Welfare States in Wealthy Democracies

Abstract

The contemporary study of the welfare state began, along with World Politics, in the immediate postwar era, inspired by the near-collapse of democracy and the crucial role envisaged for public spending in stabilizing it after war. Over the following decades key scholarly questions focused on the normal welfare politics of the era—distributive politics, the effects of government policy on growth, and the capacity of social policies to create their own political constituencies. In a new era of more uncertain democratic resilience, we may need to return to older questions: of the coercive function of the welfare state, of its ability/inability to conserve democracy, and of the weaknesses of welfare policies to maintain political support.