State Responsiveness and State Activism: An Examination of the Social Forces and State Strategies that Explain the Rise in Social Expenditures in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, 1870–1968

State Responsiveness and State Activism (1989) provides a unique comparative account of some of the most fundamental social changes that have taken place in the western world and the role played in these changes by the state. It evaluates which models – economic, modernization, political mobilization, class conflict – best predict the growth in social welfare and in educational expenditures; determines how much the political and administrative centralization of the state, centralization of the administration of social welfare and of education, and institutional autonomy affect state responsiveness to various models; and studies how much state activism in the creation of social welfare and in its centralization affects the political process and especially the role of class conflict in determining public expenditures.