This report is intended to provide both a record and a critical assessment of the second workshop of the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society’s programme, The Social Contract Revisited: The Modern Welfare State. The workshop was held in Oxford, 10–12 October 2007.

A report of a workshop held in Oxford in June 2008.

Recently, the social contract has been seen as a device for identifying the moral principles that ought to govern relations both amongst the members of society, and between the members of the society and their government. There is more emphasis placed here on the positive moral principles that ought to govern the political arena.

In the United States, ’welfare‘ and the politics of welfare – cash assistance for families, generally female-headed single-parent families with children – have been treated as a separable realm of policy, and too often as synonymous with all of anti-poverty policy. 

Contemporary welfare states remain in need of powerful policies aimed at protecting against new social risks, inclusion through work, and more equality in education and the labour market. Clearly, in less stratified societies, such as in Scandinavia, there is less scope for Matthew effects and these social policies are likely to be more effective.