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THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

THE WELFARE STATE


THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

THE WELFARE
STATE

SECOND EDITION

Edited by
DANIEL BÉLAND
KIMBERLY J. MORGAN
HERBERT OBINGER
and
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in
certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2010
Second Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under
terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931011
ISBN 978–0–19–882838–9
eISBN 978–0–19–256347–7
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198828389.001.0001
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only.
Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website
referenced in this work.
In memory of Stephan Leibfried (1944–2018)
Preface

THIS is the second edition of The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare


State, a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary and multi-author survey of
the state of the welfare state in its advanced capitalist homelands. It
is eleven years since the first edition was published, and much has
changed in the intervening period. This second edition fully reflects
those changes. All of the chapters that have been retained from the
first edition have been substantially rewritten to reflect what has
happened over the past decade. In addition, we have commissioned
five entirely new chapters, and a new conclusion, which focuses
upon the challenge that climate change poses for all future social
policy regimes. It is our expectation and our belief that this new
edition of the Handbook will reflect the breadth of issues and
experience in the welfare state today in just the way that the first
edition did in 2010. It is designed to tell a comprehensive story
about the comparative experience of advanced welfare states right
now.
There have been some significant changes of personnel since
2010. We have recruited a number of new authors, all of whom have
a proven expertise in the topics about which they write. Two of the
original editors—Jane Lewis and Frank Castles—have retired, though
their mark can still be seen upon the book in its revised form. Two of
the other editors—Herbert Obinger1 from the University of Bremen
and Christopher Pierson from the University of Nottingham—remain
on the editorial team. We have recruited two new and highly
experienced editors from North America, Professors Kimberly Morgan
(from George Washington University) and Daniel Béland (from McGill
University), who have brought new insight and expertise to the
editorial process. Very sadly, in the early stages of preparing this
second edition, Professor Stephan Leibfried, the mastermind of the
entire project (alongside Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press),
died. Stephan’s death was a terrible shock and a grievous loss to all
those who knew him. He was a very funny and generous man, who
took his work, including this project, extremely seriously and
ensured that things were always done and done right. He is
irreplaceable. We have retained his characteristically insightful and
off-centre essay on the postage stamps of welfare in this second
edition of the book, which we dedicate to his memory. Finally, we
also want to pay tribute to contributor Dennis Spies, who passed
suddenly away at age 40 shortly before this volume went to print.
support of the universities and research centres for which we
work. Special mention is due to the University of Bremen, to its
Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), and to
the associated Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (based in Delmenhorst,
Lower Saxony), which supported various members of the editorial
team during their visits to Germany. We are also grateful to Emma
Gasster for great editorial assistance. Dominic Byatt and a team of
editors and production staff at Oxford University Press have
overseen both editions from conception to publication. We are
grateful for all this support.
Assailed from almost every quarter, the welfare state is here to
stay. It remains what governments—local and central—do, most of
the time. It provides a key part of the infrastructure of our shared
lives—in health and education, for example. It is still an engine of
redistribution—of money, of life-chances, and of well-being. And it
helps support people in times of crisis, as we saw in the aftermath of
the 2008 financial crisis and, more recently, in the wake of the 2020
COVID-19 pandemic. But it faces a series of unprecedented
challenges: demographic, institutional, and (in the case of climate
change) existential. And it seems certain that COVID-19 and its
consequences will change the context for social policy profoundly
and for a long time to come. Given this, we do well to be armed with
the best possible guide to the welfare state as we have it right now.
That is what this second edition of the Oxford Handbook of the
Welfare State is designed to be.
1 Herbert Obinger and all other authors of the University of Bremen thank the
German Research Foundation (DFG) for financial support (grant 374666841 - SFB
1342)
Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Select List of Abbreviations
List of Contributors
A Note on the Jacket Illustration
STEPHAN LEIBFRIED
1 Introduction
DANIEL BÉLAND, KIMBERLY J. MORGAN, HERBERT OBINGER, AND
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON

PART I PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATIONS AND CRITIQUES


OF THE WELFARE STATE
2 Ethics
STUART WHITE
3 Intellectual Roots of the Welfare State
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON AND MATTHIEU LEIMGRUBER
4 The Critics of Welfare: From Neoliberalism to Populism
GERDA HOOIJER AND DESMOND KING

PART II HISTORY
5 The Emergence of the Western Welfare State
STEIN KUHNLE AND ANNE SANDER
6 Post-War Welfare State Development: The ‘Golden Age’
FRANK NULLMEIER AND FRANZ-XAVER KAUFMANN
7 Recent Developments: Social Investment Reform in the Twenty-
First Century
ANTON HEMERIJCK AND STEFANO RONCHI
PART III APPROACHES
8 Research Methods
EDWIN AMENTA AND ALEXANDER M. HICKS
9 Public and Private Social Welfare
WILLEM ADEMA AND PETER WHITEFORD
10 Governance
DANIEL BÉLAND AND KIMBERLY J. MORGAN
11 Social Investment
JULIAN L. GARRITZMANN, SILJA HÄUSERMANN, AND BRUNO PALIER
12 Families, States, and Markets
MARY DALY
13 Disciplinary Perspectives on Welfare States
EINAR ØVERBYE

PART IV INPUT AND ACTORS


14 Needs and Risks in the Welfare State
JAN ZUTAVERN AND MARTIN KOHLI
15 Democracy and Capitalism
TORBEN IVERSEN
16 Unions and Employers
BERNHARD EBBINGHAUS
17 Parties
MANFRED G. SCHMIDT
18 Political Institutions
ELLEN M. IMMERGUT
19 Public Attitudes
STAFFAN KUMLIN, ACHIM GOERRES, AND DENNIS C. SPIES
20 Gender
ANN SHOLA ORLOFF AND MARIE LAPERRIÈRE
21 Religion
KEES VAN KERSBERGEN AND PHILIP MANOW
22 Migration and New Ethnic Minorities
SIMONE SCARPA, STEPHEN CASTLES, AND CARL-ULRIK SCHIERUP
23 European and National Social Policy
MANFRED G. SCHMIDT
24 Intergovernmental Organizations
KLAUS ARMINGEON
25 Globalization
DUANE SWANK

PART V POLICIES
26 Social Expenditure and Welfare State Financing
HERBERT OBINGER
27 The Welfare State as Employer
KARIN GOTTSCHALL AND MARKUS TEPE
28 Old-Age Pensions
KARL HINRICHS AND JULIA F. LYNCH
29 Health
HEINZ ROTHGANG
30 Long-Term Care
AUGUST ÖSTERLE AND HEINZ ROTHGANG
31 Work Accident and Sickness Benefits
OLLI KANGAS
32 Disability
MARK PRIESTLEY
33 Unemployment Insurance
OLA SJÖBERG, EERO CARROLL, AND JOAKIM PALME
34 Employment Promotion
LANE KENWORTHY
35 The Regulation of Employment
PATRICK EMMENEGGER AND PAUL MARX
36 Social Assistance
THOMAS BAHLE AND CLAUS WENDT
37 Family Benefits and Services
NAOMI FINCH AND JONATHAN BRADSHAW
38 Housing
TONY FAHEY AND MICHELLE NORRIS
39 Education
MARIUS R. BUSEMEYER AND RITA NIKOLAI

PART VI POLICY OUTCOMES


40 The Social Rights of Citizenship
JOHN D. STEPHENS
41 Inequality and Poverty
PETER SAUNDERS
42 Macroeconomic Outcomes
ISABELA MARES AND CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
43 Gendered Outcomes
JENNIFER HOOK AND LEAH RUPPANNER
44 Welfare Retrenchment
JONAH D. LEVY

PART VII WORLDS OF WELFARE


45 Models of the Welfare State
PHILIP MANOW
46 The Nordic Countries
MIKKO KAUTTO AND KATI KUITTO
47 Continental Western Europe
BRUNO PALIER
48 The South European Countries
MAURIZIO FERRERA
49 The English-Speaking Countries
FRANCIS G. CASTLES AND CHRISTOPHER PIERSON
50 Central and Eastern European Countries
LINDA J. COOK AND TOMASZ INGLOT

PART VIII PROSPECTS


51 From Welfare States to Planetary Well-Being
IAN GOUGH

Name Index
Subject Index
List of Figures

7.1 Employment rate, equality, and welfare spending (the size of


the pie charts) in selected OECD countries (averages 2010–
2015)
7.2 Total employment rates (squares) and female employment
rates (triangles) in the late 1990s and 2018 in twelve OECD
countries
9.1 Pension and health care are the largest public social spending
items. Public social expenditure by broad social policy area by
% GDP, in 2015–2017 or latest year available.
11.1 Social investment and social compensation in thirty-five
advanced economies, 2010
11.2 Welfare legacies and the politicization of social investment
16.1 Trade union density, social expenditure, and bargaining
coverage, 1980 and 2000
26.1 Total tax revenue, % GDP, 1965 vs 2015
26.2 Tax-to-GDP, 2015 and income inequality, 2017 (Gini post taxes
and transfers)
26.3 Tax wedge and public social spending, 2015
26.4 Share of social contributions as a percentage of public social
expenditure, 2015
27.1 General government employment expenditure and size
27.2 Female and immigrant employment share in the public and
private sectors
27.3 Public–private wage differentials
28.1 Typology of pension systems
28.2 Pension spending as a share of total non-health social
expenditure
31.1 The sequential introduction of social insurance laws in
different continents and in OECD-18 (OECD-18 countries
excluded from their continents)
31.2 Generosity (net benefit/net wage) and coverage
(insured/labour force) of sickness benefits in OECD countries
in the 2010s
34.1 Employment rates, 1989 and 2017
34.2 Jobs with equality
35.1 Development of job security regulations in Western Europe,
1950–2013
35.2 Changes in the regulation of dismissal protection in the case
of open-ended contracts (black circles) and temporary
employment (grey circles), 1985–2008
35.3 Percentage of temporary contracts among workers twenty-
five–thirty-four years in five countries, 2000–2018
36.1 Extent and generosity of social assistance, OECD countries,
1992
36.2 Rate of social assistance beneficiaries, 2007 (as % of total
population)
36.3 Rate of social assistance beneficiaries, 2007 (as % of
population twenty–sixty-four and sixty-five plus)
36.4 Net income on social assistance, couple with two children,
OECD countries, 2015 (as % of median income)
36.5 Net income on social assistance, couple with two children and
single parent with one child, EU countries, 2012 (as % of
median income)
37.1 Percentage of children living in a lone-parent family, 2014
37.2 Spending per child in percentage of spending per older
person, 1990–2013
37.3 Child benefit package for couple with two children, one earner
by level of earnings. Ranked by average earnings: percentage
extra over a childless couple on the same earnings.
37.4 Fertility rate, 2014 by family spending by % GDP, 2013
37.5 Maternal employment rate by % GDP spent on family services
37.6 Child poverty rates of single parents before and after
transfers, 2014
37.7 Overall child well-being by percentage GDP devoted to family
benefits and services, 2013
38.1 Real house price trends in 14 western countries, 1870–2010
38.2 Housing costs as percentage of household income at different
income levels in England and Wales, 1961–2016
38.3 Housing costs as percentage of household income among
poor and non-poor, EU 28, 2017
38.4 Poverty rates on all income and on residual income after
housing costs
39.1 The relationship between public education and social
spending by % GDP, 2015
39.2 Variation on education in spending, 2015
41.1 The relationship between income inequality and social
expenditure in OECD countries
41.2 The relationship between poverty and social expenditure in
OECD countries
50.1 Total social expenditure in CEE states by % GDP
51.1 A safe and just space for humanity to thrive in
51.2 The impact of a consumption-based view on emissions by
country
51.3 Global distribution of consumption-based emissions
List of Tables

4.1 The critics on the welfare state


5.1 Overview: establishment of first statutory social security
schemes in selected ILO member countries down to 1945
8.1 Causal research according to methodological approaches
8.2 Welfare programme consolidation in early democracies and
proto-democracies, 1920
9.1 From gross to net social spending: social expenditure by %
GDP at market prices
9.2 The income accounting framework
12.1 Constellation of factors animating state policy towards families
14.1 Socio-economic drivers of new social needs and risks
14.2 Selected risk and need profiles: employment
14.3 Selected risk and need profiles: family
16.1 Ideal-typical modes of labour relations and their institutional
affinities
17.1 Social policy positions of major families of parties in Western
democracies since the mid-1950s
23.1 Social policy’s degree of Europeanization, 1957–2017
26.1 Trends in social expenditure, 1980–2015
26.2 Programme-related public spending by % GDP, 2015
26.3 Revenue from main tax categories as a percentage of total
tax revenue, 2016
28.1 Funding and types of pension scheme
31.1 Characteristics of work accident and sickness benefit schemes
throughout the world in the late 2010s
33.1 Years of introduction of first laws providing for unemployment
benefits at the national level among 18 OECD countries
33.2 Net replacement rates and coverage in labour force (all in %)
for eighteen countries: averages for the periods 1930–1939,
1947–1970, and 1975–2015
37.1 Child well-being in the OECD dimension, c. 2013
38.1 Schematic illustrations of inflation-adjusted accumulated
wealth flows associated with mortgage-financed home
purchase in the United Kingdom for selected mortgage terms
38.2 Decline of owner occupation of housing in the English-
speaking world
40.1 Social rights generosity (decommodification) indexes by
welfare state regime
40.2 (Quasi) social rights indicators of services and gendered
policies
42.1 Average unemployment in advanced industrialized political
economies: cross-national and temporal trends, 1960–1975
and 1976–1995
46.1 Public social expenditure and tax revenue in the OECD
countries, 1995–2015
46.2 Expenditure in services and social investment in the OECD
countries, 1995–2015
46.3 Selected social policy outcomes in the OECD countries, 1995–
2015
49.1 Liberal regime characteristics according to Espin-Andersen
(1999) and English-speaking family of nation characteristics
according to Castles and Obinger (2008)
49.2 Shares and progressivity of cash benefits and household taxes
in household disposable income in English-speaking and
selected other OECD countries, mid-2000s
49.3 Measures of the dispersion of components of social
expenditure, child poverty, and inequality in eighteen OECD
countries, mid-2000s
50.1 Selected welfare indicators, 2016
Select List of Abbreviations

ADLs Activities of daily living


AEI American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC (1943 ff.; http://www.
aei.org)
AFDC Aid to Families with Dependent Children, USA (1935–1997; now TANF)
ALMP Active labour market policies (1990s ff.)
ATTAC The international anti-globalization network ATTAC (1998 ff.; Action
pour une Taxe Tobin d’Aide aux Citoyens ¼ Association for the
Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens;
http://www.attac.org/)
BRIC Brazil, Russia, India, & China
CCT Conditional cash transfer programme
CEE Central and Eastern European
CEPAL Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, Santiago, Chile
(¼ ECLAC; 1948 ff.; http://www.eclac.org/)
CPF Central Provident Fund, Singapore (1955 ff.; http://mycpf.cpf.gov.sg)
CPS Centre for Policy Studies, London (1974 ff.; http://www.cps.org.uk/)
CV Coefficient of variation CWED Comparative Welfare Entitlements
Dataset (http://www.sp.uconn.edu/ ~scruggs/wp.xhtml)
DC Defined contribution
DRG Diagnosis related group
ECJ European Court of Justice, Luxembourg (1952 ff.;
http://curia.europa.eu)
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago,
Chile (¼ CEPAL; 1948 ff.; http://www.eclac.org/)
ECM Error correction models
EFTA European Free Trade Association, countermovement to founding the
EEC [EU] in 1957 (1960 ff.; http://www.efta.int/)
EITC Earned Income Tax Credit, USA (also EIC; 1975 ff.; in UK: Working Tax
Credit)
EPL Employment protection legislation
ESA Event structure analysis
ESF European Social Fund, Brussels (EU; 1957 ff.;
http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/esf/index_en.xhtml)
EU European Union as of Maastricht Treaty 1992, Brussels (EEC [European
Economic Community] or EC [European Community]; 1957–1992;
http://europa.eu/index_en.xhtml) OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINALS,
3/8/2012, SPi
EUR The Euro currency (also !; accounting currency 1999–2001; in
circulation as of 2002, 2009 in 16 Member States) Eurostat Statistical
Office of the European Communities [European Union], Luxembourg
(1953 ff.; http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat)
GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services (1995 ff.; under WTO; see
http://www.wto.org/)
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1947 ff.; see now WTO
http://www.wto.org/)
GDP Gross domestic product
GNP Gross national product
GP General (medical) practitioner, UK
GPA Global Program on AIDS, UN (but see also WHO; 2001 ff.;
http://www.un.org/ga/aids/ungassfactsheets/html/fssgcall_en.xhtml
and http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)
HMO Health Maintenance Organization, USA
HRS Health and Retirement Study, USA (http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/)
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ¼ World Bank
(WB),Washington, DC (1946 ff.; with IMF one of the two BrettonWoods
institutions founded in 1944; http://www.worldbank.org/)
ICSID International Center for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes,Washington, DC (1966 ff.; WB founded arbitration institution
devoted to investor-state dispute settlement;
http://icsid.worldbank.org/ICSID/)
IDA International Development Association,Washington, DC (1960 ff.;
grantmaking or interest free credit-providing branch of the WB; via
http://www.worldbank.org/)
IEA Institute for Economic Affairs, London (1955 ff.;
http://www.iea.org.uk/)
IFC International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC (1956 ff.; member
of WB Group, financing investment in private sector in developing
countries; http://www.ifc.org/)
IFI International financial institutions
IGO International governmental organizations
ILO International Labour Organization [and Office], Geneva, Switzerland
(1919 ff.; http://www.ilo.org/)
IMF International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC (1944 ff.
http://www.imf. org/)
INGO International non-governmental organizations
IO Intergovernmental organizations
ISI Import substitution industrialization
ISSP International Social Survey Programme (1984 ff.;
http://www.issp.org/)
KMT Kuomintang, China
LDC Less developed country
LDP Liberal Democratic Party, Japan
LIS Luxembourg Income Study, Luxembourg (1983 ff.;
http://www.lisproject. org/)
LTC Long-term care
MIGA Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency,Washington, DC (1988 ff.;
WB Group; http://www.miga.org/)
MLSG Minimum Living Standard Guarantee, China (and South Korea)
NDC Notional defined contribution
NHI National health insurance
NHS National Health Service, UK (1948 ff.; http://www.nhs.uk)
NICS Newly industrialized countries
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris (1961
ff.; dates back to Marshall Plan 1948–1951; http://www.oecd.org)
OMC Open Method of Coordination, EU (Lisbon Strategy; 2000 ff.)
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Vienna (1960 ff.;
http://www.opec.org)
PAYG Pay as you go
PPP Purchasing power parity
QCA Qualitative comparative analysis
SCIP Social Citizenship Indicators Programme
(http://www.snd.gu.se/sv/catalogue/series/55)
SD Standard deviation
SERPS State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme, UK (1978–2002; replaced
2002 by State Second Pension)
SHARE Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
(http://www.shareproject. org/)
SOCX Social Expenditure Data Set (OECD;
http://www.oecd.org/els/social/expenditure)
SOE State-owned enterprise
TANF Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, US (1997 ff.)
TRIPS Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (1994 ff.; under
WTO; see http://www.wto.org/)
TSCS Time-series cross-section
UN United Nations, New York (1945 ff.; http://www.un.org)
UNDP United Nations Development Program, New York etc. (1965 ff.;
http://www.undp.org/)
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris
(1946 ff.; http://portal.unesco.org/)
USD US Dollars (US$)
WB World Bank; Washington, DC (1946 ff.; see also IBRD; with IMF one of
the two Bretton Woods institutions founded in 1944;
http://www.worldbank.org/)
WHO World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (1948 ff.;
http://www.who.int/en/)
WTC Working Tax Credit, UK (2003 ff., predecessor 1999–2003 WFTC with
‘F’ standing for families; see also EITC, USA)
WTO World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (1993 ff.;
http://www.wto.org)
US AID United States Agency for International Development, Washington, DC
(1961 ff.; originates with Marshall Plan 1948–1951;
http://www.usaid.gov/)
List of Contributors

Willem Adema is Senior Economist in the OECD Social Policy


Division in Paris.
Edwin Amenta is Professor of Sociology at the University of
California, Irvine.
Klaus Armingeon is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
University of Bern and associated researcher at the University of
Zurich.
Thomas Bahle is a Senior Researcher at the Department of
European Societies and their Integration at the Mannheim Centre for
European Social Research (MZES).
Daniel Béland is James McGill Professor of Political Science at
McGill University.
Jonathan Bradshaw is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the
University of York.
Marius R. Busemeyer Professor of Political Science and Speaker of
the Excellence Cluster “The Politics of Inequality” at the University of
Konstanz. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the WSI in
Düsseldorf.
Eero Carroll is an analyst at the Swedish Agency for Public
Management in Stockholm.
Francis G. Castles is Professor Emeritus at the University of
Edinburgh and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the Research
School of Social Sciences at Australian National University.
Stephen Castles is an Honorary Professor of Sociology at the
University of Sydney.
Linda J. Cook is Professor Emerita of Political Science and Slavic
Studies at Brown University and Academic Supervisor, ILSIR, Higher
School of Economics Moscow.
Mary Daly is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the
University of Oxford.
Bernhard Ebbinghaus is Professor of Social Policy at the University
of Oxford.
Patrick Emmenegger is Professor of Political Science at the
University of St. Gallen.
Tony Fahey is Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at University
College Dublin Ireland.
Maurizio Ferrera is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Milan.
Naomi Finch is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of York.
Julian L. Garritzmann is Professor of Political Science at the
University of Frankfurt/Main.
Achim Goerres is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Duisburg-Essen.
Karin Gottschall is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Bremen.
Ian Gough is Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of
Bath and Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, Centre for
the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE).
Silja Häusermann is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Zurich.
Anton Hemerijck is Professor of Political Science at the European
University Institute in Florence.
Alexander M. Hicks is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Karl Hinrichs is a Senior Research Fellow (ret.) at the University of
Bremen.
Gerda Hooijer is Assistant Professor of Comparative Political
Economy at University College London.
Jennifer Hook is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Southern California.
Ellen M. Immergut is Professor of Political Sciences and
Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence
and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Tomasz Inglot is Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of
Political Science in the Department of Government, Minnesota State
University-Mankato.
Torben Iversen is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of
Political Economy at Harvard University.
Olli Kangas is Professor of Practice at the Department of Social
Research, University of Turku and Director of the Equal Society
program, Strategic Research at the Academy of Finland.
Franz-Xaver Kaufmann is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the
University of Bielefeld.
Mikko Kautto is Managing Director of the Finnish Centre for
Pensions.
Lane Kenworthy is Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in
Social Thought at the University of California-San Diego.
Kees van Kersbergen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus
University.
Desmond King is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American
Government and Fellow, Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.
Martin Kohli is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the European
University Institute in Florence.
Stein Kuhnle is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Politics at the
University of Bergen and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Social
Policy at the Hertie School, Berlin.
Kati Kuitto is Senior Researcher at the Finnish Centre for Pensions.
Staffan Kumlin is a Professor of Political Science at the University
of Oslo.
Marie Laperrière is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Sociology at Northwestern University.
Matthieu Leimgruber is Professor of History at the University of
Zurich.
Jonah D. Levy is Professor of Political Science at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Julia F. Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Philip Manow is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Bremen.
Isabela Mares is Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science at
Yale University.
Paul Marx is Professor of Political Science and Socio-Economics at
the University Duisburg-Essen and a part-time professor at the
Danish Center for Welfare Studies, University of Southern Denmark.
Kimberly J. Morgan is Professor of Political Science and
International Affairs at George Washington University.
Rita Nikolai is Professor of Comparative Education at the Faculty of
Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Augsburg.
Michelle Norris is Professor and Director the Geary Institute for
Public Policy at University College Dublin Ireland.
Frank Nullmeier is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Bremen.
Herbert Obinger is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Bremen.
Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology, Gender Studies and
Political Science at Northwestern University.
August Österle is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the Vienna
University of Economics and Business.
Einar Øverbye is Professor of International Social and Health Policy
at Oslo po Metropolitan University.
Bruno Palier is CNRS Director of research in Political Science at
Sciences Po, Paris.
Joakim Palme is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Uppsala.
Christopher Pierson is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the
University of Nottingham.
Mark Priestley is Professor of Disability Policy at the University of
Leeds.
Stefano Ronchi is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of
Social and Political Science, University of Milan.
Heinz Rothgang is Professor of Health Economics at the University
of Bremen.
Leah Ruppanner is Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of Melbourne.
Anne Sander is a Research Associate at the Hertie School, Berlin.
Peter Saunders is Emeritus Professor in the Social Policy Research
Centre at the University of New South Wales.
Simone Scarpa is Associate Professor at the Department of Social
Work, Umeå University.
Carl-Ulrik Schierup is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for
Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping
University.
Manfred G. Schmidt is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
the University of Heidelberg.
Ola Sjöberg is Professor of Sociology at the Swedish Institute for
Social Research at Stockholm University.
Dennis C. Spies was Professor of Political Science at the University
of Düsseldorf.
John D. Stephens is the Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr. Distinguished
Professor of Political Science and Sociology and Director of the
Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill.
Duane Swank is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Markus Tepe is Professor of Political Science at the University of
Oldenburg.
Claus Wendt is Professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen.
Stuart White is University Lecturer in Politics and Tutorial Fellow in
Politics at Jesus College at the University of Oxford.
Peter Whiteford is Professor in the Crawford School of Public
Policy at the Australian National University and an Adjunct Professor
at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South
Wales.
Jan Zutavern is a team leader at the University of Luxembourg a
???
A Note on the Jacket Illustration

STEPHAN LEIBFRIED

IN order to highlight the comparative, international nature of this


volume’s chapters, we wished to illustrate the book jacket with
symbols of welfare states from all over the world. The welfare state
has received little, if any, notice on most national icons such as flags,
state seals, coins, and banknotes, but many nations have issued
postage stamps that honour welfare state founders or champion
social policies and ideals. Perhaps tellingly, most, if not all, of these
are special commemorative stamps, rather than regular-issue
stamps: even in countries whose welfare states developed hand-in-
hand with nationhood—in Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and
Uruguay—welfare motifs were not chosen for the core national
icons.
While hunting for stamps to adorn the book jacket, I noticed that
the welfare motifs used fall into five distinct categories, roughly
corresponding to the types of protagonists in welfare state
development. First, international welfare motifs have appeared on
many nations’ stamps, often in recognition of some event, like the
World Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, or a United Nations
special observance, such as the International Women’s Year, the Year
of Older Persons, or the Year for the Eradication of Poverty. The
United Nations also issues its own postal stamps with these themes,
as do the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World
Health Organization (WHO). The latter has been especially
successful in popularizing its yearly health themes, and its members
also tend to issue their own stamps for the WHO’s yearly campaigns.
welfare state founders and reformers, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his Secretary of Labour, Frances Perkins, are both
honoured on US stamps. And of the post-Second World War
reformers and founders, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer appears on
German stamps, Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen on Norwegian
ones, and Tommy Douglas, who founded the Canadian health
system, is honoured on Canadian stamps. Interestingly, though we
associate the welfare state with these leaders, many of them are
also known for nation building or post-Second World War economic
reconstruction, and the stamps—with the exception of a single
Roosevelt stamp—do not specifically recognize their contributions to
social policy. Notably missing from the line-up of founders’ stamps
are William Beveridge—recognized as the father of the National
Health Service in the United Kingdom—and New Zealand’s first
Labour Party Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, who introduced
a comprehensive cradle-to-grave welfare state in the 1930s and
served as inspiration for the post-war welfare state reform on the
other side of the world [ILO (International Labour Organization),
1949; Systems of Social Security. New Zealand. Geneva: ILO].
Fourth, examples of other individuals whose work has had far-
reaching consequences for welfare state cultures include the German
protestant minister, Johann Hinrich Wichern; reformist doctors such
as Arvo Ylppö, who founded childcare clinics in Finland, and Julius
Tandler, who introduced industrial hygiene in Austria; agitators for
social reform such as the unionist Ferdinand Hanusch and the
Catholic reformer Karl Freiherr von Vogelsang in Austria; and the
American unionist Samuel Gompers, who was instrumental in setting
up the International Labour Organization. Most of these figures are
recognized only in the nations where they worked, but there are a
number of Catholic heroes of social welfare, such as the Albanian
nun, Mother Theresa, who are honoured on stamps around the
world.
Non-state instruments of social policy comprise the fifth and most
varied category of postage stamp motifs that I identified. There are
stamps that pay tribute to children’s clinics, hospitals, medical
associations, nurses, accident prevention and protection measures,
and, of course, the International and National Red Cross. In Finland,
even day care centre anniversaries, women’s support groups, and a
novel have commemorative stamps. (The novel is Vāinō Linna's
trilogy Under the North Star (1959–1962), which helped set the
stage for the introduction and acceptance of a Scandinavian type
welfare state in Finland). In China, where near-universal health
insurance is now being introduced, there is a series of stamps
depicting the barefoot itinerant doctors who have long served the
rural poor. Another series indirectly highlights China’s default policy
of individual savings in lieu of a comprehensive pension system:
these stamps celebrate the one-child family planning policy, which
has led to an ageing population that can no longer rely on traditional
means—family—but has a savings rate that is 50 per cent of GDP.
Public awareness campaigns have also made use of postage stamps
to call attention to social and health issues such as child and youth
welfare, AIDS, cancer, polio, and tuberculosis. Controlling the spread
of tuberculosis was one of the first grand successes of public health
and the theme appears frequently on stamps from various countries,
but for some reason it completely dominates Finnish stamps
between 1946 and the mid-1970s.
In comparing stamps from different nations, I also noticed that
they reflected some of the major regional differences in welfare
state cultures. Education and housing are prevalent stamp themes in
Southeast Asia and China, where social policies emphasize these
aspects of welfare more than in twentieth-century Western welfare
states (Rieger and Leibfried, 2003. Limits to Globalization: Welfare
States and the World Economy. Cambridge: Polity: 255 ff.). Since the
1990s, the countries of Eastern Europe have produced far fewer
welfare state commemorative stamps than any other region of the
world, perhaps because welfare provision was part of the communist
system that these countries rejected and they have not had time to
reconstruct (but see Chapter 50). One does, in fact, find stamps
celebrating a return to pre-communist social insurance systems in
some Eastern European countries (e.g. Lithuania, 2006). In Latin
America and Southern Europe, as well as parts of Eastern Europe,
the stamps frequently depict Saint John Bosco or other Catholic
saints who were known for their work with the underprivileged and
epitomized the church’s formal and informal contributions to national
welfare states. Scandinavia’s stamps have a strong focus on the
provision of health and other services, whereas stamps from
continental Western Europe are more likely to focus on welfare state
institutions and funds and on their founders. Worker protection and
industrial hygiene was a starting point for many countries’ welfare
states, and, accordingly, seems to be a common early theme for
stamps around the world. Regional treatments of more recently
recognized welfare state issues such as gender, race, age, or other
types of discrimination that might produce unequal life chances are,
however, quite varied.
Historically, relations between nation states have played a
significant role in the development of many welfare states and this is
also evident in some of the stamps. Both Switzerland and tiny
Lichtenstein issued commemorative stamps for the fifty-year
anniversary of their pension insurance systems (AHV), as
Lichtenstein had adopted it from the Swiss. Uruguay, with its large
population of Italian immigrants, has a commemorative stamp for
the Ente Nazionale Assistenza Sociale, an Italian welfare programme
for expatriots around the world. Ireland honoured the centennial of
the founding of its pension system—in the United Kingdom—with a
commemorative stamp in 2008. This created some controversy in
Britain, where the centennial was not similarly recognized, and there
were outcries of discrimination from the Welsh community, as the
founder of the pension system, Prime Minister Lloyd George, was a
Welsh statesman. We might note, however, that the British postal
system has generally done little to honour the founding of its model
welfare state, with the notable exception of a four-stamp series
issued to celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of the National Health
Service in 1998. (A 50 pence commemorative coin was also issued
for the occasion.) Neither William Beveridge, who designed the
system, nor Aneurin Bevan (another Welshman), who insured its
enactment, are acknowledged with their own stamps, though
Beveridge appears on a first-day cover for the 1998 NHS stamps.
states’ welfare policies (see Chapter 23) and might well benefit
from public awareness of that role, none of the member states have
issued stamps that attest it and the European Union itself is not
authorized to issue stamps.
My brief sojourn into the world of stamps revealed a colourful,
international array of welfare state themes and icons—too many to
be included in the jumble portrayed on the book jacket of this
Handbook. Stamps with such themes appear to have been on the
increase since the 1960s—an increase that, ironically, has continued
uninterrupted through the 1990s and 2000s, a period when welfare
state expansion in most regions stopped and threats of
retrenchment dominated political rhetoric (see Chapter 44). During
this period, postal services in some countries were privatized,
perhaps weakening the role of stamp imagery as a statement of
national sentiment. And yet, the societal consensus that built the
effective welfare states of the 1950s and 1960s is still honoured, and
the treatable ills of hunger, poverty, discrimination, lack of education,
inadequate housing, and ageing societies is maintained in the public
eye by the images chosen for postage stamps.
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
DANIEL BÉLAND, KIMBERLY J. MORGAN, HERBERT OBINGER, &
CHRISTOPHER PIERSON

The Scope of this Handbook

THE twentieth century is often portrayed as one of extremes


(Hobsbawm 1994). Its first half witnessed the rise of totalitarian
regimes, two world wars, and more than a few genocides. The
second half was characterized by the spread of democracy,
unprecedented economic wealth and, in consequence, a degree of
well-being and a guarantee of social rights arguably unknown in
human history. In retrospect, however, this is largely a ‘Western’
story, because war, starvation, dictatorship, and impoverishment
remained the norm throughout the twentieth century and beyond for
millions of people living in other parts of the world (Cornia 2004).
This bifurcated development has many causes. Unquestionably,
though, one of the major reasons for the successful Western
trajectory is connected to a mostly European invention of the late
nineteenth century, which today is referred to as the welfare state—
or Sozialstaat, l`État providence, verzorgingsstat, estado providencia
or sociale or del bienestar or social de derecho, stato sociale or del
benessere, estado de bem-estar-social, folkhemmet, fukushikokka
(社会福利国家), shèhuì fúlì guójiā (Pinyin simplified characters 社会
福 利 国 家 , traditional characters 社 會 福 利 國 家 )—but which
developed to its fullest extent after the Second World War.
All of these terms for the welfare state invoke something different
—folkhemmet is definitely not the same as l`État providence—and
the term ‘welfare state’ itself is radically undetermined. At its
narrowest, it may simply describe a given country’s arrangements for
income maintenance. At its broadest, it is a descriptor for the full
range of economic, social, political, and even cultural traits of a
given polity. This can generate confusion. In this volume, the focus
is upon policies and outcomes, though these go well beyond income
maintenance (to include, e.g. health, education, and housing), and
the idea of the welfare state as a particular political economy is an
ever-present background condition, sometimes brought to the fore.1
At all times, our survey of the ‘state of the welfare state’ adopts a
comparative perspective, a perspective vital for demonstrating the
huge variability of welfare state forms and trajectories, providing a
methodology for understanding the factors contributing to that
variability, and understanding the corridors laid out to bound such
variability in the many Atlantic and other Crossings (Rodgers 1998)
of reform ideas in academia and politics. The Handbook is designed
to cover all the relevant aspects of the modern Western welfare
state2 and to summarize the state of the art in contemporary welfare
state research. In eight Parts, it sheds light on the philosophical
justifications underlying the welfare state; the approaches, methods,
and disciplinary perspectives of comparative social policy research;
the historical development and driving forces of the welfare state;
and its past achievements, contemporary challenges, and likely
future developments.
Such a comprehensive endeavour inevitably requires an
international and interdisciplinary division of labour. This volume
consists of fifty-one chapters written by scholars from diverse
disciplinary backgrounds. The fact that the welfare state is, in
essence, a European invention (Flora 1986–87: vol. 1, xii) and has
experienced its greatest proliferation and expansion in north-western
Europe explains the strong presence of European scholars in
contemporary welfare state research. In contrast with the
dominance of US-based scholars in political science and other social
science disciplines, this volume brings together scholars from many
countries and achieves a balance between the English-speaking and
continental European worlds of scholarship.
Origins of the Welfare State

The origins of the Western welfare state (Part II) date back to the
final quarter of the nineteenth century and are closely associated
with the deep societal, economic, and political transformations
taking place at that time. This Great Transformation (Polanyi 1957
[1944]) included industrialization and the rise of capitalism,
urbanization, and population growth. On the one hand, these
fundamental changes undercut the traditional forms of welfare
provision offered by family networks, charity organizations, feudal
ties, guilds, and municipalities, as well as churches and led, in
consequence, to a massive pauperization which was so impressively
described by Friedrich Engels in his analysis of the situation of the
working class in England (Engels 1975 [1845]), and is captured in
nineteenth-century fiction from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist
(1849/50) to Victor Hugo’s Les misérables (2008 [1882]). On the
other hand, the gains in productivity resulting from industrialization
provided the resources necessary to cope with the emerging ‘social
question’. In political terms, the second half of the nineteenth
century witnessed the formation of nation-states, secularization—
with fierce conflicts over jurisdiction in social and educational affairs
between the Catholic Church and liberals in continental Europe, an
unusually long period of peace, and, finally, the spread of civil rights
and mass democracy, putting in place the institutional basis for the
political articulation of ever-increasing social needs (Rimlinger 1971;
Alber 1982). Political and economic ideas also underwent substantial
change, with liberalism developing a strand more ready to accept
legislation designed to enable the individual to reach their potential
and an increasingly wider body of economic theory ready to admit
the possibility of raising taxes in order to permit state spending on
social programmes (broadly, for national variants on these themes,
see Rimlinger 1971: 35 ff.). The countermovement to Polanyi’s Great
Transformation (1957[1944]) gave rise to collective organization,
initially along class lines, and fashioned a growing labour movement,
which itself became an important driver of welfare state
consolidation.
While all the countries of Western Europe—and a few European
offshoots in North America and the Antipodes—were affected by
these fundamental transformations, the political responses to these
common challenges and the moral purposes in providing more or
less ‘welfare’ differed in many ways. Thus, we find remarkable
diversity with respect to the timing of welfare state consolidation;
policy goals (whether to provide a safety net for a few, to work
towards optimal provision for all, or simply to maintain the status
quo); the precise institutional solutions in terms of financing
mechanisms, programme type and administration, and the public–
private mix; the type of intervention (provision of transfers vs
regulatory social policy); and national trajectories of welfare state
building, i.e. whether social programmes were enacted from the top
down (as in the authoritarian monarchies in Europe) or emerged
from the bottom up (as in the democracies of the New World plus
Switzerland).
This diversity can be attributed to significant differences in
national political contexts that have, in their turn, been shaped by
different legacies in terms of state and nation building (Rokkan
1999); distinctive national political cultures, particularly in terms of
the degree of trust in the state and its capacity to solve problems;
differences in societal cleavage patterns and actor-constellations;
and differences in the pressure of socio-economic problems.
However, even this list of factors explaining the emergence and
diversity of the welfare state is far from exhaustive. Peter Baldwin
(1990: 36–37) has noted that there is hardly a variable which has
not been regarded as influential in this respect: ‘Industrialisation,
free trade, capitalism, modernisation, socialism, the working class,
civil servants, corporatism, reformers, Catholicism, war—rare is the
variable that has not been invoked to explain some aspect of its
development.’ In fact, there is neither a specific configuration of
socio-economic variables triggering welfare state consolidation, nor
is welfare state building related to a particular group of actors.
Rather, the countermovement against unregulated capitalism
consisted of actors from across the entire political spectrum (Polanyi
1957: 147).
Looking back at this founding period of the welfare state from the
vantage point of the early twenty-first century, what stands out is
that these early beginnings of state social policy coincided with what
we now recognize as the ‘first era of globalization’, commencing in
the 1870s and brought to an abrupt end with the declaration of war
in 1914 (see James 1996: 1–26; Bayly 2004). Creating a social
insurance system for blue-collar workers in the 1880s was perceived
by welfare state founders such as Bismarck as providing Germany
with a competitive advantage over England through what we might
now describe as a programme of social investment aimed at
promoting ‘endogenous growth’. The British bought into this view,
feeling that their former position as ‘workshop of the world’ was
profoundly challenged by developments elsewhere in Europe
(Hennock 2007).
It is not surprising then, that welfare state theorizing has mainly
been inductive and that the welfare state was almost at the peak of
its development by the time that modern welfare state theories
identifying the inputs and actors consequential for welfare state
growth (see Part IV) were formulated from the 1950s onwards.
There is, however, one exception to this rule that theorizing had to
await the mature development of the welfare state, and it is,
arguably, no coincidence that the first (functionalist) generation of
modern welfare state theories strongly built on this tradition of
reasoning. Even at the time of its inception, numerous social
scientists attributed the emergence of the welfare state to the
fundamental changes in society and economy brought about by
industrialization. Amongst them, German economist Adolph Wagner,
a leading Kathedersozialist, argued in 1893 that the far-reaching
changes in economy and society would generate increasing levels of
state intervention and rising public expenditure. On this basis, he
predicted the transformation of the nineteenth-century night
watchman state into a ‘Cultur- und Wohlfahrtsstaat’ (Wagner 1893).
Wagner’s law of a ‘growing public’ sphere (Lindert 2004) turned
out to be a powerful prediction. The rise of the welfare state during
the course of the twentieth century was impressive, as was the
concomitant growth and transformation of the public sector. In the
nineteenth century, the state had been substantially a warfare state,
with military spending amounting to 25 per cent of total public
expenditure. Public social expenditure, by contrast, was a residual
spending item equivalent to only about 5 per cent of public
expenditure, or less than one per cent of gross national product
(GDP) in most countries (Lindert 2004: 171–172; Cusack 2007:
105). By the second decade of the twenty-first century, however,
spending priorities had been entirely turned upside down. Today, on
average, in the long-standing Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) member states, more than half
of total public expenditure is absorbed by the welfare state, while
the military now occupies a residual position similar to that of the
welfare state in the late nineteenth century.
However, this growth in the size of the state, in terms of both
spending and the numbers of people it employs, together with its
more interventionist role, occurred in spurts and assumed quite
different trajectories in different countries. Governments may finance
social provision, directly provide welfare services as well as cash
benefits, and/or regulate provision made by the third or private
sectors. Different countries have committed to different roles for the
state at different periods in time. A first period of expansion
occurred between the two world wars (Rimlinger 1971; Alber 1982).
The devastating social repercussions of the First World War were a
triggering event (Obinger et al. 2018), but the transformation also
had important political sources. Democratization followed the
collapse of the imperial empires in Europe. Extensions to the
franchise provided underprivileged sections of society with a voice
and gave the parties of labour and an emergent Christian presence
in party politics access to the corridors of power for the first time.
And first efforts to internationalize social policy were already
underway, with the establishment of International Labour Office
(ILO) in 1919. In many countries, the Great Depression put an end
to this first phase of welfare state expansion. In some of them, such
as Britain and Australia, this represented merely a conservative turn,
but in others the effects were cataclysmic. Against a backdrop of
dramatic economic slowdown, some of the countries of continental
Europe made major benefit cutbacks, reinforcing political crisis, and,
in a number of cases, contributing to the downfall of democratic
regimes. In a few countries, however, economic stagnation was an
impetus to social policy transformation. In the United States and
New Zealand, the crisis was the prelude for welfare state take-off,
while, in Scandinavia, the same economic events were the precursor
of a move towards a new—and, arguably, more advanced—stage of
welfare state development.

Post-Second World War Development

The Second World War once again made the warfare state the first
priority, but, like its dreadful First World War predecessor, the end of
the war impelled further social policy expansion (Obinger and
Schmitt 2019). But note that, for the first time, it was also a war in
which the idea of welfare was presented as part of the casus belli
and as a reason why the war should be seen as a just war. Two of
the eight war aims in the Atlantic Charter of 14 August 1941, which
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on in Ship Harbour, Newfoundland,
concerned social welfare, specifically ‘securing, for all, improved
labor standards, economic advancement and social security’ (point
5) and ‘that all men in all the lands may live out their lives in
freedom from fear and want’ (point 6). ‘Social security’ now became
the grand international slogan (Kaufmann 2003). The Beveridge Plan
of 1942 is justly famous as one of the founding documents of the
modern welfare state, but much less well known is the fact that
there were also Nazi counterplans for a new kind of welfare state
after assumed victory (Recker 1985; Kott and Patel 2018). At this
tipping point of European history, the warfare and the welfare state
were ideologically fused into one.
The catastrophe of war and the subsequent commitment to
establish a new and internationally sanctioned order which would
protect peace and security had a major impact on post-war welfare
state development and social outcomes, such as income inequality
(Piketty 2014). War itself can be a ‘locomotive of change’, enhancing
and building new forms of social solidarity (Titmuss 1958; Goodin
and Dryzek 1995) and making state intervention and the funding to
finance it more acceptable in the ensuing peace (Scheve and
Stasavage 2016; Obinger et al. 2018). Moreover, the need for
economic reconstruction after the Second World War was a profound
stimulus to economic growth and provided resources for welfare
state expansion on an unprecedented scale. And the ‘Cold War’,
starting in 1947, if not even in 1945, instigated a competition of
economic systems and further supported ambitions to outcompete
the Eastern Bloc in terms of welfare performance (Obinger and
Schmitt 2011; Petersen 2013). This is the period which, in
retrospect, has sometimes been described, with a mixture of
hindsight and nostalgia, as a ‘Golden Age’ both of economic and of
welfare state development. War and the economic displacement it
caused had once again created enormous social needs, to which
countries were now better able to respond, given the centralization
of tax powers enacted during wartime and the sustained economic
growth initiated by post-war reconstruction. Moreover, a
commitment to prevent war ever again causing such physical,
economic, and social destruction was a driving force for European
integration, which was promoted in the initial post-war period as a
mechanism for preventing future conflicts through increased
economic integration and trade.
Although increased trade integration was the leitmotif of future
European economic development, the massive growth of the welfare
state during the so-called trentes glorieuses (1945–74) took place
against the backdrop of relatively closed economies. Because exit
options for mobile factors of production were low in the initial period
of the post-war settlement, there was considerable room for
redistribution, and this was exploited by governments of all partisan
complexions. ‘Liberalism’ could then be ‘embedded’, mostly in a
lasting fashion—and even the United States could see itself, at first,
as catching up with the European Joneses, and not, as in the period
from the 1980s onwards, as standing against the European welfare
tide in a kind of principled ‘exceptionalism’ (see Glazer 1998). The
experience of war and depression paved the way for the emergence
of a Keynesian consensus (however brittle in some countries),
justifying policies that promoted high levels of employment and high
tax and expenditures levels, as well as nourishing the notion that
government intrusion in economic and social affairs was imperative
for stabilizing demand and the business cycle in capitalist economies.
Distributional conflicts were mitigated by a comparatively
symmetrical balance of power between the interest organizations of
labour and capital and by exceptionally high rates of economic
growth. Partisan competition, as well as system competition in a
world now divided by an Iron Curtain, further fuelled welfare state
expansion. Under these circumstances, social benefits were
everywhere significantly raised, existing programmes were extended
to cover new groups of beneficiaries, and entirely new schemes
adopted (see Part V, describing trajectories of development of
expenditures and revenues, as well as a wide range of separate
social programmes). As a consequence, welfare state coverage, as
well as spending levels, rose dramatically, with important impacts on
policy outcomes, including a decrease in inequality and poverty, the
guarantee of social rights, and strong macroeconomic performance
(see Part VI).
Despite this massive expansion, however, the institutional
differences laid down in the era of welfare state consolidation
persisted or were transformed into new ones. Hence, Western
countries took different routes to and through welfare state
modernity (Therborn 1995; Castles 1998). In contrast to the claims
of functionalist accounts in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the mid-
1970s (Wilensky 1975), no marked convergence occurred as these
countries became wealthier. This holds true for social expenditure
and welfare state institutional patterns alike. Thus, the United States
remained a residual direct provider of public welfare, preserving
insurance-based benefits for particular groups deemed to be
deserving (in the main older people), using tax subsidies and
regulation to encourage private welfare provision and eschewing the
development of major state services (particularly health care)—the
latter leading to ever deeper conflict and recurring attempts at
health insurance reform (Oberlander 2016). At the other end of the
spectrum, the Scandinavian countries developed a full range of tax
and insurance-based benefits and public services. In light of these
persisting cross-national dissimilarities, welfare state research has
devoted a substantial intellectual effort to identifying the character
of these variations and their sources. Among the various
classifications suggested in the literature, Esping-Andersen’s (1990)
typology of welfare regimes is unquestionably the most important.
The historical origins, achievements, and vulnerabilities of these
welfare regimes, as well as of other ‘families of nations’ both within
and without the OECD area, constitute the topic of Part VII.

Critiques and Challenges

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the ‘Golden Age’ of welfare capitalism
began to falter, and the ‘Silver Age’ began to dawn (Taylor-Gooby
2002; Chapter 6 below). Deteriorating economic performance in the
wake of the oil shocks and the failure of many governments to cope
with emergent stagflation led to a (renewed) scepticism concerning
the role of the state in society and economy. As a consequence, the
welfare state was increasingly critiqued from almost every point on
the political spectrum. Conservatives complained about
ungovernability in general (Crozier et al. 1975), while liberals
lamented inefficiencies and paternalism. Certainly, though, the most
influential critiques—in terms of real-world political consequences—
were those articulated by theorists of neoliberalism and a newly
morally engaged conservatism (see Chapter 4 below), the ideas of
which gained more and more importance over time. In influential
conservative (‘New Right’) critiques of US attempts to address the
issue of poverty in the post-war era, Charles Murray (1984) launched
a powerful attack on the moral hazard of welfare policies, making a
case for the abolition of welfare benefits in the United States, while
Lawrence Mead (1986) also attacked the provision of welfare, but
argued for much greater conditionality in their administration—the
beginnings of the idea of ‘welfare-to-work’. In these accounts, and in
a pincer movement of both economists and political scientists, some
inspired by the neoliberal ideas of Hayek (1944) and Friedman (1992
[1962]) and others persuaded by the logic of rational choice
theories, who cast doubt on who really benefited from social
policies, state intervention was increasingly seen as part of the
problem, rather than as a tool for overcoming macroeconomic
imbalances or for social amelioration (documented and confronted
by Goodin 1988). Post-materialists argued that a growing welfare
state bureaucracy undermined individual autonomy and the
institutions of civil society (Beck 1999), while feminists perceived the
welfare state as an institution underpinning and freezing traditional
gender relations (Fraser 1994). Marxists, as they had at previous
stages of capitalist development, identified an emergent
contradiction, arguing that capitalism had ceased to be viable
without the welfare state but that, at the same time, the very
growth of the welfare state undermined the logic of capitalist
accumulation, producing a so-called ‘crisis of crisis management’ to
cite Gough (1979; see also Offe 1984; O’Connor 1973).
Arguably, though, the most influential critique—in terms of its real-
world political consequences—was that articulated by theories of
neoliberalism (see Part I), the ideas of which gained greater
importance over time. An ideological climate change was in the
making (Le Grand 1997): commentators and politicians in many
countries urged that more attention should be paid to the
responsibilities as opposed to the rights of individuals, particularly
the responsibility to engage in paid work. Such calls resulted in
policies that often were punitive in the United States, while Western
Europe developed more enabling ‘activation’ strategies, even though,
in the Nordic countries, the welfare state had been built firmly on
conditionality and the work/welfare relationship. Two decades of
unrelenting intellectual attack along these lines increasingly
challenged the optimistic faith in the beneficial effects of big
government on which the post-war welfare state consensus had
rested. Increasingly, the aspiration was to replace states with
markets—or, where that was not possible, with ‘quasi-markets’ (Le
Grand 1999). With the first moves being made in the English-
speaking countries, neoliberal ideas soon spread across the globe.
This process was accelerated and reinforced by international
organizations such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund and triggered a major rethinking of the role of the
state in economic and social affairs (Deacon et al. 1997), minimally
counterbalanced by international social institutions such as the ILO
and the World Health Organization, and by UN World Social Summits
as in 1995. ‘Rolling back the state’ to its core functions was
increasingly seen as offering major comparative advantages in an
international political economy which had undergone a fundamental
transformation (Scharpf 2000). This transformation had occurred in
several stages. The collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system
and the economic slowdown resulting from the two oil price shocks
in the 1970s began the process. The 1980s witnessed deregulation
and internationalization of capital markets and ever-increasing trade
liberalization. The collapse of communism in 1989 was a geopolitical
event that seemed to confirm the neoliberal view that public
intrusion in economic affairs leads to inefficiencies. The 1990s
witnessed the emergence of a truly ‘global’ economy and could build
on significant progress in European integration with the formation of
the Single European Market and later European Monetary Union,
with a European ‘common currency’ from 2002. Finally, eastwards
enlargement of the European Union (EU) from 2004 onwards
anchored a considerable disparity in wealth across EU member
states and created new opportunities to remove business and capital
to low wage countries.
Taken together, these external changes had far-reaching
consequences for advanced welfare states. The deepening of
European integration not only imposed constraints on fiscal and
monetary policy, which precluded the practice of traditional
Keynesian macroeconomic policies at the national level, but also
created ‘semi-sovereign’ welfare states which became embedded in
an emerging multi-level social policy regime (Leibfried and Pierson
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