Privatising Welfare

Abstract

This chapter deals with policies to change the institutions of the modern welfare state through increasing the role and participation of the private sector, ‘empowering consumers’ and promoting competition within the governmental system. These policies are strongly driven by the ideological goal of changing the balance between state and market in the crucial and once impregnable citadel of state welfare provision, although they also involve measures which can be claimed to represent improvements in public service. The chapter starts and ends with the political basis of the welfare state and includes examples of policy changes in the provision and delivery of personal social services, housing, education, health and social security.