The Idea of the Welfare State

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Moon
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Quality Of Services ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
History Of ◽  
Policies And Programs ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state rests upon a commitment to equality, such that the provision of services, and the type and quality of services that are provided, are not differentiated by class or other markers of unequal status. This article outlines the history of welfare state theorizing, beginning with a discourse that is likely to be most familiar to Anglophone audiences, which view the welfare state as emerging from a critical, and largely internal, interrogation of liberalism, with its commitment to juridical equality, individualism, and liberty. In much of continental Europe, where liberal ideas were less established, the idea of a welfare state emerged from a critical, and again largely internal, interrogation of socialism—more particularly, Marxism—with its commitment to solidarity, science, and positive freedom. Although discourse about the scope and structure of social policy continued to engage large issues of political philosophy, social scientists began to raise narrower and more technical questions about the effectiveness of the policies and programs of the welfare state.

E.P. Hennock 1926–2012: an appreciation

Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 726-729
Author(s):  
PAUL LAXTON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
City Life ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Welfare State

Of the British scholars gathered by H.J. Dyos in 1966 to give substance to his vision of urban history as a distinctive genre of history only a few would claim the study of cities and city life as their prime academic interest. No more than a handful of those involved in the Urban History Group in the mid-1960s went on to publish major work in urban history. That was left to the generation whose careers were established in the early 1970s. The handful included Jim Dyos himself, Tony Sutcliffe, David Reeder, John Kellett and Peter Hennock. For the latter part of his career Hennock concentrated on the history of the welfare state and social policy in Britain and Germany and that is what those historians familiar with his name will associate him with. But his first book, based partly on his doctoral research, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-Century Urban Government (1973) was as squarely a work of municipal history as one could find, and if a test of a contribution to history is not the quantity of publications but what endures of them, then Ernest Peter Hennock more than justifies our recognition amongst historians of towns and cities.

Social justice and the three worlds of welfare capitalism

2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
WOLFGANG MERKEL
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
The Normative Question ◽  
The Welfare State

This essay relates the normative discussion about social justice in political philosophy to empirical results from social policy analysis, thus linking two lines of discussions that have hitherto run mostly separately. The argument will be developed by answering four questions. The normative question: what regulative ideas of social justice does the debate about justice in political philosophy supply? The action-theoretical question: what criteria for judgement and political preferences can be found for a justice-oriented politics? The empirical question: how can the ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’ be judged in the light of these hierarchically ordered criteria of justice? And finally the institutional question: which logic should underpin a reform of the welfare state, if this reform is to be both socially just and at the same time realistically achievable.

Post-War Welfare State Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 92-111
Author(s):  
Frank Nullmeier ◽  
Franz-Xaver Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Welfare State

The key characteristic of the ‘Golden Age’ (1945–1970s) is the breakthrough of universal social rights as the normative background for social policy and the responsibility of nation-states to ensure social justice, social protection, and poverty reduction. The expansion phase of the welfare state can be described in five dimensions: (1) self-conception: social policy as a special field of policy was transformed into a new type of statehood: the welfare state; (2) finance: social policy expenditure increased massively and social benefits grew faster than GDP; (3) performance: new programmes, higher benefit levels, and the inclusion of more and more groups, as well as the transition to active employment policies, strengthened the welfare state; (4) governance: the nation-state, the labour movement, and the employers are dominant actors in this period, but new social movements were playing an increasingly important role. Moreover, welfare production in this period was not only based on state institutions; (5) outcomes: the history of social policy until the 1970s is a process of tremendous progress, but accompanied by several ambivalent developments that were also the sources of crises in social policy in the next period. Nevertheless, key features of social protection programmes during the Golden Age have survived the wave of privatization and deregulation.

scholarly journals Voluntary Action, Territory and Timing: The Council of Social Service for Wales, Periodisation and the New Historiography of the ‘British Welfare State’

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
DANIEL WINCOTT ◽  
PAUL CHANEY ◽  
CHRISTALA SOPHOCLEOUS
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
State Analysis

Abstract This article analyses the development of the Council of Social Service for Wales during what is often called the Golden Age of the Welfare State. Recovering the neglected history of the peak organisation for voluntary social service in Wales adds to our understanding of the histories of social policy and postwar Wales. The article addresses social policy from a doubly peripheral perspective – it attends to a territorial periphery of the UK State while voluntary action can be left at the margins of Welfare State analysis. From this perspective we hope to cast new light on the historiography of the ‘British Welfare State’

scholarly journals Neoliberalny panoptykon biopolityki – pomiędzy ekspansją i społeczną terapią

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Janusz Golinowski
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Quality Of Services ◽  
Private Health Care ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Welfare State

Technologie usprawniające działanie człowieka rodzą poważne pytania etyczne dotyczące praktyk zdrowotnych, które nie służą już tylko leczeniu chorób, ale proponują również „optymalizację” fizycznych, poznawczych i psychologicznych zdolności ludzi. W tym artykule dokonujemy koncepcyjnego wyjaśnienia pojęć biowładzy i biopolityki oraz argumentujemy za ich użytecznością we współczesnej analizie. Trzy dekady neoliberalnej polityki poważnie ograniczyły państwo opiekuńcze: prywatyzacje i cięcia w budżetach publicznych zmusiły agencje publiczne do ograniczenia swojej działalności, czasami tracąc uniwersalność, skuteczność i jakość usług. Pandemia dramatycznie pokazała cenę takiego neoliberalnego zwrotu. Globalizacja rynku stwarza zagrożenia dla zdrowia i nie jest w stanie reagować na sytuacje kryzysowe. Prywatna opieka zdrowotna okazuje się w dużej mierze nieistotna w walce z pandemią. Państwo opiekuńcze nie powinno być traktowane jako „koszt” dla prywatnego systemu gospodarczego. Byłoby błędem sądzić, że po ustąpieniu pandemii gospodarka mogłaby wrócić do „normalności”. Musimy ponownie przemyśleć produkcję i konsumpcję w świetle potrzeb zdrowotnych i środowiskowych. The Neoliberal Panopticon of Biopolitics – Between Expansion and Social Therapy Human enhancement technologies raise serious ethical questions about health practices no longer content simply to treat disease, but which now also propose to “optimize” human beings’ physical, cognitive and psychological abilities. In this article we undertake some conceptual clarification of the concepts of biopower and biopolitics and argue for their utility in contemporary analysis. Three decades of neoliberal policies have seriously reduced the welfare state: privatisations and cuts in public budgets have forced public agencies to downsize their activities, sometimes losing universality, effectiveness and quality of services. The pandemic has dramatically shown the price of such a neoliberal turn. Market globalisation creates health threats and is completely unable to respond to emergencies. Private health care is turning out to be largely irrelevant in facing the pandemic. The welfare state should not be considered a ‘cost’ for the private economic system. It would be a mistake to believe that, once the pandemic has passed, the economy could go back to ‘normal’. We need to rethink production and consumption considering health and environmental needs.

Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Liberalism ◽  
The University ◽  
The Welfare State

This collection of twelve essays reviews the history of welfare in Britain over the past 150 years, focusing on the ideas that have shaped the development of British social policy and on the thinkers who have inspired and also contested the welfare state. It thereby constructs an intellectual history of British welfare since the concept first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. The essays divide into four sections. The first considers the transition from laissez-faire to social liberalism from the 1870s and the enduring impact of late Victorian philosophical idealism on the development of the welfare state. The second section is devoted to the concept of ‘planning’ which was at the heart of social policy and its implementation in the mid-twentieth century, but which has subsequently fallen out of favour. A third section examines the intellectual debate over the welfare state since its creation in the 1940s. A final section examines social policy and its implementation more recently, both at grass-roots level in a study of community action in west London in the districts made infamous by the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, and at a systemic level where different models of welfare provision are shown to be in uneasy co-existence today. The collection is a tribute to Jose Harris, emeritus professor of history in the University of Oxford and a pioneer of the intellectual history of social policy. Taken together these essays conduct the reader through the key phases and debates in the history of British welfare.

scholarly journals Those were the days: welfare nostalgia and the populist radical right in the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Sven Schreurs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract In academia and beyond, it has become commonplace to regard populist parties – in particular, those on the radical right – as the archetypical embodiment of politics of nostalgia. Demand-side studies suggest that nostalgic sentiments motivate populist radical-right (PRR) voting and welfare chauvinist attitudes, yet systematic analyses of the nostalgic discourse that these parties promote have not been forthcoming. This paper seeks to fill that lacuna by analysing how the Freedom Party of Austria, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Sweden Democrats framed the historical fate of the welfare state in their electoral discourse between 2008 and 2018. It demonstrates that their commitment to welfare chauvinism finds expression in a common repertoire of “welfare nostalgia,” manifested in the different modes of “reaction,” “conservation” and “modernisation.” Giving substance to a widespread intuition about PRR nostalgia, the paper breaks ground for further research into nostalgic ideas about social policy.

The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe van Parijs
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTNo major reform of the welfare state has a chance of going through unless one can make a plausible case as to both its ‘ethical value’ and its ‘economic.value’, that is, that it would have a positive effect in terms of both justice and efficiency. In this essay, this rough conjecture is first presented, and its plausibility probed, on the background of some stylised facts about the rise of modern welfare states in the postwar period. Next, the focus is shifted to the current debate on the introduction of a basic income, a completely unconditional grant paid ex ante to all citizens. It is argued that if basic income is to have a chance of meeting the strong twofold condition stipulated in the conjecture, some major changes are required in the way one usually thinks about justice and efficiency in connection with social policy. But once these changes are made, as they arguably must be, the chance that basic income may be able to meet the challenge is greatly enhanced.

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