Conservative Thought and the Welfare State
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00085 |
| Author | Norman Barry |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Conservative Thought and the Welfare State
NORMAN BARRY
University of Buckingham
The welfare state is nowunde rgoing the most sustained analysis in a generation.
Although it is true that conservatives have been in the forefront of the major
criticism they are in a slightly embarrassing situation since they have tradi-
tionally taken credit for some of the modest state interventions that were made
from the nineteenth century onwards. It is often claimed that the post-war
British welfare state was not so much a product of the Labour government's
innovations but was a continuation, and rationalization, of measures that were
taken earlier in the century.1The changes in social insurance,2the introduction
of a nationalized health service and the state-sponsored expansion of education
at all levels emerged from the war-time Coalition Government's deliberations
rather than exclusively from the rational plans of the post-war Labour
Government.
The same is true of Europe. It was Bismarck's Germany which pioneered the
idea of social insurance, and ended what was a burgeoning voluntary system.
Although in the US conservative Republicans have always been sceptical about
state welfare they did eventually accept the implications of Roosevelt's New
Deal (including its Social Security provisions), and for a while acquiesced in the
extensions to this brought about by President Johnson's Great Society
programmes.3
It was only the more radical free market branches of conservatism that
persistently opposed the structure of the welfare state, i.e. the collectivized
delivery of unemployment insurance, health care, pensions and so on. But even
classical, or economic liberals4(I shall use these terms interchangeably) still
believed in some residual role for the state in aiding the deprived. What they
objected to was what has come to be known as the `institutional' welfare state,
or the collective and compulsory (though not necessarily monopolistic) delivery
of such welfare goods as unemployment insurance, health care, pensions etc.
Such arrangements were thought to be a threat to both freedom and eciency.
But only a very small minority of dogged advocates of the minimal state resisted,
the, what had become by the late 1950s, overwhelming consensus. The dier-
ences were mainly about the form that statewelfare should take. That consensus
has to some extent broken down and an obvious consequence of this has been
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
1See Viscount Hailsham, The Conservative Case (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1959), p. 109.
2Though this was originally a Liberal measure, successiveConservative governments have made
no attempt to reverse it.
3These became `weapons' in the `War on Poverty'.They are described in Charles Murray, Losing
Ground: American Social Policy 1950±80 (New York, Basic, 1984).
4See Norman Barry, `Economic Liberalism, Ethics and the Social Market' in James
Meadowcroft (ed.), The Liberal Political Tradition (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996), pp. 56 ±76.
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 331±345
To continue reading
Request your trial