Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kohlmann
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Administrative Procedures ◽  
The Welfare State

The Introduction begins to outline a literary prehistory of the welfare state in Britain around 1900 by turning to a period that forces us to look beyond the connotations associated with the terms reform and revolution today. The chapter presents the book’s two intertwined goals, one reconstructive and literary-historical, the other conceptual and theoretical. First, British Literature and the Life of Institutions reconstructs the emergence of a reformist literary mode around 1900 by exploring how literary texts responded and adapted to the elongated rhythms of institutional change that characterized the emergence of new state structures in this period. But the book also, secondly, aims to make visible a reformist idiom which pervades literary, philosophical, political, and social writing of the period, and which insists that we need to think about the state as an idea, as a speculative figure, rather than as a set of administrative procedures and bureaucratic processes.

British Literature and the Life of Institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kohlmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Administrative Procedures ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Welfare State

Speculative States pursues two related goals, one reconstructive and literary-historical, the other conceptual. First, the book restores to view literature’s engagements with the slow politics of reform by linking the development of the institutional forms of the state to the aesthetic forms of literary writing. In doing so, it maps out a literary prehistory of the welfare state in Britain that spans the late Victorian and modernist periods. Second, the book also makes visible an ambitious reformist idiom which insists that we think about the state as an aspirational (speculative) figure—as a form of life in its own right rather than as a set of detached administrative procedures and bureaucratic processes. Placing literary studies in dialogue with political theory, philosophy, and the history of ideas, Speculative States marks a major contribution to current debates about literature and the state, but it also centrally intervenes in conversations in critical theory by urging a fuller engagement with the critical and speculative dimensions of the dialectical imagination.

War and the State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Ball
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
British State ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter characterizes the relationship of the British state to war over the long term. It analyses two epistemic turning points for the war–state relationship, one occurring in the 1860s, the other in the 1970s. It explains the importance of war to the British state under the ‘fiscal security’ compromise.The chapter traces the long and uneven emergence of the ‘welfare state’ as a successor to the ‘warfare state’. It argues that the ‘warfare state’ paradigm loses much of its empirical and conceptual force if it were to be extended beyond 1970. The relationship of the state to war changed so fundamentally at that point that history, the chapter suggests, ceased to be a useful guide for future conduct.

Staatseingriff und Ökonomiefunktion / State intervention and the economic function

1978 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Vobruba
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Economic Function ◽  
Means Of Production ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe origin of the function of the Welfare State is to be explained as a reaction, firstly, to forceful social claims by the working class and, secondly, to its hereby increasing political weight which the state had to take into account for the sake of its own survival. With the adoption of social obligations, the state in capitalism enters into a specific dependence from the economic system. Since the state is not a producer, it has to acquire the necessary financial means from the economic system to function as a Welfare State. The extraction of financial means from the economic system (especially in the form of taxes) can occur all the more easily, the more smoothly the economic system itself functions. The state is, therefore ‚out of its own interests‘ dependent on the promotion of the economic system. The intervention of the Welfare State affects, on the other hand, the function of the economy. Whilst the Welfare State provides an, at least rudimentary, existence beyond the labour market and occupation, it evades the constraintive situation: wage labour or starvation, to which the non owners of the means of production were subject to under ‚classical‘ conditions, and therefore strenghtens their conflict potential. The corollary of this is that the function of the capitalist crisis to purge wage costs, can no longer unfold itself. Consequently this results in a change of the particular character of capitalist crisis and in a development, which in its tendency burdens the state with ever increasing social problems, to be solved, without enableing the state to sufficiently expand its financial margin.

III. Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Hume
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Government ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Welfare State

Within the last twenty years, historians' views about the significance of ‘Benthamism’ for the development of British government in the nineteenth century have fluctuated pretty widely. In 1948 J. B. Brebner set decisively in motion a movement away from the interpretation, stated in classic but curiously ambivalent form by A. V. Dicey, which made Bentham the philosopher and advocate of an allegedly dominant policy of laissez faire or ‘individualism’. Brebner attacked both legs of Dicey's argument, contending that in the years 1825–70 (which Dicey had identified as the period of individualism) the scale and variety of State intervention were extensive, and that the State intervention of the time ‘in practically all of its many forms was basically Benthamite—Benthamite in the sense of conforming closely to that forbidding, detailed blueprint for a collectivist state, the Constitutional Code’. More recently, some specialists in nineteenth-century administrative history have accepted, and have in some directions extended, one side of Brebner's thesis, but have cast doubt on the other side. Thus, reinforcing Brebner's interpretation of Victorian policy-making, David Roberts has located ‘the origins of the welfare state’ in the period 1832–54, and Oliver MacDonagh has argued that in ‘the middle quarters of the nineteenth-century…(contrary to all expectation and desire) the collectivist system of the present day began to take its shape’. But in developing their themes Roberts and MacDonagh have tended to attach little importance to what Dicey called ‘opinion’—consciously formulated and coherently worked-out beliefs or programmes—and to stress instead the pragmatic responses of politicians and administrators to problems and events.

In Need

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordanna Bailkin
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter asks how refugee camps transformed people as well as spaces, altering the identities of the individuals and communities who lived in and near them. It considers how camps forged and fractured economic, religious, and ethnic identities, constructing different kinds of unity and disunity. Camps had unpredictable effects on how refugees and Britons thought of themselves, and how they saw their relationship to upward and downward mobility. As the impoverished Briton emerged more clearly in the imagination of the welfare state, the refugee was his constant companion and critic. The state struggled to determine whether refugees required the same care as the poor, or if they warranted their own structures of aid.

scholarly journals Social innovation as a policy response to restructure the welfare state

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 269-276
Author(s):  
Doğa Başar Sariipek ◽  
Gökçe Cerev ◽  
Bora Yenihan
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The State ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
The Welfare State

The focus of this paper is the interaction between social innovation and restructuring welfare state. Modern welfare states have been reconfiguring their welfare mixes through social innovation. This includes a productive integration of formal and informal actors with support and leading role of the state. This collaboration becomes significantly important since it means the integration of not only the actors, but also their capabilities and resources in today’s world where new social risks and new social challenges have emerged and no actor can overcome these by its own. Therefore, social innovation is a useful tool in the new role sharing within the welfare mix in order to reach higher levels of satisfaction and success in welfare provision. The main point here is that this is not a zero-sum competition; gaining more power of the actors other than the state – the market, civil society organisations and the family – does not necessarily mean that the state lost its leading role and power. This is rather a new type of cooperation among actors and their capabilities as well as their resources in welfare provision. In this sense, social innovation may contribute well to the debates over the financial crisis of the welfare state since it may lead to the more wisely use of existing resources of welfare actors. Thanks to social innovative programs, not only the NGOs, but also market forces as well as citizens are more active to access welfare provisions and social protection in the broadest sense. Thus, social innovative strategies are definitely a solid step taken towards “enabling” or “active” welfare state.

Entreprenøren som figur under neoliberalismen - Kapitalisme, individ og velfærdsorganisering

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Economic Innovation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Welfare State

The article explores the central role of the entrepreneur in neoliberalism. It demonstrates how a displacement and a broadening of the concept of the entrepreneur occur in the neoliberal interpretation of the entrepreneur compared to Schumpeter’s economic innovation theory. From being a specific economic figure with a particular delimited function the entrepreneur is reinterpreted as, on the one hand, a particular type of subject, the entrepreneur of the self, and on the other, an ism, entrepreneurialism, which permeates individuals, society, and institutions. Entrepreneurialism is discussed as a movement of the economic into previously non-economic domains, such as the welfare state and society. Social entrepreneurship is an example of this in relation to solutions to social welfare problems. This can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of the neoliberal understanding of the entrepreneur, but it also, in certain interpretations, resists the neoliberal understanding of economy and society.

Global Equality and Open Borders

2020 ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Nils Holtug
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Open Borders ◽  
Egalitarian Justice ◽  
The Welfare State

Egalitarians disagree about the extent to which states should have open borders. Sometimes, this disagreement is due to a deeper disagreement about the scope of egalitarian justice. Egalitarians holding that equality has domestic scope only may be inclined to favor restrictive immigration policies to protect the welfare state. Egalitarians holding that equality has global scope, on the other hand, may be inclined to support more open borders in order to reduce global inequality. This chapter argues that equality has global scope and then considers the implications of global egalitarianism for the issue of open borders. Furthermore, the chapter provides an argument for why (more) open borders can be expected reduce global inequality. Then some objections to this argument are considered, based on brain drain, threats to welfare states, and in-group bias. Finally, the chapter considers the suggestion that (more) open borders is not the best (or most efficient) way of reducing global inequality.

scholarly journals Neo-liberalism and the Nordic welfare model: a study of the Liberal Alliance and ideological adaptation in Denmark

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troels Fage Hedegaard
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Liberal Ideology ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Welfare Model ◽  
The Welfare State

This article explores whether and how the neo-liberal ideology has adapted to the Nordic welfare model by studying the attitudes of voters and grass-roots members of the Danish party Liberal Alliance towards the welfare state. This inquiry into one of the key issues for the neo-liberal ideology is inspired by theory on how an ideology will adapt to its context. The expectation outlined in the article is for the neo-liberals of this party to favour features that make the Nordic welfare model distinctive – extensive governmental responsibility, especially for children and the elderly, and a universalistic approach to providing welfare. I have explored this question using a mixed-methods approach, where I analyse a survey of voters and interviews with grass-roots members of the party. Combined this shows that the neo-liberals in Liberal Alliance do support a role for the welfare state that extends beyond a minimum welfare state, especially for the care of children, but they view old age and retirement mostly as a problem each individual must deal with. Regarding the universalistic approach to providing welfare, the neo-liberals seem torn between two different tendencies, one being a perception of a fair way to provide welfare and the other the idea of a selective welfare state as a neo-liberal core idea, which leads to ambivalent attitudes. I argue that this results in a form of the neo-liberal ideology that has adapted to the Nordic welfare model.

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