The Curious Case of Post-Fordism and Welfare

Abstract

AbstractThe post-Fordist welfare state thesis is premised upon the economic and technological changes seen in Britain and elsewhere over the last twenty-five years. Its regulationist variant though goes further and locates welfare shifts within a broader account of the transformed accumulation regime. This amounts to a useful intellectual framework within which to consider social policy developments.This article however, argues that the post-Fordist case is ultimately misleading as it works with an overly restrictive picture of welfare and pays insufficient attention to non-class social divisions. It overemphasises historical disjunctures in the development of welfare and in doing so misses important areas of continuity. This is compounded by a linked tendency to assume rather than demonstrate the actual transformation of the various services. The evidence from education provides only limited support for the predictive aspects of the model. It also confirms the need for sensitive causal accounts of welfare change.