Steven Klein is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London.

'The welfare state is a site of intense democracy, where workers, women, people of color, and immigrants take radical action on their own behalf. In a fascinating reconstruction of more than a century's thinking – from Weber to Habermas and beyond – Klein gives us not only the most discerning and robust theory of the welfare state to date, but a way to think past the welfare state, to show us what democratic agency in a 21st century political economy might be.' Corey Robin, Brooklyn College

• 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.

Steven Klein is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London.

'The welfare state is a site of intense democracy, where workers, women, people of color, and immigrants take radical action on their own behalf. In a fascinating reconstruction of more than a century's thinking – from Weber to Habermas and beyond – Klein gives us not only the most discerning and robust theory of the welfare state to date, but a way to think past the welfare state, to show us what democratic agency in a 21st century political economy might be.' Corey Robin, Brooklyn College

• 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.