Power Resources Analysis

Power resources analysis is a comparative political-economy framework, developed above all by Walter Korpi in The Democratic Class Struggle (1983) and extended by Gosta Esping-Andersen in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), that explains the size and shape of welfare states by the distribution of power resources between social classes. Its central claim is that under democratic capitalism the working class can offset capital's structural advantage in markets by mobilizing political power resources — above all the organizational strength of trade unions and the governing strength of left and labor parties. Where labor is strongly organized and durably in government, it builds class coalitions that translate that power into generous, redistributive social policy and a high degree of decommodification: the extent to which citizens can maintain a livelihood without depending on the market.