This book describes how experts in the “old” Federal Republic of Germany (1949–1989) sought to make sense of the vast array of state programs, expenditures, and bureaucracies aimed at solving social problems. These observers worked in the fields of politics, economics, law, social policy, sociology, and philosophy. They made sense of the developing welfare state by describing discrete programs and by explaining what the programs meant as a whole. Their real concern was to grasp their state, which was now social (one German word for the welfare state is indeed ...