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Political Science Welfare State Development
by
Linda Cook
  • LAST REVIEWED: 28 August 2018
  • LAST MODIFIED: 29 November 2011
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0053

Introduction

The modern welfare state originated in industrializing Europe, in the English system of “poor laws” that supplemented private and church-based charity, and more fully, in the workers’ social security system established by Bismarck in 19th-century Germany. Welfare provision in Europe expanded after both world wars, growing into systems that provided publicly funded social insurance, health care, education, income security, and family supports, with the United States seen as a “welfare laggard” in comparison with European systems. In the industrial democracies the welfare state experienced its golden age of expansion in scope and generosity from 1945 to 1980. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, globalization, demographic change, and other factors have produced pressures for retrenchment. Scholarship initially focused on Organisation for Economi Co-operation and Development (OECD) welfare states and entitlements linked to formal employment, then extended to include Communist and developing states, women and “care work,” and broader issues of global stratification, privatization and informalization, clientelism, and nonstate provision.

General Overviews

All welfare states use public expenditures to provide social security and services, but the states vary significantly in levels of spending, programmatic structures, relations with labor markets, and distributive effects. Welfare states both result from and in turn structure class and social orders and systems of stratification. Scholars have focused on conceptualizing types and identifying clusters—welfare state regimes and families in Europe (Esping-Andersen 1990, Castles 1993), and insecure, productivist, and protectionist regimes in the developing world (Gough and Wood 2004, Rudra 2008). Titmuss 1987 provides a historical overview; Castles 2010 provides an early-21st-century overview. Sen 1999 proposes a reconceptualization of welfare, from provision to capability.

  • Castles, Francis G., ed. Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies. Aldershot, UK, and Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth, 1993.

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    A historical-cultural approach to explaining differences across Western welfare states; the authors identify “families of nations”—English speaking, German speaking, and Scandinavian speaking—and argue that shared cultures produced similarities in policy approaches and outcomes.

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  • Castles, Francis G., Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, Herbert Obinger, and Christopher Pierson. The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State. Oxford Handbooks in Political Science and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579396.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Authoritative source on all aspects of welfare states—philosophical foundations, emergence, development, models and conceptualizations, actors, institutions, policies, attitudes, gender, migration and minorities, influence of the European Union, and international organizations. Focused on the OECD, includes emerging welfare states in Latin America, East Asia, and eastern Europe.

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  • Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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    Seminal study that reconceptualized welfare states, identifying three distinct welfare regime types in the OECD—liberal, conservative, and social democratic—and explained their origins based on political power resources and historical and institutional factors. Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes and “decommodification index” served as touchstones for many later studies.

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  • Gough, Ian, and Geof Wood. Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511720239Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    First major attempt to extend conceptual analysis of welfare regimes to developing states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Authors use concepts of “informal security regimes” and “insecurity regimes” to capture reliance on family and community, clientelistic, precarious, often futile strategies for meeting basic needs. Welfare effects of international dependencies, migration, and so on are included.

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  • Rudra, Nita. Globalization and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries: Who Really Gets Hurt? Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511491870Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Conceptually innovative study that extends analysis of welfare regimes to the more or less successfully developing states of India, Brazil, and Korea, finding qualified support for the “race-to-the-bottom” argument and identifying new typologies of productivist, protectivist, and dual developing-country welfare models.

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  • Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1999.

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    Nobel Prize–winning economist argues for a “capability” approach to human welfare that places freedom at the core of development, emphasizing people’s fundamental need for material, political, and social means to counter poverty and realize their potential. Sen presents a major alternative to the standard view of development as economic growth.

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  • Titmuss, Richard. The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard M. Titmuss. Edited by Brian Abel-Smith and Kay Titmuss. London: Allen and Unwin, 1987.

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    Introduction to Richard Titmuss’s influential normative theories and broad-ranging empirical research on welfare states, including categorizations of welfare programs and models and limits of redistribution.

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Data Sources on Welfare

Numerous sources of data on various aspects of comparative welfare state development are available. The most important and broadest in coverage include the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index and yearly Human Development Report, and UNICEF’s TransMONEE Database. The International Monetary Fund is the best source for government expenditure statistics; the World Health Organization provides an extensive database on health-care provision and health outcomes; the International Labour Organization’s LABORSTA Internet offers data on employment, wages, and social security; and the annual Social Security Programs throughout the World is the most comprehensive source on social insurance. These sources are valuable but have many omissions of data, especially on less developed states. The most extensive, reliable, and comparable data on social expenditures and outcomes are available for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states (Social Expenditure Database (SOCX)) and the European Union (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) Database). Data on social expenditures, living standards, health, and education are available from the official statistical handbooks and websites of most governments; their reliability varies.

Journals

There are a few journals devoted mainly or exclusively to welfare states and social policy, including Global Social Policy, International Journal of Social Welfare, Journal of Comparative Social Welfare, and Journal of European Social Policy. Several journals with more general coverage regularly publish articles related to welfare issues, including Global Governance, World Development, Journal of European Public Policy, and Politics and Society. Most political science and sociology journals, as well as most regionally focused journals, include some coverage of welfare politics.

Origins of the Welfare State

Social scientists have presented various, sometimes competing explanations for the origins and development of welfare states. Wilensky 1975 points to economic and industrial growth as the main driver of welfare state development. Korpi 1983 and Esping-Andersen 1990 focus mainly on political power resources as determinants, the most influential explanation. Heclo 2011 and Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1996 emphasize the importance of ideas and social-science and social-policy elites, as well as political learning from past policy failures; Beveridge 1942, a report to the British parliament, stands as a prominent example of such influence. Rimlinger 1971, a broadly comparative historical study, incorporates Russia into an otherwise Euro-American-centric literature and points to a combination of social, political, and economic factors.

  • Beveridge, William H. Social Insurance and Allied Services: Report by Sir William Beveridge. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1942.

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    Famous report that convinced Britain’s political elite that widespread poverty and ill health among the population were undermining Britain’s comparative military capabilities, contributing to expansion of welfare provision.

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  • Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

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    Seminal study that identifies three distinct welfare state regimes in Europe, resulting from different configurations of political power, as well as historical and institutional differences.

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  • Heclo, Hugh. Modern Social Policies in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance. 2d ed. Colchester, UK: European Consortium for Political Research, 2011.

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    Historical survey that reassesses the development of income maintenance policies in the two states. Heclo recognizes the influence of political factors but identifies the main impetus for change as political learning from past policy failures.

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  • Korpi, Walter. The Democratic Class Struggle. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.

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    Korpi identifies labor organization and class struggle as the drivers of welfare state development. His analysis focuses on “power resources,” including the strength of labor unions, workers’ councils, and workers’ participation in company decision making.

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  • Rimlinger, Gaston V. Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America and Russia. New York: Wiley, 1971.

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    Comparative historical analysis of the development of social security systems in Europe, the United States, and Russia from the preindustrial era to the modern period, focusing on social classes, political systems, and economic factors.

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  • Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Theda Skocpol, eds. States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

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    Examines the role of ideas and knowledge-bearing social-science elites in influencing social-policy agendas and state bureaucracies that carried out reforms, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.

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  • Wilensky, Harold L. The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

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    Classic cross-national study, making the case that economic development is the overriding factor leading to welfare state development. Asserts that states’ levels of spending for health and welfare rise with level of economic growth, whereas political systems and elites’ ideologies determine little about welfare.

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The State and Welfare

The classic European social thinkers (Durkheim 1997, Marx 1992–1993, Smith 1961) served as sources for contemporary corporatist, social-democratic, and liberal welfare states, respectively. Later-day Marxists, such as Gramsci (Gramsci 2000), stressed the ideological hegemony of dominant class in preserving capitalism, whereas Offe (Offe 1984) emphasized the incapacity of the late capitalist state in managing crises. Therborn 1986 provides an overview of competing pluralist, corporatist, statist, and neo-Marxist explanations for welfare states’ past and future development.

  • Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by W. D. Halls. New York: Free Press, 1997.

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    Originally published in 1933. Durkheim’s analysis of society stresses the importance of societal norms and standards and social ties in meeting people’s needs and the dangers of anomie and alienation. Along with that of other 19th-century German philosophers and social thinkers, Durkheim’s work is a source of contemporary corporatist and conservative welfare state models.

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  • Gramsci, Antonio. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916–1935. Edited by David Forgasc. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

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    Gramsci was a 20th-century European neo-Marxist whose work sought to explain the persistence of capitalist society (and thus apparent falsification of Marx’s predictions of revolution) as being the result of the ideological hegemony of the dominant capitalist classes. Gramsci was perhaps the most prominent of a group of neo-Marxists who sought to adapt Marxist thinking to later-day realities.

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  • Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. 3 vols. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1992–1993.

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    Originally published in 1867. Marx’s analysis divided 19th-century European society into dominant capitalist and subordinate laboring classes, the former exploiting through the extraction of surplus value, the latter oppressed and immiserated. Marx foresaw a socialist revolution that would, after a period of class struggle, create equality, social justice, and universal welfare. Marxism is a source of contemporary social-democratic welfare state models.

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  • Offe, Claus. Contradictions of the Welfare State. Edited by John Keane. Contemporary Politics. London: Hutchinson, 1984.

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    Offe argues that the postwar settlement that produced the welfare state’s golden age had broken down by the 1980s, and that states were no longer capable of managing the problems and conflicts of late capitalist society. Offe assesses attempts at welfare state restructuring by rightist, corporatist, and democratic socialist groups.

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  • Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by E. Cannan. London: Methuen, 1961.

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    Originally published in 1776. Smith advocated the primacy of the market as the creator and distributor of wealth in society. He viewed state redistribution as being damaging to the market’s efficiency and thus to the maximization of a society’s wealth. Smith’s work is a source of contemporary liberal welfare state models.

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  • Therborn, Goran. “Karl Marx Returning: The Welfare State and Neo-Marxist, Corporatist and Statist Theories.” International Political Science Review 7.2 (1986): 134–164.

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    A critical overview of pluralist, corporatist, statist, and neo-Marxist theories of welfare state development, with emphasis on neo-Marxist theories about the future of welfare states.

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Postwar Expansion in Europe

In the post–World War II decades of prosperity, the welfare state experienced its golden age. The European social model of broad social security, protections, and entitlements expanded both in scope and geographic coverage (Flora and Heidenheimer 1981, Rose 1984, Weir and Skocpol 1985, Immergut 1990). Variations within the model persisted: Scandinavian (Nordic) states provided the most universalistic and egalitarian social welfare (Baldwin 1989); the continental states developed somewhat more limited, conservative welfare models; and the Anglo-Saxon states, including Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, adopted liberal models, using more means-tested benefits. Europe’s southern tier developed a distinctive model (Ferrera 1996).

  • Baldwin, Peter. “The Scandinavian Origins of the Social Interpretation of the Welfare State.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31.1 (1989): 3–24.

    DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500015644Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Examines the origins and development of the universalistic and generous Nordic models, based both in class politics and social solidarity.

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  • Ferrera, Maurizio. “The ‘Southern Model’ of Welfare in Social Europe.” Journal of European Social Policy 6.1 (1996): 17–37.

    DOI: 10.1177/095892879600600102Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Identifies similarities in the welfare states of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, arguing that they present a distinct “Southern model” among European welfare regimes or families.

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  • Flora, Peter, and Arnold J. Heidenheimer, eds. Development of Welfare States in Europe and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1981.

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    Comparative study of welfare states in northwestern Europe, the United States, and Canada, from the postwar period of persistent economic growth to the emergence of constraints in the 1970s. The authors generally reject culturally differentiated explanations in favor of a focus on modernization and common developmental patterns.

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  • Immergut, Ellen M. “Institutions, Veto Points, and Policy Results: A Comparative Analysis of Health Care.” Journal of Public Policy 10.4 (1990): 391–416.

    DOI: 10.1017/S0143814X00006061Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Immergut explains elegantly the sources of differential policy toward health-care providers, specifically private versus state-run single-payer systems, viewing them as the products of political-institutional factors.

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  • Rose, Richard. Understanding Big Government: The Programme Approach. London and Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1984.

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    Rose examines the growth of welfare programs in Scandinavia, continental Europe, Britain, and the United States during the postwar quarter century (c. 1945–1970), focusing on how governments mobilized law, taxation, and public employment to produce education, health, and pension programs. He sees growth as outpacing capacities for taxation by the 1980s.

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  • Weir, Margaret, and Theda Skocpol. “State Structures and the Possibilities for “Keynesian” Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” In Bringing the State Back In. Edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, 107–163. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511628283Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    The authors argue that states’ responses to the Great Depression were driven by varying political-institutional structures, rather than by economic pressures or labor strength. Polities’ openness to Keynesian ideas and their intellectual promoters was key.

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American Exceptionalism

The United States was commonly viewed as a “welfare state laggard” in comparison with Europe. Even after the introduction of social security and Medicare, the United States had a more constricted welfare state, higher levels of poverty, largely private health insurance, and stigmatizing poverty-linked benefits (Patterson 2000, Piven and Cloward 1993, Pontusson 2005). American exceptionalism was variously seen as a product of the weak US labor movement, ethnic and racial divisions, individualistic social norms, vested interests in private services, or fragmented national and federal political institutions. Some scholars challenged this view. Skocpol 1992 argues against the characterization of the United States as a laggard, and Howard 1997 shows that large, de facto middle-class entitlements were hidden in the tax system. Welfare expanded in the 1960s, with the War on Poverty (Weir, et al. 1988).

  • Howard, Christopher. The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States. Princeton Studies in American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

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    Argues that tax expenditures have major influence on the size and structure of the US welfare state. The tax system provides substantial financial subsidies, mainly benefiting homeowners, employers, and professional and middle-class employees, in effect constituting a “hidden welfare state.”

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  • Patterson, James T. America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

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    Historical evolution of policies and programs designed to combat poverty, documenting how different generations perceived and responded to poverty, from the Progressives to the Clinton administration.

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  • Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. Rev. ed. New York: Vintage, 1993.

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    Famous and controversial study arguing that US poverty policies were designed primarily to control the poor, rather than as a response to need. The authors focus on the United States. from the 1920s to the 1960s, arguing that relief expanded in times of economic hardship to mitigate discontent and social protest, contracting in periods of stronger economic performance to reinforce work norms.

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  • Pontusson, Jonas. Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal America. Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.

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    In this comparison of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) welfare states, Pontusson challenges elements of neoliberal conventional wisdom, defends European social-market economies, and argues that social spending can enhance economic efficiency, growth, and pro-poor distribution.

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  • Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

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    In this landmark book, Skocpol challenges the conventional view of the United States as a welfare laggard, showing that the federal government provided extensive Civil War pensions and a “maternalist welfare state” early in the 20th century, while rejecting other social-insurance programs. Her analysis relies on women’s civic activism, political institutions, coalitions, and corruption of early entitlements to explain outcomes.

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  • Weir, Margaret, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds. The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Studies from the Project on the Federal Social Role. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

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    Traces US social policy, from its origins, to the New Deal of the 1930s, to the War on Poverty in the 1960s, with attention to racial and gender aspects and synthetic essays on the historical sources and the likely future of welfare in America.

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Communist Welfare States

By the 1960s, scholars were moving beyond Cold War rhetoric to recognize that Communist states in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and elsewhere had created broad systems of welfare provision. Communist welfare states were poor and inefficient in comparison with their Western counterparts but did achieve nearly universal literacy, dramatic improvements in health, and broad social security, best described for the Soviet Union in McAuley 1979. Communist welfare states were variously explained as a requisite of labor force planning for rapid industrialization (Kornai 1992), a legacy of communist ideology and societal expectations (Millar and Wolchik 1994, Lipsmeyer 2003, Offe 1993), a means of state control over society (Ferenc 1986), or part of a “social contract” between the post-Stalininst regime and Soviet society (Cook 1993), or a combination of these.

  • Cook, Linda J. The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers’ Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin. Russian Research Center Studies 86. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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    Classic statement of the controversial social-contract thesis that post-Stalinist Soviet regimes were constrained to continue providing comprehensive welfare by an implicit agreement with society to exchange political quiescence for social security.

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  • Ferenc, Féhér, Agnes Heller, and György Márkus. Dictatorship over Needs: An Analysis of Soviet Societies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

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    Analysis of totalitarian systems that emphasizes the state’s control over populations through monopolization of resources needed for fulfillment of basic needs.

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  • Kornai, János. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

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    Landmark study of socialist political economies, including a succinct, authoritative treatment of the size, scope, and functions of Communist-era welfare states in the Soviet Union and east-central Europe. Kornai famously coined the phrase “premature welfare states” to reflect the overdevelopment of welfare commitments relative to economic resources in these systems.

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  • Lipsmeyer, Christine S. “Welfare and the Discriminating Public: Evaluating Entitlement Attitudes in Post-Communist Europe.” Policy Studies Journal 31.4 (2003): 545–564.

    DOI: 10.1111/1541-0072.00042Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Lipsmeyer relies on public-opinion surveys to document the broad legacy of expectations and normative commitments to statist provision in eastern European societies fifteen years after Communism’s collapse. Available online by subscription.

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  • McAuley, Alastair. Economic Welfare in the Soviet Union: Poverty, Living Standards, and Equality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.

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    Most comprehensive and thorough available treatment of the Soviet welfare state, including expenditures, programs, wage policy, equality and inequality, regional differentiation, and stratification.

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  • Millar, James R., and Sharon L. Wolchik, eds. The Social Legacy of Communism. Woodrow Wilson Center series. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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    Prominent authors analyze the social dimensions of the early post-Communist transition, including ethnic and gender aspects, health, social stratification, labor, and deviance, to identify common “social legacies” across the former Soviet Union and east-central Europe.

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  • Offe, Claus. “The Politics of Social Policy in East European Transitions: Antecedents, Agents, and Agendas of Reform.” Social Research 60.4 (1993): 649–684.

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    The structure and constituents of Communist-era welfare states and the challenges they would pose to reform.

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Welfare States in Regional Comparison

Although studies of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states dominated welfare scholarship because of the superior accessibility and quality of data for these cases, in the early 21st century, scholars began to pay more attention to other regions of the world. As a result, several ambitious comparative studies have appeared, including Haggard and Kaufman 2008, a masterly comparison of Latin America, East Asia, and eastern Europe. Gough and Wood 2004, Rudra 2008, and McGuire 2010 provide comparisons, including Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Other scholars focused on specific regions or countries (see subsections that follow). All studies of welfare states outside the OECD suffered to varying degrees from limitations of reliable comparative data.

  • Gough, Ian, and Geof Wood. Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511720239Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    First systematic attempt to conceptualize and compare welfare regimes across poorer and less developed regions, focusing on greater insecurity, the informality and precariousness of social provision, and the need for expansion of public-welfare programs.

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  • Haggard, Stephan, and Robert R. Kaufman. Development, Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

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    Authoritative scholars provide a comprehensive account comparing development and reform of welfare regimes across Latin America, East Asia, and Communist and post-Communist eastern Europe from 1945 to the early 1980s; analyzes distributive coalitions, economic performance, and political institutions to explain different developmental paths.

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  • McGuire, James W. Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511750656Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Systematically compares welfare policies and outcomes across eight states from East Asia and Latin America from 1960 to 2005, with a focus on patterns of infant mortality. The study concludes that broad provision of inexpensive basic services matters more for survival than does gross domestic product (GDP) or overall welfare expenditure and coverage.

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  • Rudra, Nita. Globalization and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries: Who Really Gets Hurt? Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511491870Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Studies India, Brazil, and Korea in order to develop new productivist and “protectivist typologies for successful developing states” welfare regimes.

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Latin America

During their period of import-substitution industrialization, Latin American states developed extensive welfare policies that generally privileged professional and formal-sector blue-collar workers, while largely excluding the rural and urban poor (Segura-Ubiergo 2007). Mexico’s corporatist system was something of an exception here (Brachet-Márquez 1995). The development of liberal markets and democracy that has occurred since the late 20th century placed stress on existing welfare commitments while producing pressure for broader social inclusion (Huber 2003, Segura-Ubiergo 2007, Mesa-Lago 2008).

  • Brachet-Márquez, Viviane. Dynamics of Domination: State, Class, and Social Reform in Mexico, 1910–1990. Pitt Latin American series. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.

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    The author gives a “bottom-up” account of social-welfare policy formation in postrevolutionary Mexico, focusing on the role of organized labor, rather than state action, as the source of major policies on medical care, housing, and workers’ profit sharing.

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  • Huber, Evelyn, ed. Models of Capitalism: Lessons for Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.

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    Authors analyze why some market economies combine growth and equity more effectively than others and consider the lessons to be drawn for Latin America’s post-1980 systems; includes cross-regional analysis of labor markets and distributive politics at different levels of development.

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  • Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. Reassembling Social Security: A Survey of Pensions and Health Care Reforms in Latin America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

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    This book provides a systematic comparison of pension and health policy in twenty Latin American countries, beginning with the liberalizing 1981 Chilean reforms and including equity and solidarity, degree of privatization, financing, sufficiency, and sustainability. Goals and outcomes of reforms are contrasted, and policy recommendations are offered.

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  • Segura-Ubiergo, Alex. The Political Economy of the Welfare State in Latin America: Globalization, Democracy and Development. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511510984Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    This study analyzes the development of Latin American welfare state policies in the preglobalization decades (1920–1979) and examines how post-1980 globalization and democratization have affected public spending and welfare provision.

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East Asia

East Asian “developmental” welfare states developed later than those in most other regions, and from their beginning focused on raising educational levels and fueling economic growth. The 1997–1998 economic crisis presented these welfare states with serious challenges, to which they responded differently (Gough 2001, Kwon 2005). As East Asia democratized, scholars began to look at the effects of democratic politics in pressing for maintenance and expansion of welfare (Wong 2004). The opening up of China to empirical research provided new insights into public-goods provision in that state’s market-authoritarian system (Tsai 2007).

  • Gough, Ian. “Globalization and Regional Welfare Regimes: The East Asian Case.” Global Social Policy 1.2 (2001): 163–189.

    DOI: 10.1177/146801810100100202Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Comparative study of five economically successful East Asian states: Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, including the impact of the Asian financial crisis and the different reactions across these five states, reflecting variations in their welfare regimes.

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  • Kwon, Huck-ju, ed. Transforming the Developmental Welfare State in East Asia. Social Policy in a Development Context. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

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    This study examines social-policy reforms in East Asia since the 1997 economic crisis, explaining how the shift in economic strategy has affected welfare and asking whether these states can extend social rights while at the same time maintaining developmental goals.

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  • Tsai, Lily L. Accountability without Democracy: Solidarity Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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    In an original study of welfare in rural China, Tsai argues that differences in public-goods provision are consequences of informal, village-level institutions that enmesh officials in webs of obligation and responsibility. The study relies on mixed methods and provides a vivid narrative.

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  • Wong, Joseph. Health Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.

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    Wong shows that the opening up of political and electoral competition in Taiwan and South Korea produced increases in provision of and expenditure on health care. At the same time, the pattern of the relationship between democracy and public-health provision differs across the two cases.

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Africa

African states, particularly sub-Saharan, have the weakest and least-developed welfare states, as consequences of poor economic performance, poor governance, and common violence. Bevan 2004 conceptualizes Africa’s welfare states as “informal security” and “insecurity” regimes. De Waal 1997 discusses the problems with international relief efforts; Easterly and Levine 1997, the obstacles to welfare posed by ethnic divisions even in the context of growth.

  • Bevan, Philippa. “The Dynamics of Africa’s In/Security Regimes.” In Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts. Edited by Ian Gough and Geof Wood, 202–252. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511720239.008Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Bevan conceptualizes welfare states in most of Africa as either “informal security” regimes, that is, dependent on unreliable, clietelistic, and corrupt mechanisms, or “insecurity” regimes, that is, often failing to provide even the most basic security or provision.

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  • de Waal, Alex. Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa. African Issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

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    The author critiques then-current practices in international famine relief efforts as well as the political failings of African governments.

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  • Easterly, William, and Ross Levine. “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112.4 (1997): 1203–1250.

    DOI: 10.1162/003355300555466Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Examines cross-country differences in growth rates and the link with public policies, arguing that ethnic fragmentation undermines welfare even in countries with growing economies.

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  • van de Walle, Nicholas. “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party System.” Journal of Modern African Studies 41.2 (2003): 297–321.

    DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X03004269Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Prominent expert on African politics examines the influence of clientelistic distribution, party systems, and presidentialist government.

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Eastern Europe

A literature emerged on the reform of post-Communist welfare in eastern Europe as these states transitioned to market economies, first undergoing transitional recessions of varying depth and length (Cerami 2006, Cook 2007, Inglot 2008). Scholars from the emerging region began to produce fine, well-documented studies on welfare state change and variation and comparisons with European models and practices (Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009; Golinowska, et al. 2009).

  • Cerami, Alfio. Social Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Emergence of a New European Welfare Regime. Region, Nation, Europa 43. Berlin: LIT, 2006.

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    A broad-ranging study of ten contemporary east-central Europe welfare states, including comparative data on many dimensions of policy, public attitudes, international and domestic actors, and theoretical and normative considerations.

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  • Cerami, Alfio, and Pieter Vanhuysse, eds. Post-Communist Welfare Pathways: Theorizing Social Policy Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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    Prominent experts sort out causes of unity and diversity, path dependence, and path departure during post-Communist welfare transformation in ECE. The authors find hybrid welfare models, shaped by history and politics, and provide a complex account of causal factors and developments through the 2008–2009 global economic crisis.

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  • Cook, Linda J. Postcommunist Welfare States: Reform Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

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    Comparative analysis of welfare states from 1990 to 2005, with emphasis on Russia and comparisons with other post-Soviet and east-central European cases, integrating post-Communist states into the broader literature on political determinants of welfare state development.

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  • Golinowska, Stanislawa, Peter Hengstenberg, and Madej Zukowski, eds. Diversity and Commonality in European Social Policies: The Forging of a European Social Model. Warsaw, Poland: Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, 2009.

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    A group of scholars from east-central Europe argue that regional welfare states overall compare fairly favorably with their European counterparts, with higher international rankings on the Human Development Index than on GDP, providing empirical background on many aspects of east-central Europe welfare systems.

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  • Inglot, Tomasz. Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511510175Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Deeply researched study of all aspects of welfare state development in east-central Europe since the post–World War I period, emphasizing policy cycles and frequent ad hoc adaptations producing “emergency welfare states.”

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Feminist Perspectives

In the 1980s feminists critiqued the welfare state literature for its lack of attention to gender, in particular to how welfare systems structured and reproduced gendered divisions of labor and male-breadwinner domination through their public policies, ideologies, and distributional principles (Orloff 2010). Feminists drew attention to women’s “care work” as largely uncompensated, and claimed it as a legitimate basis for welfare entitlement (in addition to the established entitlement categories of “need,” “citizenship,” “labor market status,” and “family breadwinner”; see Lewis 1992, Sainsbury 1996). Scholars argued that welfare policies shaped women’s family and labor market possibilities (Del Boca and Wetzels 2007, Gilbert 2008). The costs and benefits of the Communist “dual breadwinner, double-burden” welfare models for women were also assessed (Haney 2002).

  • Del Boca, Danièla, and Cécile Wetzels, eds. Social Policies, Labour Markets, and Motherhood: A Comparative Analysis of European Countries. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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    Relationships among women’s employment, fertility, and welfare policy in contemporary Europe.

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  • Gilbert, Neil. A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

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    Critical review of developments in women’s employment, family life, and public policy in the United States since the 1960s, arguing for more options in managing work and family responsibilities.

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  • Haney, Lynne. Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary. Berkeley: University of California, 2002.

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    Innovative analysis of welfare policies and practices in Hungary from 1948 to 2000, examining shifts from maternalist to liberal policies and how changes led to diminished social protection. The study is done from an ethnographic perspective and includes attention to Roma families.

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  • Lewis, Jane. “Gender and the Development of Welfare Regimes.” Journal of European Social Policy 2.3 (1992): 159–173.

    DOI: 10.1177/095892879200200301Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Critiques established typologies of welfare states for assuming a male-breadwinner model of the family. Argues for a gendered understanding of welfare, as women gained access to welfare entitlements mainly as dependents within families, providing unpaid domestic care work.

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  • Orloff, Ann Shola. “Gender.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State. Edited by Francis G. Castles, Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, Herbert Obinger, and Christopher Pierson, 252–264. Oxford Handbooks in Political Science and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579396.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Overview of contemporary mainstream and feminist literature on gender and welfare.

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  • Sainsbury, Diane. Gender, Equality, and Welfare States. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511520921Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    In this important and theoretically innovative book, Sainsbury takes issue with previous work on welfare states for inattention to women, introduces care work as a basis of entitlement, and compares women’s welfare across Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States.

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Crisis, Challenge, and Retrenchment

The 1970s, with its sluggish economic growth, structural unemployment, and aging populations, brought the end of the welfare state’s golden age—and pressure for retrenchment. By the mid-1970s conservative governments in Anglo-American countries were enacting measures to try to reduce welfare expenditures, such as cutting benefits, restricting eligibility, and privatizing services and insurance. Scholars debated the causes of retrenchment, its extent in practice, and the effectiveness of political resistance to cuts (Hacker 2002, Pierson 1994, Huber and Stephens 2001; see also Offe 1984, cited under The State and Welfare). Left-of-center and post-Communist governments also moved to reduce the breadth of their welfare states, while the European Union appeared to have limited influence on member states’ welfare policies, but Leibfried 1995; Cook, et al. 1999; Pierson 2001; and Taylor-Gooby 2004 find evidence of the welfare states’ resilience, and Esping-Andersen, et al. 2002 proposes ways for Europe to meet future welfare challenges while fulfilling commitments to social inclusion.

  • Cook, Linda J., Mitchell A. Orenstein, and Marilyn Rueschemeyer, eds. Left Parties and Social Policy in Postcommunist Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999.

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    A group of regional experts discuss differing strategies of welfare state reform across east-central Europe, focusing on political strategies and policy options during transitional recessions.

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  • Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, Duncan Gallie, Anton Hemerijck, and John Myles. Why We Need a New Welfare State. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

    DOI: 10.1093/0199256438.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Leading scholars look at future challenges to European welfare states in light of European commitments to maximum social inclusion and gender equality. The authors make original proposals for welfare responses to the demands of aging populations and changing household and economic structures.

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  • Hacker, Jacob S. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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    Documents the continuing, path-dependent sources of support for private health care and other services in the United States and their struggles with efforts to expand public provision.

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  • Huber, Evelyne, and John D. Stephens. Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

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    Superb, methodologically sophisticated study of the development and retrenchment of welfare states in Europe and the Antipodes.

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  • Leibfried, Stephan, and Paul Pierson, eds. European Social Policy: Between Fragmentation and Integration. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995.

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    Authors assess the influence of the European Union’s fragmented but expanding social-policy initiatives on member states.

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  • Pierson, Paul. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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    In this influential comparative study of the United States and Britain, Pierson finds that welfare states create political constituencies that in turn defend entitlements even against powerful neoliberal political executives; however, success of dismantling does vary between cases and across policy areas.

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  • Pierson, Paul, ed. The New Politics of the Welfare State. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

    DOI: 10.1093/0198297564.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Prominent authors debate pressures for and against the contemporary welfare state, finding that economic, demographic, and social pressures for austerity and retrenchment confront popular interests in maintaining welfare. Covering a range of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and policy areas, the authors find continuing national differences, reform, and restructuring, but not dismantling.

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  • Taylor-Gooby, Peter, ed. New Risks, New Welfare: The Transformation of the European Welfare State. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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    Looks at traditional welfare state programs (i.e., pensions, unemployment insurance, health care) as well as new risks arising from the postindustrial transition. The authors consider changes from national, comparative, and supranational perspectives, finding that the European Union has exercised rather limited impact on member states’ social policy.

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Globalization and Welfare

The effects of globalization—economic, institutional, and social—on welfare states became a major theme by the 1980s. The “globalization thesis” argued that trade openness and capital mobility would pressure governments to reduce welfare expenditures in order to attract capital, producing a “race to the bottom.” Other studies focused on the growth of a liberalizing “global social policy” dominated by the international financial institutions (World Bank 1994). Scholars found evidence both for and against the influence of global factors. Swank 2002 challenges the “globalization induces retrenchment” argument. Deacon 1997 and Orenstein 2008 find that international financial institutions have great influence on states’ social policies, whereas Hunter and Brown 2000 find the World Bank’s influence to be limited. Esping-Andersen 1996 uncovers a range of adaptations to globalization among developed and developing states.

  • Deacon, Bob. Global Social Policy: International Organizations and the Future of Welfare. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1997.

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    First major study of the effects of global institutions—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the International Labour Organization, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and so on—on states’ welfare policy, comparing these various institutions’ policy advice and instruments of influence. Focusing on eastern Europe case studies, Deacon and his colleagues argue that international organizations can substantially shape states’ social policy, a claim variously supported and disputed by other studies.

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  • Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, ed. Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1996.

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    Prominent regional experts, several with social-democratic leanings, assess changes in welfare states in the globalizing economy, “after the ‘Golden Age.’” These authors produce a broad-ranging comparison both of advanced and emerging welfare states, with attention to changes in family structure and skepticism about neoliberal solutions.

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  • Hunter, Wendy, and David S. Brown. “World Bank Directives, Domestic Interests and the Politics of Human Capital Investment in Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies 33.1 (2000): 113–143.

    DOI: 10.1177/0010414000033001005Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Creative study that shows World Bank lending and policy directives in education and health care had little effect on domestic spending patterns when the bank’s policy advice contradicted the interests of powerful domestic groups.

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  • Orenstein, Mitchell A. Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

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    Orenstein shows that international institutions—the World Bank, USAID, and other global social-policy actors—have influenced pension privatization reforms in more than thirty countries across the developed and developing world.

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  • Swank, Duane. Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511613371Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Influential study of globalization’s effects on post-1970 welfare in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states; contends that national political and labor institutions and welfare systems shape the domestic-policy responses to global economic pressures on welfare states, producing different welfare outcomes across polities.

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  • World Bank. Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old and Promote Growth. A World Bank Policy Research Report. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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    A programmatic document from the World Bank, Averting promoted privatizing reforms of the dominant, established pay-as-you-go pension systems as necessary to avert a coming crisis driven by demographic trends. The book articulates the ideology and agenda of the best-known campaign by an international organization to reshape broadly national welfare systems.

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Migration, Informalization, and New Global Divisions of Labor

With increasing globalization, welfare scholars have turned attention to the flow of labor migrants, informal labor markets, human trafficking, and changing global gendered and ethnic divisions of labor. Migration from poor to developed states, denial of citizenship to long-term resident immigrants, and racialized exclusion create new patterns of stratification in established welfare states (Bommes and Geddes 2000; Habyarimana, et al. 2007; Castles and Schierup 2010). Women, providing hired care work as nannies and maids, and trafficked for leisure and sex work, are especially affected by these trends (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2004). Women’s, human-rights, and other not-for-profit organizations increasingly take on welfare issues that in the past were addressed mainly by governments or labor movements (Murphy 2002).

  • Bommes, Michael, and Andrew Geddes, eds. Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State. Routledge/EUI Studies in the Political Economy of Welfare. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

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    The expanding role of immigrants in European labor markets and the challenges they pose to established welfare states.

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  • Castles, Stephen, and Carl-Ulrik Schierup. “Migration and Ethnic Minorities.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State. Edited by Francis G. Castles, Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, Herbert Obinger, and Christopher Pierson, 278–291. Oxford Handbooks in Political Science and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579396.003.0019Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Focuses on migrant labor, informal labor in the welfare sector, racialized exclusion, and the effects, especially on European welfare states.

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  • Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan, 2004.

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    Effects on women of transfer of labor and caring skills from poor to wealthy countries, including maids, nannies, nurses, sex workers, and contract brides.

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  • Habyarimana, James, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?” American Political Science Review 101.4 (2007): 709–725.

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    Examines the obstacles to redistributive welfare provision in racially diverse societies.

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  • Murphy, Craig N., ed. Egalitarian Politics in an Age of Globalization. International Political Economy series. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

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    Authors look at women’s, human-rights, and democratization movements across a range of Western, Latin American, Asian, and post-Communist eastern Europe cases from a critical perspective, arguing that since the 1980s these movements have had more influence than organized labor.

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Welfare, Clientelism, and Nonstate Provision

Until the late 20th century the state (along with family, church, and community) was regarded as the major provider of welfare. Now a plethora of other organizations—not-for-profit organizations; international nongovernmental organizations; and confessional, paramilitary, political, and other groups—have emerged as major providers of social benefits and services, especially in poorer and less developed states. These welfare providers compensate for state failure but at the same time raise concerns that they will replace states with unaccountable organizations that follow their own agendas and will shift recipients’ political loyalties from state to nonstate or antistate organizations (Cammett and Issar 2010). There has also been expansion of clientelistic (rather than programmatic) democracy, affecting modes of welfare distribution, especially in Latin America and South Asia (Kaufman and Trejo 1997, Schaffer 2007, Dunning and Nilekani 2010, Weitz-Shapiro 2010).

New Approaches and Technologies

In the 21st century, both the forms of welfare provision and the methodologies for study of welfare states are changing. Welfare programs based on Sen’s capability approach, such as microfinancing loans for individual and cooperative production, have developed, as have conditional income support programs that pay families to keep children in school (Banerjee and Somanathan 2007, Mares and Carnes 2009). Research focuses increasingly on the roles of women, information, and basic services (Kantor 2005, McGuire 2010). Global-positioning technologies, allowing the study of service provision over wide geographical areas and in remote regions, are transforming the study of welfare, especially in the developing world. First-rate, creative scholarship is moving beyond the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to find different patterns of distribution and politics of welfare (Min 2009).

  • Banerjee, Abhijit, and Rohini Somanathan. “The Political Economy of Public Goods: Some Evidence from India.” Journal of Development Economics 82.2 (2007): 287–314.

    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2006.04.005Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Examines political factors that shape the distribution of social services in Indian villages.

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  • Kantor, Paula. “Determinants of Women’s Microenterprise Success in Ahmedabad, India: Empowerment and Economics.” Feminist Economics 11.3 (2005): 63–83.

    DOI: 10.1080/13545700500301163Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Examines social and economic factors that affect women’s capacity to establish sustained sources of income through the use of microfinance loans.

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  • Mares, Isabela, and Matthew E. Carnes. “Social Policy in Developing Countries.” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): 93–113.

    DOI: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.071207.093504Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Overview of early-21st-century social-policy changes in developing states across regions, focusing on historical origins, evolution, authoritarian roots, and political coalitions producing different policy outcomes. Available online through purchase.

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  • McGuire, James W. Wealth, Health and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

    DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511750656Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Argues, on the basis of cross-regional case studies, that democracy contributes to the use and effectiveness of health services and that effective basic services need not require great expenditure.

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  • Min, Brian. “Distributing Power: Public Service Provision to the Poor in India”. Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting and Exhibition, American Political Science Association, Toronto, 3–6 September 2009.

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    Impressive paper that examines the distribution of scarce electrical power in all 98,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh over two decades, using satellite imagery of the earth at night to see variations in lighting, correlating with the election of lower-caste party representatives.

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