Paper presented at the ESPAnet Annual Conference, September 9-11, 2004, Oxford (UK). A preliminary version of that paper was presented at the WRAMSOC Conference, 23-25 April, 2004, Berlin. Published in: P. Taylor-Gooby (ed.), Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe, 100-123, Basingstoke/Nueva York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005Social assistance schemes have received more attention in the general welfare state reform debate since the early 1980s. For most of the time after WW II social assistance schemes had been perceived as a residual and declining branch of the overall welfare system. Social inclusion was meant to be achieved through full and life-long employment by the male breadwinner, expanding social insurance systems which increasingly included the whole population and stable family structures (Therborn 1995; Crouch 1999). Indeed, most of the West-European countries achieved these goals and the scope for social assistance - where it was already established - as a scheme of last resort was limited. Other countries, particularly in Southern Europe, lacked this kind of scheme.Peer reviewed