GLOBALIZATION, WELFARE RETRENCHMENT AND THE LOGIC OF NO ALTERNATIVE -WHY 2ND-BEST WONT DO

Peter Taylor-Gooby's recent contribution to the debate on globalisatio n and the logic of welfare retrenchment with which it has come to be s o closely associated (1997), represents a valuable and timely interven tion in a debate whose significance can scarcely be over-stated. Our a ssessment of the extent to which the contours of the contemporary glob al political economy circumscribe the parameters of the politically an d economically possible is crucial to our understanding of the traject ory and future of the welfare state in a post-Keynesian era, as it is to any attempt to reclaim a positive agenda for welfare reform in a co ntext in which social policy is increasingly being subordinated to the perceived imperative(s) of economic competitiveness. Yet, despite its important challenge to the equation of globalisation, 'new times' (ho wever labelled) and welfare retrenchment, Taylor-Gooby's intervention is not unproblematic, The counterposing of an 'old sociology' concerne d with class, capital and the state with a 'new sociology' of fragment ation and diversity (a sociology of and for new times) is ultimately u nhelpful. It presents an artificially stark choice between a celebrati on of the novel that threatens to prove complicit with contemporary we lfare reform on the one hand, and a reassertion of continuity and the continuing relevance of 'second-best theory' on the other. It is the a rgument of this brief response that is only by rejecting the dualistic pairings of 'old' and 'new' sociology,'old' and 'new' times alike, th at we can fashion a sociology and attendant political economy capable of detailing the complex and contingent processes currently restructur ing the welfare state and of charting the space for positive alternati ve trajectories of welfare reform, In so doing we must resist the temp tation to make do with second-best.