WHAT'S LEFT OF THE WELFARE STATE?

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consensus ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Capitalist Democracies ◽  
The Welfare State

What, if anything, is left of the socialist project? One way of interpreting this question is to ask whether socialism has bequeathed any permanent legacy to the capitalist democracies—do they have any features that would not exist apart from the historical impact of socialism, and that positively reflect socialist values? If we assume, with the political consensus of the moment, that full-blown socialism no longer represents a possible programme for these democracies, perhaps we can still discover the remains of socialism embedded in their practices. Or maybe not—that is the question I want to address.

The emergence of the idea of ‘the welfare state’ in British political discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110344
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Core ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Subsequent Integration ◽  
The Welfare State

This article traces the emergence of the term welfare state in British political discourse and describes competing efforts to define its meaning. It presents a genealogy of the concept's emergence and its subsequent integration into various political scripts, tracing the struggles that sought to name, define, and narrate what welfare state would be taken to mean. It shows that the concept emerged only after the core programmes to which it referred had already been enacted into law and that the referents and meaning of the concept were never generally agreed upon – not even at the moment of its formation in the late 1940s. During the 1950s, the welfare state concept was being framed in three distinct senses: (a) the welfare state as a set of social security programmes; (b) the welfare state as a socio-economic system; and (c) the welfare state as a new kind of state. Each of these usages was deployed by opposing political actors – though with different scope, meaning, value, and implication. The article argues that the welfare state concept did not operate as a representation reflecting a separate, already-constituted reality. Rather, the use of the concept in the political and economic arguments of the period – and in later disputes about the nature of the Labour government's post-war achievements – was always thoroughly rhetorical and constitutive, its users aiming to shape the transformations and outcomes that they claimed merely to describe.

Financialization, Income Inequality, and Redistribution in 18 Affluent Democracies, 1981–2011

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Hyde ◽  
Todd Vachon ◽  
Michael Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
The Political ◽  
Credit Expansion ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Capitalist Democracies ◽  
The Welfare State

In recent decades, the growth of finance and rising income inequality has become a pervasive feature of the political economies in affluent capitalist democracies. This study investigates the long-run effects of financialization on three measures of income inequality—market-generated income inequality, redistribution, and state-mediated income inequality—in 18 affluent capitalist democracies from 1981 to 2011. We focus on three aspects of financialization (finance, insurance, and real estate employment; credit expansion; and financial crises). We find support for our claims that all three measures of financialization increase market-generated and state-mediated income inequality. The results for redistribution are mixed: credit expansion decreases redistribution as expected, but financial crises increase redistribution—a finding that supports the welfare state stabilization hypothesis.

Managing Decentralization: The Strategy of Institutional Differentiation in German Industrial Relations

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Schroeder ◽  
Rainer Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Collective Bargaining Agreement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Institutional Differentiation ◽  
The Welfare State

The approach of the new millennium appears to signal the demiseof traditional models of social organization. The political core ofthis process of change—the restructuring of the welfare state—andthe related crisis of the industrywide collective bargaining agreementhave been subjects of much debate. For some years now inspecialist literature, this debate has been conducted between theproponents of a neo-liberal (minimally regulated) welfare state andthe supporters of a social democratic model (highly regulated). Thealternatives are variously expressed as “exit vs. voice,” “comparativeausterity vs. progressive competitiveness,” or “deregulation vs.cooperative re-regulation.”

The Political Economy of the Welfare State.

1983 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 734
Author(s):  
John B. Williamson ◽  
Thomas Wilson ◽  
Dorothy J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Welfare State
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