The Future of the Welfare State: Crisis Myths and Crisis
Realities. By Francis Castles. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. 208p. $99.00 cloth, $35.00 paper.
As Francis Castles observes, quantitative comparative political
economy has generated a “cacophony” of explanations for the
welfare state crisis from 1980 to 1998. Political economists have
identified causal factors including globalization, de-industrialization,
population aging, declining birth rates, weak economic performance,
welfare program maturation, political institutions, and partisanship. To
Castles, however, these explanations rest on faulty empirical evidence.
Methodological problems—in particular, unreliable comparative social
expenditure data and overreliance on pooled designs and statistical
techniques—have made it impossible to distinguish “crisis
myths” from “crisis realities.” His proposed solution is
to combine cross-national designs with the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development's SOCX database on social spending, and
he argues that doing so reveals that dominant theories are myths. His
sweeping account is a spirited contribution, but it is bound to attract
significant criticism.