ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses whether the welfare state has developed from an instrument to manage social 'crises' to a causal factor of such 'crises'. To raise this kind of question indicates that there is at least some presumption that the modern welfare state has indeed become a destabilising force. The chapter also approaches the welfare state as a structural/functional adaptation to the broad economic, social and political transformation represented by the rise of the modem state and by industrialisation. Much of the literature on the problems of the modern welfare state, especially the economic literature, is concerned with the growth of the economic burden imposed upon the active labour force by increasing cohorts of old age pensioners and by ever rising costs of education and medical care. Professor Flora's conceptualisation of the problems of the welfare state involves a macro-sociological approach in a comparative historical framework.
