"The domain of the welfare state has greatly expanded to encompass a large number of developing countries. Social policy in the nascent welfare states has remained little explored and even less understood. This volume makes a valuable contribution to the literature on comparative social policy, with a number of country case-studies on Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America, and five contextual chapters. The contributions reveal that there is no single model that can be presented as a universal one, with temporal and spatial variations being the norm rather than the exception."--BOOK JACKET.