The aim of this book is essentially to rank-order Germany, the Netherlands and the United States – and the welfare regimes that they represent – in terms of how successful they are in achieving the various social and economic welfare goals ordinarily associated with welfare regimes. Based on our theoretical models of welfare regimes (chapter 3) and what we know about the specific countries taken as representatives of them (chapter 4), we are now in a position to set out some background expectations in that regard.

This chapter's discussion is merely meant to sketch the background, the received wisdom, against which our study is set. The full implications of the alternative regime logics will be elaborated, and tested, in chapters 7 to 16. However, a sample of what might ordinarily be expected on the basis of existing theories and evidence might helpfully set the scene for those more detailed analyses that follow.

In explicating that received wisdom, we will essentially be following Esping-Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990). But as we said before, those models are not uniquely his own. They are common currency among most cross-national welfare-state researchers. Esping-Andersen's is simply the clearest and most authoritative statement of a broader theoretical structure which he shares with many others.

Policy priorities

In many ways, welfare-capitalist regimes all harbour similar normative goals and just prioritize them differently. Presumably, though, priorities matter.