ABSTRACT
Raymond Plant's paper seeks to restore the concept of need to its place in the discourse concerning welfare state and welfare society. An alternative view of the welfare state regards it as an expression of the community's concern for certain values which it seeks to promote or defend. Albert Weale argues that to call for a more egalitarian welfare system or to criticize it for failure to achieve equality is to be insufficiently precise. To the degree, however, that both conceptions of equality are embedded in liberal thinking about the person and about a welfare society, the political issue for the pluralist welfare state would be to decide which principle of equality should prevail in which areas of welfare. Colin Crouch employs Hirschman's concepts of exit and voice in an attempt to redress the acknowledged defects in much state welfare provision and delivery by calling in an element of the market.
