cohesive, authoritative set of volumes.