Welfare State

The welfare state describes a variety of political practices and processes related to the arrangement of a social and economic order within a polity. It is relevant for global studies from at least four perspectives. First, it is embraced by many states as a conscious normative order for the organization of social justice and equal opportunity. Second, it is criticized as an obstacle for the self-regulating [Page 1783]forces of the free market within a state as well as globally from one variety of liberal thought. Third, it is challenged by global market forces. At the same time, fourth, it serves as an exemplary way of regulating the social and has been appropriated as a form of internal political regulation by non-Western countries since the end of World War II and increasingly since the end of decolonization.

The term welfare state was allegedly coined in 1941 by Sir William Temple in Britain in his description of the difference between National Socialist Germany (a warfare state) and British society (a welfare state). As in other Western countries, liberal economic orders were increasingly reined in during the 1930s by a conscious regulation of the social as well as a conscious integration of social interests into the taxation and redistribution logics of industrialized countries. The New Deal of the United States is a good example of a conscious reorganization of the state by incorporating the social dimension and striving for a more socially just political organization by strengthening trade unions and other interest organizations. Since the end of World War II, the term welfare state has become a synonym for the different ways in which societies aim to provide social justice and practice the redistribution of taxes, which constitute the main way of financing the welfare state. In this entry, the general concept and the historical emergence of the welfare state are described, together with its main variants, before the four aspects of the welfare state in relation to global studies are presented.