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To Dream of Dreams: Religious Freedom and Constitutional Politics in Postwar Japan . By David M. O'Brien, with Yasuo Ohkoshi. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. 271p. $50.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

and concluding chapters. The introduction articulates the book's provocative thesis, and the conclusion raises important theoretical issues for the study of the welfare state. King's focus is on work-welfare, but his conclusions have much to say about questioning the "historical institutionalist" perspective. It provides much evidence, in particular, for understanding why conservative reform of welfare under both Reagan and Thatcher succeeded, whereas liberal reforms that preceded these efforts failed. In the process, Actively Seeking Workl convincingly demonstrates its main thesis, namely, that the differences between the United States and at least Great Britain have been exaggerated. This book provocatively suggests that previous scholarship needs to be addended in other ways to give greater emphasis to the role of politicians and political parties in influencing the development of social policy. It soberly reminds us that, regardless of state structures, political actors can only do so much when operating under pressure from other, often more powerful, people who are primarily interested in perpetuating the logic of their market economies and the values embedded in their cultural practices. If politicians succumb to placating those who, among other things, give priority to profits and prejudice, then they will not build an inclusive welfare state, whether their state structure is more or less open to such revision. King defines work-welfare programs as denoting "three sorts of government policy for the unemployed: first, placement policies to marry jobseekers with vacancies; second, training schemes, intended to augment jobseekers' skills; and, third, workfare programs sometimes imposed upon job seekers as a condition of receiving benefits." His inclusion of the third could not be more timely. His meticulous narrative documenting the machinations of politicians, administrators, policy experts, and interest groups over the development of work-welfare in the course of the twentieth century is simply fascinating. It convinces this reader that the development of these programs in both countries was haunted by political constraints ensuring each country could only go so far in helping those who needed assistance before the imperatives of power associated with capital and culture, economics and value, imposed their limitations by way of wary political actors. As King documents, pressures for cheap labor and prejudice against African Americans undermined the development of serious training schemes in the United States. In Britain, the resistance was more class based. Yet, in both countries labor market policy could never be effectively joined to economic policy, and welfare guarantees became increasingly at risk when seen in the 1980s as undermining the "clearing price for wages" in a softening economy. By the 1990s, the logic of retrenchment had taken hold, and Britain's more developed set of protections underwent serious revision, making its system more like that of the United States, at least until the "end of welfare" became an American reality.