Book Review: Vail, M. I. (2010). Recasting Welfare Capitalism: Economic Adjustment in Contemporary France and Germany. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press

• Author: Mariely López-Santana
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414010381079
• Published date: 01 January 2011
• Date: 01 January 2011
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews 117

Vail, M. I. (2010). Recasting Welfare Capitalism: Economic Adjustment in

Contemporary France and Germany. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Reviewed by: Mariely López-Santana, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0010414010381079

The topic of “institutional change” is at the core of contemporary social sci-

ence. The widely used notions of “path dependence” and “critical junctures”

illustrate the important contributions of these discussions to various debates,

including the scholarship on models of capitalism and welfare reform. Yet

these discussions are far from being settled as we are still seeking solutions

to grasp “how institutions change” and “how welfare states are changing.”

Recasting Welfare Capitalism complements these bodies of work as it cap-

tures the transformation of national models of welfare capitalism in Germany

and France as they shift from a climate of prosperity to periods of economic

austerity.

This relevant book carefully walks us through four decades of gradual

change by laying out different stages in the creation, expansion, and reforms

of French and German welfare states and models of capitalism. Mark Vail

picks up where Paul Pierson (1994) left off and constructs a compelling

argument that challenges dominant approaches within comparative political

economy—to support the projects of marketization and liberalization, a state

necessitates a robust welfare state. In this way, marketization and liberaliza-

tion are not synonyms of neoliberalism or retrenchment; rather, the nature

of welfare capitalism (which includes dominant, national, governance mod-

els) has changed to manage austerity. By persuasively marrying institutions

(formal and informal), policies, and actors’ strategies, Vail develops a “mul-

tidimensional and dynamic” account of change “that considers develop-

ments across a wide array of policy and institutional domains” (p. 169).

To capture the process and the traits of welfare state reform, the author intro-

duces a set of concepts that encapsulate three eras of welfare state capitalism—

“welfare-capitalist expansion” (late 1940s to 1980s), “socialized marketization”

(1980s to early 1990s), and “managed austerity” (early 1990s to present).

Chapter 2 sets the stage for later arguments as it presents a detailed account

of the launch of French dirigisme and the expansion of the German social

market economy. As it is well known, during the postwar golden age, wel-

fare capitalism flourished in many European countries by devising novel

institutions and policies. These institutions, in turn, fostered economic pros-

perity and social and political stability. The economic slowdown and social