The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is a book on political theory written by Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen, published in 1990. The work is Esping-Andersen's most influential and highly cited work, outlining three main types of welfare states, in which modern developed capitalist nations cluster. The work occupies seminal status in the comparative analysis of the welfare states of Western Europe and other advanced capitalist economies. It has been described as "the single most influential piece of comparative welfare state research of the contemporary period." The work called into question well-established ways of thinking about differences among welfare states in advanced capitalist democracies. At the time of writing this book, Gøsta Esping-Andersen was Professor at the European University Institute, Florence.
Typology of welfare capitalism.
In "The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism", Esping-Andersen outlines a typology of welfare capitalism in an attempt to classify contemporary Western welfare states as belonging to one of three "worlds of welfare capitalism." The three types are characterised by a specific labour market regime and also by a specific post‐industrial employment trajectory.
The three types are:
Since its publication the typology has been widely used in academic research and theory, and has generated much debate on the subject of the nature of the welfare state. The desirability of the work's approach has been stated by various comparative welfare state scholars.
In the book Esping-Andersen criticized earlier theoretical models of the welfare state as "inadequate", arguing that their analysis relied too heavily upon the misleading comparison of aggregate welfare state expenditure, and also argued that public expenditure should no longer be a measure of comparison and that we should seek to replace it with other measures. In the place of expenditure, Esping-Andersen built his typology on a rich database of detailed programme characteristics.
East Asia.
While using three categories in his typology, the author notes that East Asia may not strictly fit in a single category but may be seen as a hybrid of liberal and conservative models.
Southern Europe.
Other scholars, including Maurizio Ferrera, have argued that the model does not apply entirely to Southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. These models are, on the one hand, conservative since they rely on family ties. But, on the other hand, they also have high levels of governmental pensions which, in the extended family network, are often used to support also the young members when unemployed.