This document contains all information given during the 7 lectures of Key Challenges to the Welfare state, including information that was only given during the lectures specifically and isn't included in the slides.
What is a welfare state?
- One of the most powerful institutions of the 20th century and beyond
- The result of a long historical development
- Or:
1. Van Doorn (1978): “The welfare state embodies the formulation of a social
guarantee: society, organised as a nation state, guarantees all citizens a
reasonable standard of living.
2. 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."
3. Thoenes (1962): “The welfare state is a society type, which is characterised
by a democratic system of government care, which guarantees the collective
social welfare of its subjects, while the capitalist production system remains
largely unaltered.”
The 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.
6. (Etc. etc?
- Mortgage deduction (the middle classes’ welfare state?)
- Tax cuts?
- Etc.)
,What’s important 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 what it should be is highly contested
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 origins of the welfare state
Social change: three drivers:
1. Industrialisation
- From agriculture to industry
- Migration and urbanisation
2. Individualisation
- Disintegration of traditional communities
- Quest for individual rights
3. 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)
, The origins of the welfare state
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 (what do you get?)
- Immunisation from market dependency (“decommodification”)
Three welfare state regime types:
1. Liberal welfare state
2. Conservative welfare state
3. Social democratic welfare state
Conservative welfare state:
- Mainly (male) breadwinners covered
- Generosity: rather high
- Decommodification: medium
- Examples: Germany, France, Austria
Social democratic welfare state:
- 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
Esping Andersen and his critics:
- “Types are caricatures”
- What about:
1. Southern Europe: the family
2. Eastern Europe: communist past
3. Hybrids like the Netherlands
→ Is Esping Anderson’s typology outdated?
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 neoliberalism
Welfare state reform
1. 1980s and early 1990s:
- Spending cuts
- Restriction of access
2. Late 1990s and 2000s:
- New organisational structures
- New policy types: activation, socialisation etc.
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