| Summary/Abstract |
The main takeaway for many readers of Paul Pierson’s Dismantling the Welfare State? concerns the durability of social welfare programs. Certainly for the period that Pierson analyzes, the conservative governments of Reagan and Thatcher largely failed to retrench welfare state spending. Both overall social spending and the split between universal and targeted programs remained fl at during the 1980s, despite the great hopes and eff orts of those administrations.
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