Investigating Welfare State Change: The\Dependent Variable Problem in Comparative Analysis

'The welfare state is a catch-all term which covers a broad range of governmental interventions into social affairs. Over the past decades, social policy scholars have devoted tremendous efforts to analyze those factors that account for crossnational variation and energize the reform trajectories of advanced welfare states. By contrast, the dependent variable has received much less attention: This volume presents a systematic overview of the dependent variable problem incomparative welfare state research. By sketching different approaches on how to conceptualize and measure social policy change and by highlighting their genuine strengths and weaknesses, this volume should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in comparative social policy research.'? Stephan Leibfried, University of Bremen, GermanyContemporary accounts of welfare state change have produced conflicting findings and incompatible theoretical explanations. To a large extent this is due to a 'dependent variable problem? within comparative research, whereby there is insufficient consideration of how to conceptualize, operationalize and measure change. With contributions from leading international scholars, this important book presents a comprehensive examination of conventional indicators (such as social spending), available alternatives (including social rights and conditionality), as well as principal concepts of how to capture change (for example convergence and efamilization).By providing an in-depth discussion of the most salient aspects of the 'dependent variable problem?, the editors aim to enable a more cumulative build-up of empirical evidence and contribute to constructive theoretical debates about the causes of welfare state change. The volume also offers valuable suggestions as to how the problem might be tackled within empirical crossnational analyses of modern welfare states. The focus on the methodology of conceptualizing and measuring welfare state change in a comparative perspective gives this unique book widespread appeal amongst scholars and researchers of social policy and sociology, as well asstudents at both the advanced undergraduate and post-graduate level studying comparative social policy, research methods and welfare reform.Clasen, Jochen is the author of 'Investigating Welfare State Change: The\Dependent Variable Problem in Comparative Analysis', published 2007 under ISBN 9781845427399 and ISBN 1845427394.