Making sense of the mixed economy of welfare.

This article explores the history of welfare pluralism or the mixed economy of welfare. The intellectual antecedents of welfare pluralism have a long history. In the context of social policy they make strike as new concepts. First, social welfare was popularly equated with statutory welfare. Secondly, the belief that Great Britain became a unitary welfare state after 1945 was based largely on a misconception fostered partly by collectivists. There are other aspects of the notion of welfare pluralism that have more to do with cultural traditions than with party politics.