1st Edition

The Moral Economy of Welfare States Britain and Germany Compared

By Steffen Mau Copyright 2003
    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book investigates why people are willing to support an institutional arrangement that realises large-scale redistribution of wealth between social groups of society. Steffen Mau introduces the concept of 'the moral economy' to show that acceptance of welfare exchanges rests on moral assumptions and ideas of social justice people adhere to. Analysing both the institution of welfare and the public attitudes towards such schemes, the book demonstrates that people are neither selfish nor altruistic; rather they tend to reason reciprocally.

    Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Self-interest and pocket-book attitudes; Chapter 3 The admixture of motives; Chapter 4 An analytical framework; Chapter 5 The state of welfare; Chapter 6 The logic of popular support for welfare schemes and their objectives; Chapter 7 The moral economy revisited;

    Biography

    Junior professor in the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS), University of Bremen, Germany.

    'The review is persuasive on both empirical and theoretical grounds and achieves its aims of adding substance to literature on attitude surveys which so often raise questions rather than provide answers ... This is no mean achievement.'

    Social Policy Issue 3, 2004.