Daniel Engster provides a vigorous defense of the welfare state in this thoughtful, carefully researched book. Designed to address the problems of an industrial society with traditional gender roles, the welfare state as currently constituted has not adapted to recent changes. One might hope that political theorists and philosophers would have articulated these problems and proposed compelling solutions to them, but Engster argues that, with rare exceptions, those who have addressed the question of justice in contemporary society have failed to do so. The theories they present, he charges, are formulated at such a high level of idealization that they are of little use in telling us how to make progress towards a more just society.

A real strength of Justice, Care, and the Welfare State is its mastery of an enormous empirical literature on a wide range of social policies and problems, and its focus on setting out the policies that are most likely to be effective in terms of addressing the needs of children, the elderly, and the disabled, in overcoming poverty, and in developing a just health-care system. Although the book is primarily focused on the United States, Engster draws on the experience of other advanced democracies in each of these policy areas to propose an ideal mix of social policies that reflects what are arguably best practices. He does not endorse a particular “model” of the welfare state, but finds that different countries, with significantly different traditions, have come up with policies that are effective in different areas, even endorsing some policies in the United States (p. 239), a country that is often seen as a welfare state laggard. Throughout the book he is sensitive to issues of cost, taking seriously the charge that the welfare state has become unsustainable, and he makes a powerful case that—properly designed—the welfare state is affordable as well as required by justice.

Engster’s argument is unified by an account of justice based on an ethics of care, which rests on the idea that we are necessarily dependent on others to meet our needs, and so make moral demands on others for help, giving rise to an obligation to provide care to others when we are in a position to do so. Since so much of what we need can only be met through collective provision, a “public ethics of care” (p. 24) posits a “collective responsibility to work with others” to create an institutional structure—notably, a welfare state—capable of such collective provision. Specifically, Engster calls for social policies that will guarantee to all members of society a social minimum, providing for their basic well-being and ability to participate in social life and pursue their own ideals (p. 26), but beyond this social minimum, we do not have obligations of further support, as “individuals are for the most part expected to make their own way in life based on their choices and relationships” (p. 27). Nonetheless, this social minimum represents a demanding standard, since “society should aim to develop and maintain the basic capabilities of all children and adults as much as reasonably possible and not just up to decent threshold levels” (pp. 27–28).

To a significant extent, the book is framed in terms of a critique of liberal theories of justice, especially John Rawls’s. One central way in which Engster’s approach differs from Rawls’s is that Engster tacitly assumes the structure of liberal capitalist societies and focuses on policies to meet the needs of more or less specific sets of individuals (children, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor). Rawls, by contrast, focuses on the principles of justice that ought to govern the basic structure of society, rather than taking existing institutions as the baseline and proposing policies to tweak them in order to produce “better” outcomes.

Engster’s focus on defending the welfare state appears to lead him to misunderstand important components of Rawls’s theory, and to obscure some important issues. For example, Engster criticizes Rawls for rejecting the capitalist welfare state in favor of property-owning democracy or market socialism, where all three are viewed as proposals for alleviating the effects of poverty. But (as Engster seems to recognize at various points) Rawls does not reject state programs to meet a wide range of citizens’ needs over the life cycle, but the capitalist welfare state in which concentrated inequalities of wealth undermine the equality of democratic citizens even while shoring up the life prospects of the less advantaged.

This observation may be dismissed as merely “academic,” but it points to a deeper issue in Engster’s approach: his objective of identifying the optimal policies for realizing “a public ethics of care,” which reflects his commitment to what he calls “nonideal theory” as opposed to “ideal theory.” In Engster’s view, those like Rawls who work within an “ideal theory” framework present arguments that “tend to have little direct bearing on contemporary debate and policy” (p. 7). This criticism obviously raises the question of the kinds of tasks that political theory should have in a democratic society. Following Rawls, one might argue that philosophers are not in a position to prescribe specific policies to their fellow citizens, but to draw on the public political culture to articulate basic principles on which citizens can agree, leaving specific policies to be worked out through deliberative, democratic processes. In this view, particular policies cannot be specified at the level of theory. This is not really a matter of nonideal versus ideal theory; the policies that Engster prescribes represent “all things considered” judgments that rest on an analysis and balancing of the conflicting considerations that bear on a particular issue. But these are issues about which reasonable people may reach different conclusions, which limits the authority of theory in public discourse.

The question of the role of theory in a democratic society raises an even more fundamental issue for Engster’s approach—whether basic questions of justice may be decided on the basis of a comprehensive ethical theory, such as an ethics of care, in a morally pluralist society. For example, in the chapter on children’s rights, the author calls for the state to adopt not merely a supportive stance toward the family but a regulatory one in which parents might be required, for example, to take child-rearing classes and family leave (pp. 46, 49–60), all justified in the name of a care-based account of children’s rights, including a right to “healthy development” (p. 38). But the idea of “care” as the basis for public policy is problematic in the face of moral pluralism, for people who hold different religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines will often have quite different understandings of what care or healthy development requires.

Engster seems to recognize the problem, putting forward an expansive view of the ends to be served by the state, while at the same time insisting that the care others are owed must be adjusted “to the circumstances and tastes of the person they are helping” (p. 20), thus apparently providing scope for difference. The problem, though, is how to balance these conflicting considerations, a problem that Justice, Care, and the Welfare State, despite its important contributions, fails to address.