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Peter C. Caldwell (2019), Democracy, Capitalism, and the Welfare State: Debating Social Order in Postwar West Germany, 1949-1989, Oxford: Oxford University Press, £69.00, pp. 240, hbk.

This is two books in one: it reconstructs the intellectual history of German social policy after WWII and it addresses fundamental issues of modern welfare statism that apply well beyond Germany. I know only one other comprehensive historical account of German social policy ideas (Kaufmann ), which, however, assumes a sociological perspective unlike Caldwell’s political perspective and is less detailed since it covers a larger time span, the th and th centuries. The book exposes the problems and predicaments of the welfare state in the context of capitalist development, democracy, and modernity. Peter C. Caldwell is a U.S. historian who specialises in German and European th-century history. It is amazing how the author succeeds in delving deep into the minds of German thinkers and politics. The book excels by linking the great questions of social order to the specifics of institutional design of social security. The book also succeeds in reducing the complexity of the vast subject area, by concentrating on two lead formulas, “social market economy” and “social rule of law”/”social state”, and on key scholars and experts across a spectrum of disciplines and political camps. A few thinkers, like Habermas and Luhmann, will be known to a broader readership, but there are many less known thinkers that wait to be discovered by non-German scholars. The book is written in a sophisticated way, yet crystal clear and fascinating reading. Caldwell’s command of the literature and of primary sources is impressive, including rich footnotes with precise references.