Images of Welfare in Law and Society: The British Welfare State in Comparative Perspective
| Author | Daniel Wincott |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00548.x |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 38, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2011
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 343±75
Images of Welfare in Law and Society: The British Welfare
State in Comparative Perspective
Daniel Wincott*
Designed by Beveridge and built by Attlee's post-war Labour
government, the welfare state was created during the 1940s. Britain
has been seen ± in domestic debates and internationally ± as a world
first: the place where both the idea and the practice of the welfare state
were invented. I draw together comparative welfare state analysis with
law and society scholarship (previously largely developed in isolation
from one another) ± as well as using British political cartoons as a source
± to develop a revisionist historical critique of this conventional wisdom.
First, the British welfare state has always been comparatively
parsimonious. Second, the idea of the welfare state seems to have its
origins outside the United Kingdom and this terminology was adopted
relatively late and with some ambivalence in public debate and scholarly
analysis. Third, a large body of socio-legal scholarship shows that robust
`welfare rights' were never embedded in the British `welfare state'.
INTRODUCTION
In 1961 eminent social historian Asa Briggs wrote: `The phrase ``welfare
state'' is of recent origins. It was first used to describe Labour Britain after
1945. From Britain the phrase made its way round the world.'
1
This account
343
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University, Law Building, Museum Ave.,
Cardiff CF10 3AX, Wales
This article is an updated and developed version of my inaugural lecture for the Blackwell
Law and Society Chair at Cardiff Law School. As an `inaugural' statement, a general aim
here is to encourage a stronger dialogue between socio-legal studies and comparative
welfare state analysis, in the belief that each has valuable lessons to teach the other. I am
very grateful to my colleagues at Cardiff, members of the editorial board of the Journal of
Law and Society, and particularly to Phil Thomas for many helpful discussions on the
themes considered here.
1 A. Briggs, `The Welfare State in Historical Perspective (1961) 2 European J. of
Sociology 221.
± one of the first systematic analyses of the concept and practice of the
welfare state ± remains influential today. Viewed as an artifact of history,
Briggs' article captures something about the `image' of the welfare state, of
how it was understood at the start of the 1960s. So, contemporary com-
mentators and analysts imagined Britain as the original, exemplary, and pre-
eminent welfare state, which was leading the world towards the New
Jerusalem. The welfare state also had something like a standard `Genesis'
story, with Archbishop Temple often credited with the invention of the
phrase in the early 1940s.
2
Looking back, the United Kingdom also seems to
have supplied the world with other key elements for welfare state theory,
particularly T.H. Marshall's concept of `social rights of citizenship'.
3
Danish
Sociologist Gùsta Esping-Andersen ± the most influential current analyst of
the welfare state ± argued as follows: `Few can disagree with T.H.
Marshall's proposition that social citizenship constitutes the core idea of a
welfare state'.
4
Esping-Andersen went on to propound the (now) standard
social and political theory that `social rights' in the welfare state should have
`the legal and practical status of property rights' and be `inviolable'.
5
The idea of the British invention of the welfare state in 1945 was not
(only) an example of anglo-centric hubris: this notion has also shaped
general comparative analysis of the welfare state.
6
So, for example, its
general historiography has come to be dominated by the idea of a (Golden)
Age of the welfare state.
7
344
2 The key text is W. Temple, Citizen and Churchman (1941); the welfare state
reference is at p. 35. An example of the attribution of the concept to Temple is P.
Gregg, The Welfare State (1967) 3±4. For critical discussion, see P. Hennessy, Never
Again: Britain 1945±1951 (1992) 74, 121; A. Oakley, `Introduction' in The Politics
of the Welfare State, eds. A. Oakley and S. Williams (1994) 1±17; C. Pierson,
Beyond the Welfare State (1991).
3 See T.H. Marshall, `Citizenship and Social Class' in Citizenship and Social Class,
T.H. Marshall and T. Bottomore (1992/1950). For a sophisticated argument that
British social analysis has had a disproportionate influence on the conceptualization
of state welfare policies, see P. Flora and A. Heidenheimer, `The Historical Core
and Changing Boundaries of the Welfare State' in The Development of Welfare
States in Europe and America, eds. P. Flora and A. Heidenheimer (1981) 17±36.
4 G. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990) 21. As well as
being a heavily cited analysis of the welfare state, this monograph is one of the most
influential pieces of contemporary social analysis.
5 id.
6 For example, Janowitz argued that `British experience can be taken as the prototype
of welfare institutions': M. Janowitz, Social Control of the Welfare State (1976) 32.
See Flora and Heidenheimer op. cit., n. 3 for a critical discussion of these ideas.
7 Christopher Pierson provides an unusually clear discussion of this periodization (op.
cit. n. 2). Sophisticated examples of its use in the context of law and society
scholarship include T. Goriely, `Rushcliffe Fifty Years On: The Changing Role of
Civil Legal Aid within the Welfare State' (1994) 21 J. of Law and Society 545; also J.
Tweedy and A. Hunt, `The Future of the Welfare State and Social Rights: Reflections
on Habermas' (1994) 21 J. of Law and Society 288. The periodization also shapes A.
Gamble, `Privatization, Thatcherism and the British State' (1989) 16 J. of Law and
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School
Conventional wisdom
8
has it that this age began in 1945:
9
a date with
which to conjure in British history, marked by the election of Clement
Attlee's Labour government, which is widely credited with the construction
of the welfare state. It is, however, much less clear that the immediate
postwar years were the critical genetic moment for the welfare state in other
countries.
10
Things looked rather different thirty-odd years later: by 1978, Alan Wolfe
could see only trouble for the welfare state.
11
And because sociology was ±
or had been ± `a child of the welfare state', this trouble had deep implica-
345
Society 1 as well as the other contributions to that special issue. The `Golden Age'
phrase is used by, among others, I. Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare
State (1979); P. Taylor-Gooby, `The Silver Age of the Welfare State: Perspectives on
Resilience' (2002) 31 J. of Social Policy 597±622; M. Moran, `Understanding the
Welfare State: The Case of Health Care' (2000) 2 Brit. J. of Politics and
International Relations 135±60; R.H. Cox, `The Path Dependency of an Idea: Why
Scandinavian Welfare States Remain Dis tinct' (2004) 38 Social Policy and
Administration 204±19. Less often ± if arguably more precisely ± the Golden Age
is understood as one of `welfare state expansion', see M. Ferrera, The Boundaries of
Welfare (2005); P. Taylor-Gooby, `Ideology and Social Policy' (1994) 30 J. of
Sociology 71±82, and Cox, id. Analysts sometimes use different labels for broadly the
same period and subject matter. So G. Esping-Andersen writes of post-war `welfare
capitalism' in The Social Foundations of Post-Industrial Economies (1999), while
others discuss the `Keynesian golden age': see D. Marquand, `Premature Obsequies:
Social Democracy Comes in From the Cold' (1999) 70 Political Q. 10±18; J. Peck
and A. Tickell, `Neoliberalizing Space' (2002) 34 Antipode 380±404.
8 A concept popularized, if not coined, by J.K. Galbraith in The Affluent Society
(1958) 6±17.
9 See Pierson, op. cit. n. 2, for an unusually clear and fluent example of this periodiza-
tion. Note, however, that some close observers of the British case choose 1948 as the
putative `start date' for the British welfare state: for example, Richard Titmuss notes
that many British commentators see 1948 as the date at which a complete `welfare
state' came into being ± see R. Titmuss, `The Social Division of Welfare: Some
Reflections on the Search for Equity' in Essays on `The Welfare State' (1963/1958)
34±9. Titmuss himself expended considerable effort arguing against the proposition
that the welfare state had been fully created at any stage in the 1940s or 50s.
10 In fact, in his careful comparative analysis, Alex Hicks identified 1945 as the year of
`welfare consolidation' uniquely for the United Kingdom: A. Hicks, Social
Democracy and Welfare Capitalism (1999) 115, Table 4.1. The significance of
the immediate post-war moment in Britain was no doubt heightened by the
(comparatively unusual) total absence of social policy innovation during the 1930s.
This contrasts starkly with the United States' New Deal or the reforms associated
with the SaltsjoÈbaden Agreem ent in Sweden. More generally, Hicks found
conclusive evidence of `mid-century welfare consolidation' in fewer than half of
the 17 wealthy democracies he studied. The United Kingdom was unique in
achieving this consolidation in 1945; four other countries (Austria, Sweden, the
Netherlands, and Norway) achieved it in the five years after the war. The 1940s
were undoubtedly an important period of innovation in welfare policy, as were the
1910s and 1930s (id., p. 81, Table 3.1) and also the 1960s.
11 A. Wolfe, `Analyzing the Welfare State' (1978) 6 Theory and Society 293; Wolfe
attributes the idea to Alvin Gouldner.
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School
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