For nearly forty years now, governments in rich democracies have been shifting labour market risks from the state and employers to employees, cutting the generosity of social programmes even as they have tightened restrictions on eligibility. This book analyses those changes in eighteen countries and shows that the most important factor in explaining whether cuts are made is the economic world view of a particular government. While the economic pressures that are typically pointed to as the causes of these reforms do exist, Alexander Horn shows that they are nonetheless secondary to ideology.