Regressive Taxation and the Welfare State: Path Dependence and Policy Diffusion. By Junko Kato. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 276p. $55.00.

Studies of the welfare state in democratic capitalist systems rarely explore comprehensively the political, economic, and institutional linkages between social programs and tax structure; analysts of tax policy rarely explicate systematically the political consequences of tax structure for social benefit programs. Junko Kato's new book is an engaging, albeit incomplete, effort to fill this void.