Bio: (1923-2011) American sociologist. Harold Wilensky received his Ph.d. from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Wilensky studied organizations, professions, and the welfare state. In the article „Orderly Careers and Social Participation” (1961), he showed the results of his study of different professions. He believes that the concept of a professional career should be limited to individual advancement within an organization. This approach is aimed at upward mobility within the organization, and is therefore related to the idea of ​​an "orderly career". In order to determine what makes a profession a profession, he analyzed eighteen professions, and based on that research he made a sequential model of professional development, which emphasizes the highest stages of a profession. He concludes that occupations that are characterized by a very slow ascending career of employees cannot be regarded as real professions.

Wilensky significantly contributed to the sociological study of the welfare state. In The Welfare State and Equality (1975), he argues that the welfare state is an integral part of the "logic of industrialism" because complex societies require modern social benefit systems to ensure a healthy and educated workforce. He divides the various welfare states according to the level of "generosity", that is, the total budget expenditures of the state for the social security system. In his book Rich Democracies (2002), Wilensky presents the results of his extensive comparative research on different welfare states. He found a strong statistical link between governments to the left of the center and the high level of social benefits budgets, as these governments spent more on these expenditures than right-wing or free-market governments. His results indicate that in explaining the level of expenditure on social benefits, a simple division into left and right parties is not appropriate, as right-wing parties, such as the Christian Democratic parties, (widespread in Western Europe) which, when they were in power, allotted more budgetary funds for social benefits than free-market parties, but still less than left-leaning parties. Since on a simple left-right scale, free-market parties are more to the left than Christian-Democratic parties, this scale is not good for explaining differences in budgetary expenditures.

Main works

Intellectuals in Labor Unions (1956);

Industrial Society and Social Welfare  (1958);

„Orderly Careers and Social Participation”, in Annual Review of Sociology (1961); 

Organizational Intelligence: Knowledge and Policy in Government and Industry (1967);

The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures (1975);

Democratic Corporatism and Policy Linkages (1987);

Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and Performance (2002);

American Political Economy in Global Perspective  (2012).