Q.What is a welfare state? Why is A.R. Desai critical of the claims made on its behalf?

A welfare state is meant to be an interventionist, democratic, mixed-economy state -- Desai tested that promise against real performance and found it came up short. …

This question first requires defining a welfare state on the terms the chapter uses, and then explaining specifically why Desai judged the concept to be a myth.

A welfare state, on the definition Desai worked with, has three features: it is a positive, interventionist state that actively designs social policy rather than confining itself to law-and-order functions (unlike classical liberal 'laissez-faire'); it is a democratic state, with multi-party electoral institutions treated as essential (which is why liberal writers excluded socialist and communist states from the category); and it runs a mixed economy, where private capitalist enterprise and public ownership co-exist, typically with the state handling basic goods and infrastructure while private industry supplies consumer goods.

Desai's criticism came from testing this definition against actual performance, using five criteria he set out himself: does the state free citizens from poverty, discrimination and insecurity; does it meaningfully redistribute income from rich to poor and limit the concentration of wealth; does it subordinate the profit motive to the community's real needs; does it achieve stable growth free of boom-and-bust cycles; and does it provide full employment? Examining Britain, the United States and much of Europe against these criteria, Desai found the claims made on the welfare state's behalf to be greatly exaggerated: even the most developed of these states failed to guarantee minimum security to all citizens, made little progress on inequality (and sometimes worsened it), remained subject to market fluctuations, and continued to show both spare capacit …