Abstract
Our article deals with the constructivist perspective on the study of welfare state. Our aim here is to promote one programmatic conceptualization of welfare state research from this standpoint because this perspective is almost missing in the Czech political science.
We contextualize the constructivist perspective in the tradition of social sciences thinking about ontology and epistemology and the relations between these two important methodological levels. Concerning the methodological issue, we also represent our own research position based on the sociological and discursive institutionalism.
From this point of view we arguing that instead of one welfare state per se there are as many different images of welfare states as is the number of different approaches to it. Thereafter we address the issue of the relation between social sciences (expertise) and politics.
We show what kind of social sciences (expertise) is demanded by political actors (politics) and why only just this.