ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the formative period between the late 19th century and the 1930s in which the regime that governed social service provision until the late 1980s emerged. It focuses on the restoration of this regime after 1945 and its remarkable stability and persistence until the 1990s. The chapter discusses the changes in social services and examines to what extent these changes amount to a break with the past. In the case of personal social services and health care, state regulation was supplemented by strong ‘corporatist’ elements. The personal social services and the health care regime proved to be remarkably stable and survived the expansion of the welfare state as well as the 1969 and 1982 changes in government. A final impetus for the marketisation of personal social services has stemmed from the far-reaching administrative reforms upon which German local governments have begun to embark.
