The Welfare State in Europe and America
Peter Baldwin
Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, NYU
Fall 2014
Attempts to help the poor can be found throughout history, organized by religious
and civic institutions and through voluntary charity and philanthropic organizations.
The modern welfare state, in contrast, has sought not only to ensure that the least
fortunate do not fall below a basic standard of civilized living. It has also aimed to
make such social help a citizen's right, not just a charitable good deed. Moreover,
the modern welfare state has attempted to ensure that all citizens, not just the
poor, be protected against a broad palette of natural and social risks. And in its
most ambitious formulations, it has aimed to redistribute income and moderate the
most extreme economic and social inequalities. The welfare state has thus been an
ambitious attempt to intervene in the market and reassert a social control of the
economy. Its beginnings, early in the 20C, its expansion later in the century, and its
current embattled condition have all therefore been accompanied by intense
political controversy. This course will seek place the welfare state in its broad
historical context, examining the radical nature of the break with previous
developments it represented, the way in which it has differed among nations and
assess its current condition: victim of its own success or embattled ideal?
1. Introduction
2. Why the Bother?
-- Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better
for Everyone
-- Christopher Snowdon, The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact Checking the Left's
New Theory of Everything
-- Göran Therborn, The Killing Fields of Inequality
3. Poor Law and Laissez-Faire: The Market Destroys the Old Regime
-- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
-- Peter H. Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since
the Eighteenth Century, v 1, pp 39-86
-- E.P. Hennock, The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, pp 1738, 50-59
-- Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers
4. Justifying and Denying the Welfare State
-- T.H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class"
-- Stein Ringen, The Possibility of Politics
-- Robert E. Goodin, Reasons for Welfare
-- Charles Murray, Losing Ground
-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
5. Risk and Modernity
-- Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance
-- Ulrich Beck, Risk Society
-- Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture
-- Abram de Swaan, In Care of the State
-- Graham Burchell, et al., eds., The Foucault Effect, chs 10, 11
-- Isabela Mares, The Politics of Social Risk, pp 86-105
6. Redistribution and the Welfare State
-- Sven Steinmo, Taxation and Democracy
-- Lindert, Growing Public, pp 296-307
-- Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, The Logic of Charity: Amsterdam, 1800-1850, pp
144-62
-- Peter Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity
-- Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
-- Isabela Mares, The Politics of Social Risk, pp 64-85
-- Hennock, The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, pp 73-100
-- G.R. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law
7. Getting to Denmark: The Scandinavian Mecca
-- Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
-- Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Moment
-- Tim Tilton, The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy
-- Ton Notermans, Money, Markets and the State
8. America as an Exception?
-- Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and
Europe
-- Theodore R. Marmor et al., America's Misunderstood Welfare State
-- Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences
-- Christopher Howard, The Welfare State Nobody Knows
-- Laura Jensen, Patriots, Settler and the Origins of American Social Policy
-- Edwin Amenta and Theda Skocpol, “Taking Exception: Explaining the
Distinctiveness of American Public Policies,” in Francis G. Castles, ed., The
Comparative History of Public Policies
9. Welfare State and Civil Society
-- Bo Rothstein and Lars Trägårdh, "The State and Civil Society in Historical
Perspective: The Swedish Case," in Trägårdh, ed., State and Civil Society in
Northern Europe
-- Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism
-- Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State
-- Sherwin Rosen, “Public Employment, Taxes and the Welfare State in
Sweden,” in Richard B. Freeman et al., eds., The Welfare State in Transition
10. The Welfare State Flies below the Radar
-- Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in Burchell, ed., Foucault Effect
-- Nikolas Rose, Power of Freedom
-- Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul
-- Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge
11. The Multicultural Welfare State
-- Will Kymlicka, "The Multicultural Welfare State?" in Peter A. Hall and
Michele Lamont, eds., Successful Societies
-- Michael Shalev, "Israel's Domestic Policy Regime," in Francis G. Castles, ed.,
The Comparative History of Public Policy
-- Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare
-- Peter Baldwin, "The Return of the Coercive State: Behavioral Control in
Multicultural Society," in TV Paul et al., eds., The Nation-State in Question
-- Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth, eds., The Cultural Construction of Norden
-- Alberto Alesina et al., "Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions," Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 114, 4 (1999)
-- E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons
12. End of the Welfare State, or Victim of its own Success?
-- Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State?
-- Neil Gilbert, Transformation of the Welfare State
-- Timothy Smith, France in Crisis
-- Harold Wilensky, Rich Democracies, ch 17
-- Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State
13: Is Inequality Inevitable?
-- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century
-- Jeremy Greenwood et al., "Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and
Income Inequality"
-- Alison Wolf, The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a
Far Less Equal World
-- Gregory Clark, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social
Mobility
-- Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of
Inequality