scholarly journals The Lost and the New ‘Liberal World’ of Welfare Capitalism: A Critical Assessment of Gøsta Esping-Andersen'sThe Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalisma Quarter Century Later

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Deeming
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Development ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Liberal Thought

Celebrating the 25th birthday of Gøsta Esping-Andersen's seminal bookThe Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism(1990), this article looks back at the old ‘liberal world’ and examines the new. In so doing, it contributes to debates and the literature on liberal welfare state development in three main ways. First, it considers the concept of ‘liberalism’ and liberal ideas about welfare provision contained withinThree Worlds. Here we are also interested in how liberal thought has conceptualised the (welfare) state, and the class-mobilisation theory of welfare-state development. Second, the article elaborates on ‘neo-’liberal social reforms and current welfare arrangements in the English-speaking democracies and their welfare states. Finally, it considers the extent to which the English-speaking world of welfare capitalism is still meaningfully ‘liberal’ and coherent today.

Diverging Paths

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Luyten
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
National Level ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
State Development ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
The Impact

For the Netherlands and Belgium in the twentieth century, occupation is a key concept to understand the impact of the war on welfare state development. The occupation shifted the balance of power between domestic social forces: this was more decisive for welfare state development than the action of the occupier in itself. War and occupation did not result exclusively in more cooperation between social classes: some interest groups saw the war as a window of opportunity to develop strategies resulting in more social conflict. Class cooperation was often part of a political strategy to gain control over social groups or to legitimate social reforms. The world wars changed the scale of organization of social protection, from the local to the national level: after World War II social policy became a mission for the national state. For both countries, war endings had more lasting effects for welfare state development than the occupation itself.

Democratization and Welfare State Development in Taiwan. By Christian Aspalter. [Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002. xii+171 pp. ISBN 0-7546-1603-7.]

2003 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 537-538
Author(s):  
Dafydd Fell
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
East Asia ◽  
English Language ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Development ◽  
Welfare State Development

Taiwan studies suffer from an overemphasis on cross-straits relations and national identity, making Christian Aspalter's Democratization and Welfare State Development in Taiwan a refreshing change. After his previous comparative publication, Conservative Welfare States in East Asia, Aspalter offers readers the first English language book-length publication explaining the development of Taiwan's welfare state.

scholarly journals Business and Welfare State Development: Why Did Employers Accept Social Reforms?

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Paster
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Development ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
State Expansion ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Business Support ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Changes Over Time

In recent years, employer-centered explanations of welfare state development have begun to challenge conventional labor-centered and state-centered explanations. These new explanations suggest that sector-specific business interests and cross-class alliances propelled the adoption and expansion of social programs (the business interests thesis). This article presents a novel explanation of differences in business support for welfare state expansion based on a diachronic analysis of the German case and shadow case studies of Sweden and the United States. The article suggests that when looking at changes in employers’ positions across time rather than across sectors, political constraints turn out to be the central factor explaining variation in employers’ support for social reforms (the political accommodation thesis). The article identifies two goals of business intervention in welfare state development: pacification and containment. In the case of pacification, business interests propel social policy expansion; in the case of containment, they constrain it. Business chooses pacification when revolutionary forces challenge capitalism and political stabilization thus becomes a priority. Business chooses containment when reformist forces appear likely to succeed in expanding social protection and no revolutionary challenge exists. The article shows that changes over time in the type of political challenges that business interests confront best explain the variation in business support for labor-friendly social reforms.

scholarly journals Party Institutionalization and Welfare State Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus B. Rasmussen ◽  
Carl Henrik Knutsen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
State Development ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article argues that the extent to which political parties are institutionalized shapes welfare state development. Institutionalized parties allow politicians to overcome co-ordination problems, avoid capture by special interests and form stable linkages with broad social groups. These features both enable and incentivize politicians to pursue extensive welfare policies. The study employs measures of party institutionalization and welfare state features to study these proposed relationships. Even when accounting for country- and year-fixed effects and plausible confounders such as electoral system, unionization, regime type and state capacity, the authors find clear relationships between party institutionalization and more extensive and universal welfare states. Focusing on universalism, they find that the relationship is more pronounced when constraints on executives are strong and in democracies, but that it also exists in autocracies. Further, when disaggregating party institutionalization and evaluating mechanisms, the linkages that institutionalized parties form with social groups constitute one important, but not the only relevant, factor.

Warfare and Welfare

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Western World ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
State Development ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact

This book is concerned with the nexus between warfare and welfare. The relationship between war and welfare states is contested. While some scholars consider war a pacemaker of the welfare state, others have emphasized a sharp trade-off between ‘guns and butter’ and highlighted the negative impacts of war on social protection. However, many of these findings only focus on social spending or are based on studies of individual national cases. From a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, this book addresses the question of whether and how both world wars have influenced the development of advanced welfare states. Distinguishing between three different phases (war preparation, wartime mobilization, and the post-war period), the volume provides the first systematic comparative analysis of the impact of war on welfare state development in the Western world. The chapters, written by leading scholars in this field, examine both short-term responses to and long-term effects of war in fourteen belligerent, occupied, and neutral countries in the age of mass warfare stretching over the period from c.1860 to 1960. The findings clearly show that war is essential for understanding several aspects of welfare state development and welfare state patterns in advanced democracies.

scholarly journals War and Welfare States Before and After 1945

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Obinger ◽  
Klaus Petersen ◽  
Carina Schmitt ◽  
Peter Starke
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
State Development ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Welfare State Development ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

The conclusion reports major findings and discusses possible cross-country patterns. It shows that war’s impact on welfare state development can be differentiated into several distinct conclusions, each highlighting specific effects or causal mechanisms. Next, the case study evidence of the long-term effects of war is confirmed with quantitative data. For a sample of eighteen countries (thirteen of which are presented in this volume) war is shown to contribute to a better understanding of several of the phenomena lying at the heart of comparative welfare state research (i.e. social expenditure, benefit generosity, the public–private mix in provision, and the timing of legislation). The impact on outcomes such as income inequality is briefly discussed, along with the impact of the Cold War on welfare state development. Due to changes in warfare and the size of the existing welfare state, the effect of war on welfare state-building has all but disappeared today.

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