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The last ten years have seen a spate of books analysing social policy in terms of ideologies or models of welfare. These models, which combine an explanatory or scientific and a normative or value component, offer the discipline of social administration a terrain or base of its own from which it can legitimately explore a range of normative and scientific issues. It is suggested that the central task of social policy analysis, at the highest level of generality of the discipline, is to tease out the relevant normative and factual propositions or assumptions underlying these models and subject them to close scrutiny. In this the discipline would largely be following, but also extending somewhat, the agenda for social administration outlined by Richard Titmuss in 1968.

The Idea of Welfare by Robert Pinker.

This paper examines convergence theory in relation to welfare-the institutional pattern of a society concerned with meeting needs. In contemporary industrial societies needs are met through a variety of patterns, viz. social services, tax rebates, fringe benefits provided by enterprises, mutual-aid, and voluntary and charitable assistance. The question is whether in the course of transition from early to advanced industrialization, Western and communist societies have become more alike in respect of such institutional patterns.1 The proposition has been examined in relation to evidence drawn from one communist and one Western country and the underlying theory criticised in the light of evi-dence.

This paper takes to task two theses which are often canvassed on the left; firstly that the welfare state is indefensible and secondly that it is irrever sible and cannot be undone. It is argued that socialists and fentinists must defend the principle of collective provision embodied in the welfare state sible and cannot be undone. It is argued that socialists and fentinists must defend the principale of collective provision embodied in the welfare state attacked as overoptimistic and akistorical. It is suggested that the social democratic welfare state may be feasibly formed into a warfare, welfare state underpinning permanent mass unemployment and poverty.