Democracy and the Welfare State

Alice Kessler-Harris is R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History, emerita, and a professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. Her books include Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (1982); In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001); A Woman's Wage (2014); and A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (2012). Maurizio Vaudagna is professor of contemporary history, emeritus, at the University of Eastern Piedmont. He is the author or editor of several books, including The American Century in Europe (2003) and The New Deal and the American Welfare State: Essays from a Transatlantic Perspective (2014). With Alice Kessler-Harris, he is the editor of Democracy and Social Rights in the "Two Wests" (2009).

Linking questions of democracy to those of social provision through the generative concept of the "Two Wests," Kessler-Harris, Vaudagna, and their contributors offer a primer on the crisis of the welfare state, the grip of austerity politics, and the rise of right-wing nationalism that mark our times. An important contribution! -- Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Uneasy Promise of the Welfare State, by Alice Kessler-Harris1. Historians Interpret the Welfare State, 1975–1995, by Maurizio VaudagnaPart I. Democracy and the Welfare State in Europe and the United States2. Reconciling European Integration and the National Welfare State: A Neo-Weberian Perspective, by Maurizio Ferrera3. Democracy After the Welfare State: An Interview, by Ira KatznelsonPart II. Varieties of Retrenchment4. Privatization and Self-Responsibility: Patterns of Welfare-State Development in Europe and the United States Since the 1990s, by Christian Lammert5. Paradise Lost? Social Citizenship in Norway and Sweden, by Gro Hagemann6. Social Citizenship in the U.S. Affordable Care Act, by Beatrix Hoffman7. In the Shadow of Employment Precarity: Informal Protection and Risk Transfers in Low-End Temporary Staffing, by Sébastien Chauvin8. From the Welfare State to the Carceral State: Whither Social Reproduction?, by Mimi AbramovitzPart III. Gender, the Family, and Social Provision9. Family Matters: Social Policy, an Overlooked Constraint on the Development of European Citizenship, by Chiara Saraceno10. Transforming Gendered Labor Policies in Sweden and the United States, 1960s–2000s, by Ann Shola Orloff11. Breadwinner Liberalism and Its Discontents in the American Welfare State, by Robert O. SelfPart IV. Possibilities of Resistance12. Nationalism’s Challenge to European Citizenship, Democracy, and Equality: Potential for Resistance from Transnational Civil Society, by Birte Siim13. Poor-People Power: The State, Social Provision, and American Experiments in Democratic Engagement, by Marisa Chappell14. Grassroots Challenges to Capitalism: An Interview, by Frances Fox PivenSelected BibliographyContributorsIndex