Summary of the lectures, literature and reading question of the course 'Key challenges in a welfare state'. This summary is based on the course content of the year 2022/2023.
Lecture 1: introduction
What is a welfare state?
- One of the most powerful institutions of the 20th century and beyond
- The result of a long historical development
This course is about western welfare states (Europe, Northern Amerika, Australia and New Zealand)
Different definitions of a welfare state (not complete):
Van Doorn (1978):
“The welfare state embodies the formulation of a social guarantee: society, organized as a nation state,
guarantees all citizens a reasonable standard of living.”
Wilensky (1975):
“The essence of the welfare state is government protected minimum standards of income, nutrition,
health, housing, and education assured to every citizen as a political right, not as charity."
Thoenes (1962):
“The welfare state is a society type, which is characterized by a democratic system of government care,
which guarantees the collective social welfare of its subjects, while the capitalist production system
remains largely unaltered.”
Components of a welfare state:
1. Social security:
- Unemployment, sickness and disability benefits
- Pensions
- Maternity and parental leave
- Social assistance
- Etc.
2. Health care
- Collective health insurance
- Funding of hospitals, rehabilitation centres
- Etc.
3. Education:
- Funding of schools, universities
- Student grants
- Compulsory education laws
- Etc.
4. Social housing
- Funding of/subsidies for affordable homes
- Property regulations
- Etc.
5. Social welfare:
- Elderly people’s homes
- Community centres
- Debt assistance
- Shelters for homeless people
- Etc.
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, 6. Etc. etc.?
- Mortgage deduction (“the middle classes’ welfare state”)?
- Tax cuts?
- Etc.
The origins of the welfare state
Social change: three drivers:
- Industrialization:
From agriculture to industry
Migration and urbanisation
- Individualisation:
Disintegration of traditional communities
Quest for individual rights
- Rise of the nation/national state:
Bureaucracy and control
Quest for national unity
Bismarck’s start (Germany, 1880s):
- First social insurance acts in history
- Protection of blue-collar workers
1900-1940: other countries follow
After World War II: further expansion:
- More categories of populations covered (non-workers, women etc.)
- Schemes become more generous
The Golden Age of the welfare state (1950s-1970s)
Gøsta Esping Andersen:
- The three worlds of welfare capitalism (1990)
- Institutional differences between welfare states:
Who is entitled to what and when? (= “eligibility”)
Generosity: benefit levels
Immunization from market dependency (“decommodification”)
- Three welfare state regime types:
Liberal welfare state
Conservative welfare state
Social democratic welfare state
Types of welfare states
Conservative welfare state
- Mainly (male) breadwinners covered
- Generosity: rather high
- Decommodification: medium
- Examples:
Germany
France
Austria
Social democratic welfare state
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, - All citizens covered
- Generosity: high
- Decommodification: high
- Examples:
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Liberal welfare state
- All citizens covered (but means-tested)
- Generosity: low
- Decommodification: low
- Examples:
UK
Ireland
USA
Australia
The Netherlands: quite a mix, hybrid
The welfare state and social change
This course: about the interrelationship between the welfare state and social change:
- Then: the origins of the welfare state
- Now: welfare state change
The welfare state after the golden age
The crisis of the welfare state (1975 –present?)
- Economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s
- The rise of neo-liberalism
Welfare state reform:
- 1980s and early 1990s:
Spending cuts
Restriction of access
- Late 1990s and 2000s:
New organizational structures
New policy types: activation, socialization, etc.
This course: five processes of social change
1. Post-industrialization:
- Services, flexibilization and life-long-learning
- The end of the steady job?
2. (Hyper-)individualization:
- Welfare state and individual choice
- Activation and participation
3. Gender:
- Labour market participation of women
- De-familialization
4. Ageing
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, - Population ageing and “de-greening”
- Rising health care costs and labour shortages
5. Migration
- Migrants, citizens and entitlement
- Immigration and integration: a new welfare state “field”
Literature lecture 1:
De Swaan - The beginnings of social security (1988)
It is difficult to grasp the full scope of administrative innovation embodied in the insurance institutions of
the Kaiser's Germany. lts principles have remained the guidelines of compulsory national insurance ever
since and showed themselves quite compatible with the subsequent extension to new groups of the
population and new fields of coverage in Germany and elsewhere.
British national insurance began as a government initiative with labor support, bypassing employers as
much as possible. lt soon grew into a tripartite enterprise, as large-scale employers were persuaded to
support legislation. Unemployment insurance had been the most ambitious initiative, but in later years its
financial base proved incapable of supporting the burdens of mass unemployment: it turned into a
massive open-ended relief system. However, the groundwork for social security had been laid and its
shortcomings did not turn opinion against it, but rather served as an added argument for the more
extensive and centralized system which was to be established after 1945.
France was as slow as the United States in welfare legislation, and in the case of France the explanation
must be sought in the relative strength of the small property owners, especially in their politica! strength.
The timing of welfare Legislation must be explained in connection with the erosion of their politica) power
base. In France the unions certainly were not weak, as in Germany and the United States, hut on the issue
of social security they were badly divided. In France, as in Germany, large-scale employers were in a
strong position, but they were allied less closely to the regime than their German colleagues had been in
Bismarck's time and clung more to an alliance with the small entrepreneurs. France was a welfare laggard
because of the strength of its petty bourgeoisie, the United States lagged behind on account of the weak
organization of the centra! - i.e. federal - state and the weak position of the labour unions.
United states: The figuration of states, each with limited politica! autonomy, competing with one another
around a federal government within one national economy, added its particular dynamics. It delayed the
advent of soda! legislation. But once economie depression and political upheaval had shifted the balance
and social security had become a fact, the position of the federal government was strengthened at the
expense of the individual states. In this manner, developments contributed, as they did elsewhere, to the
process of state formation.
The net effect of this development in the Netherlands has been a marked decrease in the proportion of
privately owned wealth in total wealth and a corresponding rise in the share of transfer capital. Not
counting transfer property (which is not included in statistics), private wealth has been distributed a linie
more evenly, but much less so than income. Similar developments have occurred in other advanced
capitalist democracies. 194 The increasingly egalitarian distribution of income is due in great part to
transfers, and it has been argued that total transfer income varies inversely with total income from capital
(rents and profits). The two forms of 'institutional income' together remain constant in proportion to
labor income. 195 This finding suggests that transfer capita is in fact formed directly at the expense of
private capita and that the worst fears of an earlier generation of property owners have come true,
although many of its sons and daughters are among the first beneficiaries.
The initial introduction of nationwide social security constituted the most incisive spurt within the
collectivizing process in the past century and a new phase in the process · of state formation. For the first
time, a considerable part of the population, which was to increase without interruption from then on, was
brought under a single compulsory and collective scheme to protect it from the adversities of working life.
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