Over the last 30 years, the logic of market liberalization has increasingly permeated the social and economic facets of political and economic discourse to such an extent that the core values about the responsibilities and obligations of nation-states to their citizens have been strained. The welfarist ethos featuring in the public fi nance of some European and North American countries for much of the twentieth century included values such as equity and access, which manifested in the

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... ion and aff ordability of social amenities. The welfarist concept, premised on the experience of western European economies, was based on the logic that if a large proportion of the population could not aff ord clean water, health care, or education for their children, long-term corporate interests of the society would be undermined.