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Edited by
PETER FLORA
and
ARNOLD J. HEIDENHEIMER
O Routledge
o^^ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1981 by Transaction Publishers
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
HN17.5D48
ISBN 0-87855-920-5
1
2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WELFARE STATES
The editors have wrestled mightily with the contributors, as well as with
each other, in the attempt to render the chapters more comprehensible and
readable. We were very lucky to be assisted in this endeavor by Michele
Prichard, a superb editing coach. Her careful paring and punctilious
editing has improved many of our chapters. Part Five also benefitted from
the editing suggestions of Carol Leff, while Richard Eichenberg provided
invaluable advice at the Cologne end. Our project editor, Kerry Kern,
provided patient and continuous care toward the production of a volume
that would be in Consonance with its title. Emma Danoski extended inval-
uable help in proofreading as well as preparation of the tables.
Welfare and state are among the most ambiguously employed terms in
contemporary English political vocabulary. In the latter 1970s, the welfare
state concept has been enmeshed in embattled slogans that have raised the
level of public anxiety, even as it has also been utilized in the more
dispassionate analyses of social scientists.
The dimensions of the contemporary discussion can well be described as
being focused on the growth and crisis of the variety of publicly financed
programs that have come to be placed under the welfare state rubric. Even
if one controls for opinion cycles, it is evident that symbols fused and
generated in one sociocultural setting have taken on differing connotations
as they have been diffused around the world.
Scholars who seek to deflect energies from heat to light in this setting can
attempt to grapple with the following kinds of questions. Is there really a
crisis? If so, what is its character and extent? Is the crisis a product of
program growth and can scaling it down put an end to it? Or is it rather a
crisis within growth? Can we even identify the presence of some of the
crisis-producing elements at the very origins of welfare state growth?
It is clearly true that, when measured in terms of the relevant public
expenditures, the growth of welfare states in the past quarter century has
been unprecedented in Western history. In the mid-1970s the nations of
Western Europe were on the average allocating almost 25 percent of their
national resources to public social expenditures. In North America the
ratio has also surpassed the 20 percent level.
It is not only that resources allocated are vast by any measure, but that
the functions they perform have become indispensable in the attempts to
maintain stability in Western economies. As welfare state programs have
5
6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WELFARE STATES
1. It is apparent that any significant analyses of Western welfare states and their
"crises" must link knowledge of both broad developmental trends and impor-
tant program details shaped by economic systems, political institutions, and
social structures. An attempt to cope with the challenge of assessing the
achievements and shortfalls of welfare states thus necessitates interdisciplinary
collaboration.
2. We attempt to analyze welfare states in developmental terms, but even if we did
not, such concepts as "stages," "recurrence" and "trend" require careful cali-
brations over several time periods. Thus, the question of whether the situation
of the 1970s represents a threshold or a different stage for the welfare state
requires historical analysis.
3. Complementary to this is the comparative analysis, based on the experiences
of 15 nations on two continents, which all of us have pursued in varying
degrees. Comparison engenders appreciation of contextual interrelationships.
The assessment of uniformities and differences in national programs is also a
prerequisite for testing and developing causal explanations. Finally, compara-
tive analysis can help surmount the ideological fixations developed in particu-
lar places and times.
overtaken Sweden as the biggest European spender, but those who are can
find an explanation in Wilensky's analysis. He also shows that left party
governments spent more if subjected to intense Catholic competition, but
where left parties were more continuously in power they tended to "slow
the adoption of new programs or the rapid expansion of the old, while
simultaneously keeping high hopes in check."
The author of the concluding Chapter 11, Hugh Heclo, seeks to pull
together many of the broader themes and questions that have been
addressed in more limited contexts in preceding sections. Does the current
situation, seen in the light of historical developments as well a£ today's
debate about policy, represent a threshold and different stage for the
welfare state? Or is it one of the recurrent phases in a basically continuous
line of development? To help answer these questions, Heclo assesses the
current situation in the light of several common stages through which most
Western welfare states appear to have passed during the last century. He
argues that while a redefinition of the democratic welfare state is likely, the
result will probably bear little relationship to the currently fashionable
emphasis on "democratic excesses" and "overloaded governments." Rather,
he predicts that Western nations are entering a new period of experimenta-
tion in which many of the traditional aims of the welfare state will be
pursued by novel means. During the coming decades we may well expe-
rience a situation mirroring that prevalent in the late nineteenth century.
He foresees a situation in which defenders of the status quo will be aligned
behind an activist social policy, while the advocates of radical change will
demand dismantled programs and limited government.
The Historical Core and Changing Boundaries of the Welfare State
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