In this document you will find all reading questions of 'Key challenges to the welfare state' with comprehensive answers that are important to learn for the exam.
Week 1
Cousins, 2005
In his chapter, Cousins discusses six different theoretical approaches to welfare state
development, i.e. theories on why welfare states developed in Western Europe by the end of
the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries:
- The logic of industrialisation thesis
- The functionalist Marxist approach
- Modernisation theory
- The power resources approach
- The social organisation of production thesis
- The institutional approach
a. Summarise, in only a few sentences, each of these theories
i. The logic of industrialisation thesis
1. Structural or functionalist approach
2. They saw the welfare state as emerging to meet the needs of society
at a certain stage of industrialisation, modernisation or advanced
capitalism
3. More industrialisation → more people working in factories
4. At first family was main support system → industrialisation +
urbanization → wider family ties tended to be broken → workers
needed another form of support → welfare state
ii. The functionalist Marxist approach
1. Welfare spending was a contradictory process which created
tendencies towards economic, social and political crisis (also highly
functionalist)
2. State has 2 functions:
a. Accumulation: the increase of capital by the addition of surplus
value
b. Legitimation: whereby state and governmental power and
policy-decisions are rendered morally acceptable to the
governed, so that there may be conformity without coercion
(dwang)
iii. Modernisation theory
1. Saw welfare state as a general phenomenon of modernisation
a. As a product of the increasing differentiation and the growing
size of societies
b. And of processes of social and political mobilization
2. It is a vague theory that emphasizes on the multidimensionality of
societal development
3. 3 key variables of modernisation theory
a. Socio-economic development: level of industrialisation and
urbanization
b. The political mobilization of the working class: % of votes in
national elections for working class parties
, c. Constitutional structures: the extension of suffrage and the
contrast between constitutional-dualistic monarchies and
parliamentary democracies
iv. The power resources approach
1. Emphasis on the mobilisation of workers and the role of social
democracy
2. A criticism of functionalist theories
3. Struggle over power, affects the distribution of resources and the
structure of the welfare state
4. It’s really about who has the power to divide the resources
v. The social organisation of production thesis
1. Welfare programmes are not a unique feature, because since at least
the sixteenth century, public welfare benefits have performed the
functions of providing support to the vulnerable and in allocating
labour
2. Welfare programmes have developed in response to the progression
of industrial capitalism
3. The nature and form of welfare states is determined by the social
organization of production
vi. The institutional approach
1. Emphasizes the role of the state (or polity) in the development of the
welfare state
2. State-centered approach:
a. States are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of
social groups, classes or societies, possibility of fully
autonomous state actions
b. An alternative frame of reference, Toquievillian view: sees
states as ‘configurations of organization and action that
influence the meanings and methods of politics for all groups
and classes in society
3. Polity centered approach:
a. Sees the polity as the primary locus of action
b. Understands political activities (carried out by politicians or
social groups), as conditioned by the institutional
configurations of governments
4. 4 types of processes party organizations, politically active groups:
a. State and party formation and transformation
b. The effects of political institutions on the identities, goals and
capacities of social groups
c. The fit between the goals and capacities of groups and the
points of access and leverage allowed by political institutions
d. The effects of policy feedback
b. Are the theories mutually exclusive (i.e. can only one theory be true while all the
others are false) or can they be combined, and if so: how?
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