How Should We Analyse the Modern Welfare State?

Abstract

A shift in the orientation of the Western states — from being mainly directed towards other states, to being preoccupied with their own territories, and finally to being concerned about their own populations — paved the way for the development of the welfare state (Therborn, 1989:73). But if the discursive construction of the population as a resource for the state was the necessary condition for the birth of the welfare state, the discursive construction of the state as a resource for the weaker and poorer parts of the population provided the sufficient condition (ibid. 72). The impure origin of the welfare state is primar­ily, but not exclusively, to be sought in the growing demand for a more active state engagement in the solving of the ‘social question’, which was high on the political agenda (Dalberg-Larsen, 1984: 94-5, 101). There had been some highly repressive forerunners to the welfare state in the form of the various Poor Laws, but recognition of the state’s responsibility for the well-being of its citizens came only after a long battle over how to counter the dislocatory effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization in the Western countries.