Professor Paul Spicker is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy in Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen and a writer and commentator on social policy. His studies of housing and welfare rights developed from his early career and his research has included benefit delivery systems, the care of old people, psychiatric patients, housing management and local anti-poverty strategy and he has published widely in the field. He is a consultant on social welfare in practice, working for agencies at local, national and international levels.

• 1. What is a welfare state?2. What has government got to do with it?3. The aims of social welfare policies4. The case for welfare5. Universal and communitarian perspectives 6. The welfare state and the market7. Some challenges for the welfare states8. The welfare states: past, present and future

"A great introduction to the historical–philosophical underpinnings, moral–theoretical fundaments and overall functions–purposes of the welfare state!" Christian Aspalter, Beijing Normal University & Hong Kong Baptist University United International College