"Winner of the Stein Rokkan Prize, International Science Council" "Winner of the Best Book Award, Political Sociology section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association" Elisabeth Anderson is assistant professor of sociology at New York University Abu Dhabi. A groundbreaking account of how the welfare state began with early nineteenth-century child labor laws, and how middle-class and elite reformers made it happen The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late nineteenth-century labor movement and to policymakers' efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in Agents of Reform, Elisabeth Anderson shows that the regulatory welfare state began a half century earlier, in the 1830s, with the passage of the first child labor laws. Agents of Reform tells the story of how middle-class and elite reformers in Europe and the United States defined child labor as a threat to social order, and took the lead in bringing regulatory welfare into being. They built alliances to maneuver around powerful political blocks and instituted pathbreaking new employment protections. Later in the century, now with the help of organized labor, they created factory inspectorates to strengthen and routinize the state's capacity to intervene in industrial working conditions. Agents of Reform compares seven in-depth case studies of key policy episodes in Germany, France, Belgium, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Foregrounding the agency of individual reformers, it challenges existing explanations of welfare state development and advances a new pragmatist field theory of institutional change. In doing so, it moves beyond standard narratives of interests and institutions toward an integrated understanding of how these interact with political actors' ideas and coalition-building strategies. "An impressive must-read."---Jaclyn N. Schultz, Journal of Modern History "With exemplary scholarship, Elisabeth Anderson persuasively demonstrates that individual reformist entrepreneurs have been decisive players in the makings of modern society. She has gifted us with a beautifully crafted social history of how early child labor regulations were the mainsprings of social reform, and eventually the modern welfare state."-Gøsta Esping-Andersen, author of The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism "Original, deeply researched, and persuasive, Agents of Reform makes numerous contributions to the study of the welfare state. It's refreshing to have a new take on this period of reform, and the scholarship is top-notch."-Kimberly J. Morgan, George Washington University "This elegant comparative study breaks new ground in our understanding of the development of welfare states. Most scholarship on the subject begins after modern electoral and administrative institutions were already in place, but Elisabeth Anderson asks how important social policies came to be adopted within political architectures that were not quite modern."-Elisabeth S. Clemens, author of Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State "Challenging key assumptions about the origins of the welfare state, Agents of Reform is an ambitious and significant book on an important yet understudied topic."-Cybelle Fox, University of California, Berkeley "Through a superb investigation of institutional landscapes, motivations, beliefs, and strategic choices, Agents of Reform achieves the rare feat of weaving an explanatory account of policy initiatives and outcomes that illuminates all the relevant explanatory factors. In so doing, it decisively contributes to our understanding of the genesis of welfare state institutions. A remarkable achievement!"-Ivan Ermakoff, University of Wisconsin–Madison