ABSTRACT
In the pioneering work of the first generation of comparative welfare state research, the normative basis of the welfare state is highlighted already in the title of its prime example: The Welfare State and Equality (Wilensky 1975). This work reached above, but also summarized, very much the emergence of a research tradition that started with studies of individual nation states characterized by ambitious social programmes and institutions such as Germany and Britain. For instance, the German experience up to the Nazi regime had been thoroughly analysed by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (1944). In the UK in particular, Marshall and Titmuss had scrutinized the normative foundations of the paths towards the modern welfare state. In historical and macro-sociological perspective the egalitarian welfare state stood out against the poverty and poor relief of earlier stages in the development of modern democracy and industrial capitalism. Equality is not the obvious, only or unquestionable answer to an investigation of the normative basis of the welfare state, but it definitely has its advocates (cf. Rothstein 1998). Wilensky was never alone, and long before the advent of the welfare state, from the American and French revolutions onwards, equality has been one of the hallmarks of modernity. Of course, there have been alternatives as well as complements such as democracy, efficiency, freedom/liberty, (social) justice, security and solidarity (or fraternity) associated with authors from de Toqueville to Okun (Bobbio 1996).
