Welfare state and capitalist crisis

Abstract

Four main tendencies or transformations, running to some extent counter to each other, have been evident throughout the crisis of Western capitalism since 2008 and which have roots from well before the crash. Do they together point to something fundamental about the trajectory of the world political economy today and into the future, with profound consequences for Western welfare states? More particularly, has the Western welfare/developmental state model been wounded fatally by the crisis and by the deeper instabilities that the crisis revealed? The answer depends on the nature of the crisis and on the deeper tendencies within the West and within capitalism as a wider world of structural tendencies.