Ten years on: Francis G. Castles and the Australian 'wage-earners' welfare state

Francis Castles' The Working Class and Welfare (1985) has achieved classic status within mainstream policy studies and the historiography of the Australian welfare state. Exhuming the functionalist theoretical and 'positivist' methodological assumptions embedded in his prior comparative policy research helps to establish why he saw the puzzles he did in the Australasian experience and why the 'wage-earner's welfare state' model emerged as an answer to those puzzles. Castles' work reminds us that our theoretical and methodological assumptions can lead to a problem-setting process that generates a sophisticated but misleading social heuristic. Castles' work, while it appears to affirm that 'politics matters' denies the contingency of history central to political processes. While he rightly insists we should look at 'occupational welfare', his work deflects attention away from the substantial experience with 'social policy by normal means' that labor governments have promoted.