Paul V. Dutton,Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 251 pp. $65.00 cloth; $27.00 paper.

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 194-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herrick Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Funded Pensions ◽  
Private Government ◽  
Second World

Comparative studies of social policy usually portray the French welfare state as lagging behind most of its counterparts in Western Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century. The sheer complexity of the French system, moreover, with its baroque mixture of separate private, government and quasi-public funds, made it exceptional as well. Yet tardiness and complexity by no means prevented the French from expanding social insurance at an especially rapid clip in the decades following the Second World War. By 1980 France spent more on social security as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than any country in Europe except Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. Today the French are among Europe's most stalwart defenders of publicly funded pensions and health insurance. Given its unimpressive beginnings, how did the French welfare state become such a heavyweight?

The Emergence of the Western Welfare State

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-92
Author(s):  
Stein Kuhnle ◽  
Anne Sander
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Protection Legislation ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The chapter provides a perspective on the early development of the welfare state in the countries of the European cultural complex, including the European (English) settler nations. The focus is on the emergence of the institutions of social insurance since the 1880s until 1945. First, an overall picture of early collective solutions to social problems is presented, followed by a depiction and discussion of why state-initiated social insurance came about, why Germany was a forerunner, and why national authorities reacted differently to the new challenge of social policy. The second part of the chapter covers the phase of consolidation, expansion, and geographical diffusion of social insurance and protection legislation after the First World War. A comprehensive tabular overview of the first statutory social security schemes in the forty-two ILO member countries that had introduced at least three out of five insurance pillars by 1945 is included. The chapter ends with a brief look at the Second World War experience.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

JEWISH IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 271-284
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Social ◽  
Second World

The conclusion examines the situation after the Second World War. It shows how the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy ended and how the social democratic settlement in Western Europe gave birth to the new linguistic turns known as structuralism. The author explores the former by examining the career of Richard Rorty and the latter by looking at how Roland Barthes combines ideas from Saussure with a project for a radical analysis of French everyday life in the Mythologies. The book concludes with a review of how the various linguistic turns overinvested in the idea of language.

Living Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-254
Author(s):  
Martin Conway
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Second World

This chapter focuses on the consumption of democracy. What happened in the roughly twenty-five-year period from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s is perhaps best regarded as a process of gradual acculturation. At different speeds and by different paths, a large majority of Western Europeans came to feel at home in democracy, and began to practise democracy for themselves. However, the new democracies were more equal in their formal structures than in their social reality. The reassertion of boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, and age, after the more fluid and often chaotic experiences of the war years, was reinforced by the evolving but persistent inequalities of social class. Western Europe emphatically remained a class society after 1945. The rapid economic growth that occurred during the post-war years generated new forms of affluence, but these were distributed in ways that reinforced pre-existing class divisions. In particular, the post-war years witnessed a resurgence in the fortunes of the middle class. Whether assessed in terms of its material prosperity, its influence within and over government, or its wider social and cultural ascendancy, the middle class was the dominant social class of the post-war era.

Reforming the Welfare State: German and European Experiences and Challenges

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-87
Author(s):  
Bernhard Seliger
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Reform Strategies ◽  
European Development ◽  
Western European ◽  
Special Respect ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Welfare State

The rise of the welfare state has been a characteristic feature of Western European development after the second world war, despite quite different economic models in Western European countries. However, dynamic implications of the welfare state made a reform increasingly necessary. Therefore, since the 1980s the reform of the welfare state has been an important topic for Western European states. This paper describes the development of the welfare state and analyzes possible welfare reform strategies with special respect to the case of Germany. It focuses on the interdependence of political and economic aspects of welfare reform on the national as well as international level.

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