Power resource theory is a

political theory Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...

proposing that variations among

welfare states A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitabl ...

is largely attributable to differing distributions of power between

economic classes A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inco ...

. It argues that "

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

power achieved through organisation by labor unions or left parties, produces more egalitarian distributional outcomes". Pioneered in the 1970s and 1980s by a school of Scandinavian researchers closely associated with

Walter Korpi Walter Korpi ( Koutojärvi, Sweden, 1934) is a Swedish sociologist. Korpi is a pioneer of power resource theory. Together with the Swedish politician and sociologist Joakim Palme, he wrote the work "The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies ...

Gøsta Esping-Andersen Gøsta Esping-Andersen (; born 24 November 1947) is a Danish sociologist whose primary focus has been on the welfare state and its place in capitalist economies. Jacob Hacker describes him as the "dean of welfare state scholars." Over the past ...

, and John Stephens, power resource theory is an empirical approach to examining the development, characteristics and effects of social policies in advanced industrialized nations. It attempts to account for the various approaches to social policy adopted by different nations, focusing primarily on the role and strength of labor mobilization. Its major conclusion is that social welfare provisions are larger and income inequality lower in countries where working-class people are more politically organized. While power resource theory became the dominant paradigm among scholars in the 1990s for explaining variations between welfare states in advanced democracies, there are criticisms that point out the lack of accountability for factors such as variations in “coverage, extension, and generosity among welfare states” in addition to not accounting for the importance of

political mobilization Mass mobilization (also known as social mobilization or popular mobilization) refers to mobilization of civilian population as part of contentious politics. Mass mobilization is defined as a process that engages and motivates a wide range of partne ...

based on social class. Competing theories have also challenged power resource theory with alternative explanations for the varying levels of welfare development such as the importance of employers and cross-class alliances that exist in coordinated market societies.

References

Political science theories {{poli-stub