Remodeling Social Welfare.

This article focuses on the convergence and divergence of modern social welfare state. Among the various accounts of the rise of the modern welfare state, much of the theory and research is concentrated along two apparently competing lines of analysis, which emphasize convergence and divergence. Simply put, "convergence theory" posits that there are certain structural determinants of the welfare state, such as economic growth, industrialization, and demographic shifts. Responding to these structural forces, countries tend to converge in the sense that they increase public expenditure to develop broadly similar institutional arrangements for social protection, such as public assistance for the poor and social security for the elderly. The modern welfare states expanded and branched off in various directions as they rode the ebb tide of economic development from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. But the tide has changed. As the 1990s come to a close, the ships of the welfare state are being drawn back into the bay as a flood tide of new structural pressures and sociopolitical forces are narrowing the channel of maneuverability and transforming the conventional arrangements for social welfare.