Lecture 1 Introduction
1. What is welfare state?
2. The origins of the welfare state (social precedes of social change 100 years ago)
3. Types of welfare states (history)
4. The welfare state and social change (central theme)
What is welfare state?
One of the most powerful institutions of the 20th century and beyond (and our century)
It first developed in Europe, then in America and spread all over the world
It deeply affected the working of the whole society, economy and families
For the first time people didn’t have to fear poverty in case of unemployment,
sickness, death or old age; it deeply affected their choices and life, the amount of
freedom
The result of a long historical development
It started by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century
Then in the course of the 20th century the welfare state matured
We have to understand the development of the welfare state to see where it is going to
Today:
Knowing and understanding its development, both then and now
Knowing and understanding major social changes and how these challenge the
welfare state today and in the future
What a welfare state is and why it should be highly contested (argued)
There are many normative questions surrounding the welfare state:
First of all: do we really need a welfare state?
o Some politicians, especially on the right wing think we don’t
o Others, on the left, think we need it to take care of the poor
Is the welfare state we currently have big enough or should it be expanded?
o In this course we are not going to answer these normative questions, but we are going
to focus on the empirical, observable development of the welfare state
Definitions welfare state:
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.’
o So it ensures the citizens a basic amount of wealth, but this definition is too narrow:
what exactly the welfare state is guarantying?
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.’
o This definition is also too narrow, because it is lacking the circumstances in which a
welfare state exists, therefore the subsequent definition is preferred by the lecturer:
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 capitalist production system remains largely unaltered.’
o Only in democracies? If so, why?
The first reason is that in democratic societies also poor people can vote and
history demonstrates that they voted for those parties who favored the
construction of a welfare state and all sorts of welfare state schemes
, The deeper reason: in sociology democracy not only means that the poor have
political rights but also that there is a lot of inequality: also in the style of
living and therefore in democratic societies there cannot be big differences
between the poor and rich and the welfare state is there to more or less
guarantee same life for the poor as the rich have
o Is government the only provider of welfare state services?
This is not unproblematic, because we see in some countries that non-state
actors also provide welfare state services and benefits. For example: in
Scandinavian countries if you get unemployed you get benefit from the labor
union and in the Netherlands most of the health care is provided by private
organizations and we are ensured by private insurance companies
In this course we define welfare state schemes as welfare state schemes if they
are highly regulated by government legislation and if most of it is financed by
government taxes
o What is ‘collective’? Who is part of the collective?
Is everybody protected by the welfare state? Is somebody excluded?
This is a very problematic aspect if you look at migration
o Only in capitalist countries? If so, why?
So the question is what is the relationship between welfare state and
capitalism?
Most welfare states exist within democratic, capitalist countries
Capitalism produces inequalities that are unacceptable for poor people, so the
welfare state is there to correct these inequalities without abolishing the
capitalist system itself
So we stick to Thoenes definition, but what is misses is: what the welfare state exactly protects, what
is provides. In this course we say that the welfare state provides these 5 things (components):
1. Social security:
o Unemployment, sickness and disability benefits
o Pensions
o Maternity and parental leave
o Social assistance
o Etc
-In some countries this is arranged by insurances: people pay premiums when they
work so when they become ill they get benefits, in other countries this is arranged via
taxes, so they don’t have to pay premium but automatically get benefits
2. Health care
o Collective health insurance
o Funding of hospitals, rehabilitation centres
o Etc
-most European, American and Asian countries have collective health insurance
systems against the costs of bad health
3. Education
o Funding of schools, universities
o Students grants
o Compulsory education laws
o Etc.
-in most countries education is paid by the government by tax revenues, like in the
Netherlands, it also obliges people to go to school until they are 18
4. Social housing
, o Funding of/subsidies for affordable homes
o Property regulations
o Etc
-so the government guarantees that everybody can live in an affordable home that has
things that are necessary
5. Social welfare:
o Elderly people’s homes
o Community centres
o Debt assistance
o Shelters for homeless people
o Etc
6. Etc? etc? not relevant to this course, we stick to the 5 elements!!!
o Mortgage deduction (‘the middle classes’ welfare state)?
o Tax cuts?
The welfare state and social change
o This course: about the interrelationship between the welfare state and social change:
Then: the origins of the welfare state
Now: welfare state change
o Why do we focus on this interrelationship? If we don’t do that we do not understand why the
welfare state is changing.
o Example: in many countries now there is a debate about old age pensions, many politicians
say we have for example to raise the age at which you receive a pension, they do that because
they think it’s a good thing to do, but behind that thinking there is a reasoning about a
changing society in which people get older, in which less young people are born. In other
words: behind political choices concerning the welfare state there are fundamental precedes of
social change and it has always been the case
o Fundamental processes of social change were the foundation of welfare state
o So social change brought welfare state but also the welfare state changed society
o And nowadays we see that changing society is changing the welfare state
The origins of the welfare state
Social change, three drivers in 19 and 20th century:
o Industrialization
From agriculture to industry
Migration and urbanization
This process started by the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century in
Great Britain and then spread all over Europe, first to Belgium, then Germany and by
the end of the 19th century also to France and the Netherlands and results were
everywhere the same: large factories emerged where production of all sorts of goods
was mechanized. This also happened in the country sides, so also here production was
mechanized. The result was that a large section of the population got unemployed.
These unemployed people went to the cities where there was new work in the factory.
The result was the process of urbanization: cities became bigger and bigger. In this
growing cities was growing poverty and the exiting poor relief schemes no longer
could handle that. So new care arrangements were needed/necessary.
o Individualization
Disintegration of traditional communities
Quest for individual rights
, Before industrialization the poverty was handled by local poor relief agencies often
organized by the church (offered by the rich in the town). These local agencies helped
the poor and unemployed. Industrialization and urbanization undermined these
traditional care arrangements: on the country side many people were leaving so the
arrangements could no longer be funded. On the other hand in the cities as a result of
the come of new inhabitants existing poor relief arrangements could no longer handle
it. Moreover, these new inhabitants were not connected to the local communities.
They had left their families in the country side and their religious communities. So the
new inhabitants of the cities were on their own, no longer part of traditional
communities this process is called individualization
So as a result of industrialization, urbanization and individualization existing poor
relief arrangements (which existed for hundreds of years) could no longer handle
poverty. There was a need for new arrangements. There was a solution to the problem:
national state.
o Rise of the nation/national state:
Bureaucracy and control
Quest for national unity
Nation state emerged in the 19th century out of the large middle age empires and these
nation states had clear borders, centralized governments and national armies. In the
second part of the 19th century the elites of these new nation states tended to bind
citizens more closely to the nation state, for example: in order to be able to raise big
armies or to collect taxes and the elites did so through strengthening the national
identities, for example by stimulating standardized national language or by building
all sorts of schemes that protected the citizens of the nation state. Also in order to
foster the idea that all citizens were all part of the same national community in which
the members cared for each other.
The first welfare state arrangements:
Bismarck’s start (Germany, 1880):
By that time Germany just became a nation state, in the decade before that Germany
didn’t exist, it was composed of 30 independent mini states, but the leader of one of
these states (Bismarck) created a German Reich in the 1870s and he tried to stimulate
the idea of national identity by organizing the first social insurance.
First social insurance acts in history
Protection of blue-collar workers (against risk of unemployment, sickness etc)
1900-1940: other countries follow (especially social security)
After World War 2: further expansion.
More categories of populations covered (non-workers, women etc)
Schemes become more generous
The Golden Age of the welfare state (1950s-1970s)
By the end of the 1950s the welfare state was more or less completed, large part of the
populations and risks were covered and the schemes were rather generous
The development of social security in Europe was
uneven. In Germany it started off quite quickly, in the
Netherlands it started off quite slowly and then in
exploded after World War 2. After World War 2 the
Netherlands became one of the most generous welfare
states in the world. So the pace at which the welfare
