For many years, comparative welfare state research has been afflicted with a sort of methodological nationalism in the sense that countries were treated as independent units. In line with the recent "spatial turn" in comparative public policy studies, this paper examines with regard to three...

Introduction : Federalism and the welfare state / Herbert Obinger, Francis G. Castles and Stephan Leibfried -- Australia : federal constraints and institutional innovations / Francis G. Castles and John Uhr -- Canada : nation-building in a federal welfare state / Keith Banting -- The United...

While the first half of the 20th century was characterized by total war, the second half witnessed, at least in the Western world, a massive expansion of the modern welfare state. A growing share of the population was covered by ever more generous systems of social protection that dramatically...