  Application of the background-field method to the electroweak Standard-Model
yields a gauge-invariant effective action giving rise to simple Ward
identities. We find that in the background-field `t Hooft-Feynman gauge the
resulting vertex functions are exactly those that are obtained using the pinch
technique. Thus, the background-field method provides a general framework that
generalizes the pinch technique directly and uniquely to arbitrary Green
functions and arbitrary orders of perturbation theory. Moreover, the desirable
properties of the pinch-technique vertex functions hold for arbitrary gauge
parameters and have a simple explanation within the background- field method.
