Trying to talk about the dynamics of welfare in 30 minutes is like the flight of Icarus. If you go too high, your words combust on the abstractness of the theories. If you fly too low, you sink in the water of the various forms of welfare. So I will try to stay in the middle. Perhaps Icarus also managed it for at least 30 minutes.

“Welfare” is not a fixed quantity; it is the subject of political debate, and decisions about it are made in a discursive process. The participants do not, of course, have equal chances of influencing the decision. This presentation of a discourse on welfare goes beyond functionalist theories and looks for the normative bases for welfare.