Welfare States
Sophie Moullin
Princeton University
Examiner: Professor Paul Starr
Overview
“The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may
prepare – all this and more”, Schumpeter thought, “is written in its fiscal history, stripped of its
phrases”.1
The sociology of welfare states retains a classical sociological interest in the intersection
of the political, economic, and social. Like political economy, sociology emphasizes institutions.
But sociologists see institutions in less formal terms than do political scientists and economists.
Institutions relevant to the welfare state include political systems, taxation, education, healthcare,
as well as social security. Yet sociology also considers (labor) markets, civic associations, and
families as institutions shaped by states. The boundary of the welfare state is a question not a
given. Furthermore, sociology emphasizes ways welfare states are embedded in – and embed –
cultures and ideas.
This perspective involves considering welfare states over time and place. The study of
welfare states showcases sociology’s historical-comparative methods. Increasingly also, statistical
analyses test and refine theories of welfare states. This syllabus reflects these different approaches
within sociology, and its porous boundary with sister disciplines, especially politics.
After reviewing classic texts on the welfare state, the first section explores the historical
origins and variation in welfare states. The second section looks at the social politics of the public
and private provision of welfare: considering both the private spheres of business/industry, and of
families. The third section considers contemporary challenges to welfare states, whether
predominately from globalization, de-industrialization, interests or ideas. How to respond to
these, both practical and theoretical, challenges is the question we end with.
1
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1991 (1918) “The Crisis of the Tax State”, Pp. 91 – 140 in The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, edited
by Richard Swedberg. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. p.101.
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1. Classical Interpretations
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our
Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1991 (1918) “The Crisis of the Tax State”, Pp. 91 – 140 in The Economics
and Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Richard Swedberg. Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Titmuss, R. M. (1958) Essays on the ‘Welfare State’, London: Allen and Unwin.
Marshall, T. H. 1992 (1949). Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto.
2. Historical Origins and Development
2a. General and European:
Rimlinger, Gaston. 1971. Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America, and Russia
Wiley.
Baldwin, Peter. 1990. The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare
State, 1875-1975. Cambridge University Press.
Thane, Pat. 1996. Foundations of the Welfare State. Longman.
Pedersen, Susan. 1995. Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and
France, 1914-1945. Cambridge University Press.
2b. United States:
Katzneson, Ira. 2013. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. Liveright. pp. 1225, 42-48, 117-194, 227-275, 342-346, 367-402, 475-486.
Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in
the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Starr, Paul. 1983. The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Book II. New York, NY:
Basic Books
Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. 2012. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public
Welfare. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Katz, Michael. 1996. In the Shadow of the Poor House: A Social History of Welfare in America.
Basic Books.
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2c. Comparative Variations
Amenta, Edwin. (2003). “What we know about the development of social policy: comparative
and historical research in comparative and historical perspective,” in James Mahoney and Dieter
Rueschemeyer, eds. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. New York:
Cambridge University Press
Esping­Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity
Press
See also: Lewis, Jane. 1997. “Gender and Welfare Regimes: Further Thoughts.” Social
Politics 4(2):160–77.
Chauvel, L., and M. Schroder. 2014. “Generational Inequalities and Welfare Regimes.”
Social Forces 92(4):1259–83.
Garfinkel, I. Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding. 2009. Wealth and Welfare States. Oxford
University Press
Pontusson, Jonas. 2005. Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe vs. Liberal America. Cornell
University Press.
2d. The Historical Relationship of Capitalism and Liberalism to the Welfare State
Hobhouse, L.T. 1911. Liberalism.
Starr, Paul. 2007. Freedom's Power. New York: Basic Books.
von Hayek, Frederich. “The Meaning of the Welfare State” from the Constitution of
Liberty/Pierson Reader.
Foucault, Michel. 2010. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France, 1978-1979.
Palgrave MacMillan. Chapters 5, 9.
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3. The Social Politics of Public and Private Welfare Provision
3a. Private welfare provision and the politics of social insurance & taxation
Hacker, J. S. 2002. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle Over Public and Private Social
Benefits in the United States. Cambridge University Press.
Iversen, Torben, and Anne Wren. 1998. “Equality, Employment, and Budgetary Restraint: The
Trilemma of the Service Economy.” World Politics 50(4):507–46.
Lee, C. S., Y. B. Kim, and J. M. Shim. 2011. “The Limit of Equality Projects: Public-Sector
Expansion, Sectoral Conflicts, and Income Inequality in Postindustrial Economies.”
American Sociological Review 76(1): 100–124.
Martin, Isaac William, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad. 2009. The New Fiscal Sociology:
Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press. (Introduction)
Mettler, Suzanne. 2010. “Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy
Reform in the Obama Era.” Perspectives on Politics 8(03):803–24.
3b. Family provision and the feminist critique
Pateman, Carole. 1988.“The Patriarchal Welfare State,” in Pateman and Mills, Contract and
Domination.
O’Connor, Julia, Ann Shola Orloff, and Sheila Shaver. 1999. States, markets, families: Gender,
liberalism and social policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2.
Fraser, Nancy, 2013. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-managed Capitalism to Neoliberal
Crisis, Verso Books. Chapters 3 (with Linda Gordon), 4 and 10.
Daly, Mary, 2011, What Adult Worker Model? A critical look at recent social policy reform in
Europe from a gender and family perspective. Social Politics. 18(1)43-
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4. Challenges to welfare states
4a. Reassessing the post-World War II expansion of social policy
Martha J. Bailey and Sheldon Danziger, Legacies of the War on Poverty (Russell Sage
Foundation). Review by Christopher Jencks, “The War on Poverty: Was It Lost? (parts I and II)”
New York Review of Books, April 2, and 23 2015, at
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/war-poverty-was-it-lost/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/23/did-we-lose-war-poverty-ii/
Fabian Society/ Webb Memorial Trust. 2012. Beveridge at 70, at http://www.fabians.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2012/12/Beveridge-supplement_WEB_SPREADS.pdf
4b. Welfare state retrenchment and reform
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of
Retrenchment. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Patashnik, Eric M. “Pierson’s Dismantling the Welfare State: A Twentieth Anniversary
Reassessment,” PS: Political Science and Politics (April 2015), 267-269 (and other contributions
to the symposium in that issue).
Brady, D., Beckfield, J., & Seeleib-Kaiser, M. 2005. Economic Globalization and the Welfare
State in Affluent Democracies, 1975–2001. American Sociological Review, 70(6), 921–948.
Block, Fred and Margaret Somers. 2005. “From Policy to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and
Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate. American Sociological Review 70(2): 260-287
Starr, Paul. 1988. The Meaning of Privatization, Yale Law and Policy Review 6: 6-41
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4c. Interests and Preferences
Offe, Claus. 1988. Democracy Against the Welfare States? Structural foundations of
neoconservative political opportunities. In Donald Mood (ed.) Responsibility, Rights, and
Welfare: The theory of the welfare state. Westview Press.
Edlund, Jonas & Stefan Svallfors “Cohort, class and attitudes to redistribution in two liberal
welfare states: Britain and the United States, 1996-2006”, pp. 206-24 In Vanhuysse, Pieter &
Achim Goerres (Eds.) Ageing Populations in Post-industrial Democracies. London: Routledge,
2011
Sachweh, P., and S. Olafsdottir. 2010. “The Welfare State and Equality? Stratification Realities
and Aspirations in Three Welfare Regimes.” European Sociological Review 28(2): 149–68
Christina Fong. 2001. “Social Preferences, Self-interest and the Demand for Redistribution.”
Journal of Public Economics 82:225-246.
Korpi, Walter, and Joakim Palme. 1998. “The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of
Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality, and Poverty in the Western Countries.” American
Sociological Review 63(5): 661.
Brady, D., and A. Bostic. 2015. “Paradoxes of Social Policy: Welfare Transfers, Relative
Poverty, and Redistribution Preferences.” American Sociological Review 80(2): 268–98.
4.d Culture and Conflict
Steensland, Brian. 2006. "Cultural Categories and the American Welfare State: The Case of
Guaranteed Income Policy." American Journal of Sociology 111:1273-1326.
Gilens, Martin. 1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare, pp. 60-79.
Fox, Cybelle. 2010. Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and Public and Private Social
Welfare Spending in American Cities. American Journal of Sociology 116(2): 453-502.
Brown, Hana E. 2013. “Racialized Conflict and Policy Spillover Effects: The Role of Race in the
Contemporary U.S. Welfare State.” American Journal of Sociology 119(2): 394–443.
4e. Rejoinders: Futures for welfare states?
Esping-Anderson, Gøsta. 2009. The Unfinished Revolution: Adapting to Women’s New Roles.
Polity.
Huo, Jingjing, and John D. Stephens. 2015. “From Industrial Corporatism to the Social
Investment State,” in The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State, ed. Stephan
Leibfried, Frank Nullmeier, Evelyne Huber, Matthew Lange, Jonah Levy, and John D. Stephens.
New York: Oxford University Press.
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