Britain " this account rather downplays the role of collectivities, especially trade unions, which probably did more to shape Britain’s distinctive labour relations, and certainly did more to sustain working-class incomes, than any state programme. More troubling to me, however, is the way Renwick’s teleological narrative approach limits the analytical power of the book. We are told a story of how this welfare state came about, but because there is neither a comparative framework nor any real analysis of the way social structures (not just people) shape both visions and outcomes, the distinctiveness of Britain’s choices never really emerges. The book does provide a good and readable account of the making of the Beveridgean welfare state. But without a sharper analytical focus, and especially some attention to Beveridge’s ideas about how to provide income security without disordering family life, the book not only ignores the welfare state’s disciplinary function but also rather...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51