Argues that the changes in welfare policy in Europe and the US are not marginal adjustments to the borders of the welfare state, but represent a fundamental shift or transformation in the design and philosophy of social protection. This work also provides evidence of how the system changes the nature of social cohesion.

"[A] worthy contribution to welfare state scholarship.... Transformation of the Welfare State deserves commendation for its fascinating, detailed descriptions of welfare retrenchment..."--Social Forces

"A stimulating overview of contemporary social policy reform. This accessible, well-written, and concise book is a provocative contribution to debates that often transcend purely academic considerations to address one of the most crucial political issues of our times: the future of economic solidarity and social proctection in advanced industrial societies." --Comparative Politics "[A] worthy contribution to welfare state scholarship.... Transformation of the Welfare State deserves commendation for its fascinating, detailed descriptions of welfare retrenchment..."--Social Forces "This is a book of great interest and profound scholarship from one of the country's leading thinkers on socal welfare issues. It makes a major contribution to the social policy literature and deserves not only to be widely read but widely discussed. Hopefully, it will provoke an extensive debate on how an enabling state can transcend a commitment to promote market solutions to human ills and be worthy of the term's connotation."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare "... persuasive....Gilbert says something valuable about a social reality as complicated as the welfare state: that its development, as is true of any human institution, is anything but geological."--The New Republic "A stimulating overview of contemporary social policy reform. This accessible, well-written, and concise book is a provocative contribution to debates that often transcend purely academic considerations to address one of the most crucial political issues of our times: the future of economic solidarity and social proctection in advanced industrial societies." --Comparative Politics "[A] worthy contribution to welfare state scholarship.... Transformation of the Welfare State deserves commendation for its fascinating, detailed descriptions of welfare retrenchment..."--Social Forces "This is a book of great interest and profound scholarship from one of the country's leading thinkers on socal welfare issues. It makes a major contribution to the social policy literature and deserves not only to be widely read but widely discussed. Hopefully, it will provoke an extensive debate on how an enabling state can transcend a commitment to promote market solutions to human ills and be worthy of the term's connotation."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare "Neil Gilbert's Transformation of the Welfare State has the following virtues: it is based on a deep study of comparative welfare systems; it distinguishes between actual welfare tendencies and desirable utopian ambitions; it carries forward the long tradition of social decencies in the treatment of basic human needs. In other words, Gilbert's work is down the middle ideologically and straight arrow intellectually."--Irving Louis Horowitz, Hannah Arendt University Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University "Denied by the left, and unappreciated by the right, European social welfare regimes seem to be in the midst of a radical transformation toward more work-oriented benefits. So, too, is the U.S, where attention to "welfare reform" has obscured massive increases in aid to the working poor. Neil Gilbert is well known on both continents as one of the most talented and informed observers of comparative welfare policies. He has given us an insightful--and engaging--description of the causes and extent of this "convergence," and of what the future holds. His balanced assessment will not please the partisans on either side of the political divide, but, for the rest of us, he has opened a door to understanding the new world of welfare in modern society." --Douglas J. Besharov, Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar in Social Welfare Studies, American Enterprise Institute "This book has a special quality to it, rarely achieved by any other...." --from the foreword by Amitai Etzioni "An age of watersheds is the age for grand syntheses: New politics of the welfare state, three worlds of welfare capitalism, transformation of the welfare state, limits to globalization. Neil Gilbert's "enabling state" contributes superbly to this OECD-wide discussion. Promoting work, subsidizing private activity as well as share-holder claims on private markets, and targeting benefits - this is Gilbert's common Western core of "the new market-oriented social policies."--Stephan Leibfried, Professor of Social Policy, University of Bremen, Germany

Neil Gilbert is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare and Social Service at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include: The Enabling State: Modern Welfare Capitalism in America and, most recently, Welfare Justice: Restoring Social Equity.