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F EAT U R ED ESSAYS 787split, and what she views as its disastrousresults, to the course of the war itself.

Kent argues that many welcomed the war'santicipated remasculinization of British cul-ture after the perceived deterioration of theEdwardian years. Yet total war, by drawingwomen into waged work and other publicsphere activity, even onto the field of battle,blurred the distinctions between the sexes.This produced a sense of gender disorder,prompting a violent and misogynous back-lash. In this "sex war," gender roles andboundaries were sharply redrawn, with menrecast as essentially aggressive, dominant,violent, and women either as sexualized andsubversive or as innocent and in need ofprotection. This discursive polarity impris-oned postwar feminists: Those who raisedequalitarian demands were denounced asdivisive, promoters of "war between thesexes," while New Feminists' appeals, framedin the language of motherhood and women'sspecial role, rendered them "virtually indistin-guishable from antifeminists" (p. 4).Kent usefully raises anew the question ofwhether the master's toolsin this case ideol-

ogies of essential sex differencecan ever dis-mantle the master's house (Lorde 1984). Yet inlimiting her analysis to elite women, Kent takeslittle account of the genuine complexities of thelives of the majority that difference feminismsought, perhaps less than successfully, to ad-dress. While acknowledging the specificity ofher focus, Kent perhaps needed to articulate itsimplications more fully. This argument alsoslights significant discontinuities in interwar gen-der prescriptions. In the United States, in Wei-mar Germany, in the Soviet Union, the 1920sroared: The appearance of the flapper and the"New Woman," women's increased work-force participation, and many women's deci-

sive rejection of traditional norms of marriageand motherhood prompted fears of gender dis-order that the Depression and its accompanyingclimate of repression helped to reverse (Cott1987; Rosenthal 1977; Stephenson 1975). Per-haps these discontinuities were less marked inBritain, but the reader is left wondering howconclusions drawn largely from the evidence ofthe war years would hold up against equallyintensive investigation of the 1920s and 1930s.The strengths and the flaws in the foregoingsimply indicate the bewildering proliferation ofscholarship under the rubric "social history."Yet one wonders how three scholars who doubt-less occupied the same room at numerous schol-arly meetings over the past decade could con-tinue talking past one another on such basicquestions. This reviewer found herself wishingfor a history of social formations whose mem-bership is specified and disaggregated; for ahistory of culture that accounts for both mate-rial and discursive practices; and for theory writ-ten in plain language, reconciled with politicaleconomy, and supported by evidence about peo-ple doing things.

ReferencesCott, Nancy, 1987, The Grounding of Modern Feminism.

New Haven: Yale University Press,Lorde, Audre, 1984, "The Master's Tools Will NeverDismantle the Master's House," Pp, 110-13 in SisterOutsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY:Crossing Press.Moch, Leslie Page, Nancy Folbre, Daniel Scott Smith,Laurel L, Cornell, and Louise Tilly, 1987, "FamilyStrategy: A Dialogue," Historical Methods 20, no,3:113-25 ,Rosenthal, Bemice, 1977, "Love on the Tractor: Womenin the Stalin Period," In Becoming Visible: Women inEuropean History, ed, Renate Bridenthal and ClaudiaKoonz, New York: Houghton Mifflin,Stephenson, Jill, 1975, Women in Nazi Society. London:Croom Helm.

Regulating the Social wants to do too much:rethink welfare state theory, rewrite thehistoriography of German social policy,reexamine the class character of the Imperial

GosTA ESPING-ANDERSENUniversity of TrentoRegulating the Social: The Welfare State andLocal Politics in Imperial Germany, byGeorge Steinmetz. Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1993, 375 pp. $45.00 cloth,

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7 8 8 F E A T U R E D E S S A Y Stions. Steinmetz is probably mortal; modesthe is not.The book is organized around one bigpoint: Welfare state evolution cannot begrasped by one overriding, monocausai expla-nation. Instead, the causal agency behindsocial reform changes over time and differsacross space. Hence, a multicausal theoryrequires a multidimensional research design.This is hardly a new argument, not even inthe war of monocausai explanation thatdominates the welfare state literature. ButSteinmetz pursues it with greater depth andsubtlety than most; indeed, multicausalitybecomes pure eclecticism. Virtually all lead-ing welfare state theories, normally regardedas competing or outright contradictory, arereconciled and integrated into Steinmetz'sexplanatory structure. Be it feminist, state-centered, social democratic, Marxist, ormodernization theory, they all matter.

The empirical case is local and centralgovemment social policy in nineteenth cen-tury Germany, and up to 1914. Some mightregard this as a rather narrow design for sucha huge theoretical and methodological ambi-tion. Steinmetz's choice is actually sound. Aone-nation case history helps him hold amyriad of variables constant, it allows himthe advantages of in-depth case analysis, andit gives him the necessary variance of periodand locality.The book has three parts. The first isdevoted to theory, the second and third to theanalyses of central and local govemment,respectively, Steinmetz's attempt to retheo-

rize welfare states is by far the book's greatestweakness. Existing theory gets little morethan a breezy, panoramic overview thatconcentrates more on different conceptions ofthe welfare state than on explanations of itsemergence, Foucault and Bourdieu, who donot have much of a theory of welfare states,receive more attention than those who do.Critical debates, such as the effect of religionor Baldwin's (1990) middle-class theory, arecompletely ignored. These kinds of omissionscome back to haunt the book later,Steinmetz's claim to be studying welfare

entitlements and universalism. It makes littlesense to speak of a welfare state if, as inImperial Germany, govemm ent activity m ainlyconcemed the military, law and order,administration, and infrastructure.The confusion between social policy, pureand simple, and welfare state becomes almosttotal when Steinmetz brings in Foucault andcurrent French sociological fashion. Now, assuggested by the book's title, it is a study of"the social." What is the social? Somethinglike a definition is offered on page 39, where"the social" is the space left unoccupied bythe economic and political sphere, somethingthat involves solidarity, rights, and duties.This is hardly the kind of con cept from whichpowerful sociological analysis springs. Inpractice, "the social" becomes synonymouswith social problems, and, to Steinmetz'scredit, French fashion evaporates as soon asthe book moves from introduction to analysis.

The history of German social policy couldfill libraries, but Steinmetz's study hassomething new to add. By juxtaposing localand central govem men t social policies throughtime, he presents a picture of ImperialGermany that is radically different from theconventional portraits of a polity ruled by"hegemonic" authoritarian forces Of theiron-and-rye alliance type. The central stateenjoyed a degree of relative autonomy fromdirect class dictates far greater than mostwriters allow for. The heavy hand of bigbusiness is occasionally obvious, but itsdesires are also sometimes ignored. The "ruleof capital" was more evident in the earlieryears; state autonomy in the later. What isclearest is that this was not a Junker state. TheJunkers were secondary players who, wellpositioned in the bureaucracy, implementedmodemizing policies for the benefit ofGerman capitalism rather than German capi-talists. This is where state-centered theorygets its due. Alas, Steinmetz's accountglosses over several important issues. First,except for ad-hoc references to the Centerparty, he ignores the effect of religion andespecially of social Catholicism, a force

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FE A TURE D E S S A Y S 789been better off studying the Papal encyclicalsthan Foucault.

Second, Steinmetz is so preoccupied withthe capitalists and the Junkers that hecompletely forgets the emergent force ofprofessional associations. The single largestsocial policy development after Bismarck wasthe 1911 pension scheme for salaried employ-ees (the Angestalten Versicherung). Here, asKocka (1981) shows, emerged a new kind ofpolitical practice propelled by the status-seeking, proto-corporative association of white-collar workers eager to be recognized as adistinct class. One wonders how Steinmetzwould fit this kind of agency into hisexplanatory scheme. We do not know be-cause he completely ignores it. There is afmal omission: Originally, Bismarck wantedto add a direct state grant to the workerpension so as to cultivate loyalties. It came tonaught because of a parliamentary veto. Whyis this critical conflict over "state autonomy"ignored in the book?

Steinmetz's treatment of local governmentsocial policy is far more compelling andoriginal. (However, the book cover's procla-mation that this is the first serious study ofboth central and local level social policyignores the intellectual legacy of the lateDouglas Ashford.) City-level politics havemany parallels to what evolved in the nationalstate: At first, city politics were dominated by(mainly liberal) capitalist notables who showedscant sympathy for working-class welfareexcept when threatened by disorder; in citieswith strong labor organization, policy-makingeventually shifted toward labor-inclusive cor-poratist intermediation. Hence, this is wheresocial democratic theory finds validation. Itwas also here, according to Steinmetz, thatthe new "scientific" approach to social work,the eugenics movement, and womens' organi-zations were strongest. The last two stressedtraditional womanhood, but in Steinmetz's

analysis they validate the feminist approach tothe welfare state.

Steinmetz has a wonderful capacity tobring local policy-making to life and toconnect it to the larger picture. The combina-tion of a wealth of quantitative and qualitativedata, of regression analysis and microlevelstories, is quite powerful. The general causalstructure comes across well in the quantitativeanalyses, and daily life examples, say ofsocial worker practice, succeed in giving asnapshot of the larger German politicaleconomy. What puzzles me, however, is thatSteinmetz did not exploit his city compari-sons for greater analytical aims. Here, again,he could have examined the "Catholicismeffect" by comparing, say. Bavarian andnorthern German cities.

It is at the very end that Steinmetz fmallyaddresses the Sondenveg question. In anall-too-brief discussion, he claims that pre-1914 Germany had no overdetermining effecton the Nazi rise to power. Maybe, butwithout examining the Weimar era, thisseems to me a rather courageous conclusion.Regulating the Social would have beenstronger with a tighter focus and lesspretentious theorizing. The result is a bookwith many flaws. Most books are flawed, andconsidering that this was a Ph.D. thesis andnot the work of a grand old master, it isimpossible not to be impressed by Stein-metz's scholarship. The section on the citiesis historical sociology at its very best.

ReferencesBaldwin, Peter. 1990. The Politics of Social Solidarity.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Kocka, Juergen. 1981. "Class Formation, InterestArticulation, and Public Policy: The Origins of theGerman White Collar Class in the Nineteenth andEarly Twentieth Centuries." In Organizing Interests inWestern Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism and theTransformation of Politics, edited by Suzanne Berger.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PETER BALDWIN

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7 9 0 F E A T U R E D E S S A Y Spolicy. Steinmetz's book foreshadows such asumming up. At its best, it is a multifaceted,ecumenical, broad-gauged, and ambitiouslook at the first and most fascinating exercisein welfare-state building. But it is also a bookwhose strengths are the flip side of itsweaknesses, leaving it, at its worst, sprawl-ing, unfocused, and methodologically undis-criminating.

Steinmetz's goals are several. He seeks toaccount for four varieties of social policy:traditional poor relief, Bismarckian socialinsurance, protocorporatist policies, and mod-em scientific social work, by which he meanseugenics, health care, public hygiene, temper-ance, deportment, and the like.He seeks to examine these different socialpolicies in the context not only of the centralstate (the usual focus of such studies) but alsoof local politics. Empirically, one of the maincontributions of the book is to show that localpolitics were as important for the develop-ment of welfare policies as the national state,that these different levels of govemment wereeach the motor of policy innovation at varioustimes. Methodologically, his argument is thatno single existing theory of the origins anddevelopment of the welfare state will accountfor these four varieties of social policy.Instead, a smorgasbord of different ap-proaches, applied variously to different SU I J -jects and periods, is called for.

Although Steinmetz claims to be equallyinterested in each of his four varieties ofsocial policy and all theories of the welfarestate, the bulk of the book in fact consists ofan attempt to interweave class analysis (bothof the social democratic and Bonapartistvarieties) with a focus on the state as asemi-autonomous actor able to act other thanjust as the direct mouthpiece of socialinterests. Much of this is good and reveals adeft ability to piece together a plausibleexplanation of how social policy was in theoverall interests of capitalism, yet not reduc-ible to any one fraction of its underlyingsocial base.

Scientific social work, however, in contrastto the other varieties of social policy, is dealt

social policy since much of it (e,g,, eugenicsand social hygiene) was equally a question ofnational policy.One of the strong suits of the book is itsmethodological pluralism. Although histori-ans will find Steinmetz's plea for the use ofmultiple and various theories on differentfacets and periods of welfare policy unexcep-tionable, perhaps there still are social scien-tists whose thralldom to monocausai andparsimonious explanations will be chal-lenged. And yet there remains a naggingsense of polymorphous perversity in a meth-odological sense, a feeling that Steinmetznever met a theory he did not like. Hismethodological goal is not to test existingtheories, nor to advance new ones. Rather heassembles a pastiche of theories, each ofwhich applies best to certain periods andkinds of social policy, each of which findssome niche, however modest, in his overallconstruction.

This willingness to employ an eclecticarray of different theories leads, however, attimes to odd and jarring juxtapositions. Onthe one hand, Steinmetz laces his argumentwith the jargon of cultural constructivism (thewelfare state as a series of "discursiveelaborations") but on the other he appearsunperturbed by the contrast between this andthe often rather crude class reductionism ofhis arguments elsewhere.

His conception of the nineteenth-centuryGerman state is one example. Steinmetz'sFragestellung borders on a caricature of theSonderweg debate. Was the German statepremodem, feudal, and aristocratic, or, in thebinary choice he allows himself, was itindustrialized, capitalist, and bourgeois? Anentire chapter is then devoted to solving apseudoproblem that arises only from aquestion posed in terms of extreme classreductionism: why, given that much of thecivil service was manned by aristocrats, thestate in fact did not overrule industrial andcapitalist interests, rolling back developmentsto the economic Old Regime and imposingvoluntarily a sort of Morgenthau plan avant lalettre. Similar attempts to describe types of

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F E A T U R E D E S S A Y S 791social soil in which it was planted. Not alltheories, in even the most eclectic compila-tion, can necessarily be reconciled.Finally, there is the question of compari-son. Steinmetz wanted not merely to write abook about social policy in the nineteenthcentury but also to take on the majorhistoriographical issues of German history, inparticular the Sonderweg debate. The problemis that, although he has thus set this up as acomparative problem, he does not alwayshave material that allows him to answer thequestion whether Germany was unusual ornot. Many of the factors he discusses werenot in any sense peculiar to Germany: thesocial fear among the middle classes createdby the rise of the labor movement andeventually helping give rise to statutory social

policy; the German state's dependence ontaxation and therefore capitalist enterprise thatmade a hindrance of industrial developmentimpossible; the evolution of a modem,class-independent bureaucracy.He argues strongly that the German welfarestate should be seen not as a throwback to theold-fashioned paternalist state but as aforeshadowing of the modem interventionismthat all nations would soon be following, thatGerman social policy was, in this sense, notsonderbar. But this is hardly a new argument;besides arguments from Blackboum and Eleyto this effect, Gerhard Ritter has written anentire book {Der Sozialstaat) arguing thatGerman social policy provided the modemstandard against which other welfare statesare to be measured.

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