The Role of Business in the Development of the Welfare State and Labor Markets in Germany: Containing Social Reforms

One of the most contested issues in the comparative and historical literature on the welfare state is the role industrial employers played in its development. Business and the Development of the German Welfare State explores alternatives to existing employer-centred explanations of welfare state development.The book offers an explanation of employers' roles in welfare state development that is complementary to power resource explanations, rather than an alternative to the latter. The core theme is that employers supported social policies as lesser evils. They supported social policies as means to contain political outcomes that would have been worse, including labour unrest and more radical reform plans. Business and the Development of the German Welfare State will be of interest to students and scholars of welfare and social policy politics, and European politics.