Welfare State Transformations in Comparative Perspective: Shifting Boundaries of ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Social Policy?

Abstract

The dividing line between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ is not fixed, but usually contested and constantly renegotiated (cf. Shonfield, 1965). During the so-called golden era of welfare state capitalism, direct public provision of social policy was perceived as the core element for the realization of ‘social citizenship’ (Marshall, 1950), social integration or the reduction of poverty by a majority of political actors and social scientists in Western Europe. Although the family, voluntary organizations and the market had been identified in addition to the state as constituent parts of the mixed economy of welfare very early on, the attention within public debates and academic analyses has been on the nation state as a financier and provider of social policy (Titmuss, 1958). Over the past two decades, however, public debates in many countries and international organizations have shifted, calling for a greater emphasis on private arrangements, said to be mainly resulting from a combination of three socio-economic developments: globalization, rapidly ageing societies and individualization.