Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:41:41.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Development of Welfare States: The Production of Plausible Accounts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

John Carrier  and
Ian Kendall
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is intended to extend our previous analysis (Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 2, Part 3, July 1973) of explanations of the development of social policy. Some problems associated with the preparation of historical accounts are examined and we proceed to review the value of international comparisons of welfare developments as a device for avoiding some of these problems. We look at some examples of studies that have utilized international comparisons and the problems involved in attempting such studies. Our conclusion is that the use of the comparative method is valuable, not because it enables us to get any nearer the truth about welfare developments, but rather because the range of plausible explanations that it will generate makes us more aware of the variety of perspectives on welfare activities that can exist and of the multitude of value-systems that are embodied in these perspectives.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 271 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Carrier, John and Kendall, Ian – ‘Social Policy and Social Change – explanations of the development of social policy’ – journal of Social Policy, 2: 3 (1973) 209–24.Google Scholar

2 By statutory welfare activities we mean state-directed attempts to meet ‘recognised needs’ and we are therefore taking the distinctive feature of welfare activities to be that their manifest purpose is to influence differential command-over-resources-over-time according to some criteria of need. This definition of welfare activities is based on those of several other writers – see ibid. p. 21 on.

3 Berger, P. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 222.Google Scholar

4 The paradox being that the emphasis of the Marxian perspective on inter-class conflict tends to lead to rather dubious assumptions about intra-class consensus. See for example, Saville, J., ‘The Welfare State – An Historical Approach’ in The New Reasoner, 1: 3 (1957) 8, 9, 10 and 11.Google Scholar

5 See J. Carrier and I. Kendall, op. cit, p. 210. Goldthorpe implies that the ‘functionalist’ type of explanation that he examines may have been developed in response to what were perceived as the defects of conventional histories – see Goldthorpe, J. H., ‘Development of Social Policy in England, 1800–1914’, International Sociological Association, Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, Washington, 1962Google Scholar; London, 1964, p. 43.Google Scholar

6 J. H. Goldthorpe, op. cit., p. 43.

7 Both quotations from ibid. p. 43.

8 We have delineated some of the more obvious questions in J. Carrier and I. Kendall, op. cit., p. 211.

9 Ibid., p. 222.

10 It is pertinent to point out that detailed critiques of the ‘conventional ad-hoc approach’ have been made by those concerned with pursuing a more ‘systematic approach’. See for example Jones, G. Stedman, ‘The Poverty of Empiricism’ in Blackburn, R. (ed.), Ideology in Social Science – Readings in Critical Social Theory, Fontana/Collins, Glasgow, 1972, pp. 96–115.Google Scholar

11 We would suggest that our typologies of ‘rational’ and ‘moral determinism’ often fall into the category of explicit description/implicit theorizing (see J. Carrier and I. Kendall, op. cit., pp. 211–12).

12 This phrase is taken from Bloch, M., The Historian's Craft, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1954, p. 193.Google Scholar

13 See for example, Mill, John Stuart, System of Logic, Longmans, Green and Co., 8th edition 1891Google Scholar, Book VI, ‘On the Logic of the Moral Sciences’, especially Chs. VI and VII, p. 572Google Scholar. ‘The circumstances, on the contrary, which influence the condition and progress of society, are innumerable, and perpetually changing, and though they all change in obedience to causes, and therefore to laws, the multitude of the causes is so great as to defy our limited powers of calculation’ and again, p. 576, ‘Social phenomena are those in which the plurality (of causes) prevails in the utmost possible extent’.

14 See for example, Thane, Pat, ‘The History of Social Welfare’, New Society, 29 08 1974.Google Scholar

15 For example, Piven, F. F. and Cloward, R. A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Tavistock Publications, London, 1970.Google Scholar They criticize the literature on ‘relief, because ‘the arid moralisms and pieties of nineteenth-century writers or the ostensibly value-neutral analyses of twentieth-century professionals and technicians merely serve to obscure the central role of relief agencies in the regulation of marginal labour and in the maintenance of civil order’, p. XVI. However, Piven and Cloward still argue a case that ‘expansive relief policies are designed to mute civil disorder, and restrictive ones to reinforce work norms’, p. XIII. Similarly, Gilbert, Bentley B., British Social Policy, 1914–1939, Batsford, London, 1970Google Scholar, argues that ‘Public men …were faced after the conflict (1914–18 war) not with the request for charity for the helpless, but with an intractable demand for work or maintenance from society's most dangerous and volatile element, the unemployed adult male. Beside the threat of revolution, nothing else was important’ (p. VIII) (italics our emphasis). Again, George, Victor, Social Security and Society, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1973Google Scholar, argues that ‘Our historical discussion has shown that ruling class power and authority sometimes in the face of working-class opposition and sometimes with the active or passive co-operation of the working class ensured that what social security provision had to be made from time to time always took into account the ideologies and interests of the ruling class either openly or in the name of national interests’ (p. 36) (italics our emphasis).

A more open ended discussion on the reasons underlying social policy initiatives at the turn of the twentieth century, and a reminder about the complexity of causes in producing social policy changes is to be found in Hay, J. R.'s excellent The Origins of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, 1906–1914, Macmillan, London, 1975Google Scholar, and also in Hall, , Land, , Parker, and Webb, , Change, Choice and Conflict in Social Policy, Heinemann, London, 1975.Google Scholar

16 M. Bloch, op. cit., pp. 192–3.

17 G. Stedman Jones, op. cit., p. 98. This point has of course been made before. Thus Voltaire wrote that ‘it seems that, for fourteen hundred years, there have been none but kings, ministers, and generals in the Gauls’ (quoted by M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 178).

18 McGregor, O. R., ‘Social Research and Social Policy in the Nineteenth Century’, British Journal of Sociology, 8: 2 (1957) p. 146.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 146.

20 For example, see B. B. Gilbert (1970), op. cit. the preface: ‘1939 provides a reasonable terminal date’ (our italics).

21 Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination, Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1970Google Scholar, in a convincing discussion of the relevance of historical writing to social science makes the point that ‘Whatever else he may be, man is a social and an historical actor who must be under stood, if at all, in close and intricate interplay with social and historical structures’.Ch. 8, ‘Uses of History’, p. 175.Google Scholar

22 M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 182.

23 Titmuss, R. M., Essays on the Welfare State, Allen and Unwin, London, 1958, pp. 75–87.Google Scholar

24 M. Bloch, op. cit, p. 175.

25 Marshall, T. H., Social Policy in the Twentieth Century (3rd rev. edition), Hutchinson, London, 1972, p. 13.Google Scholar

26 ‘Never can so important a Royal Commission have produced so little in the way of action for not even the more moderate suggestions of the Majority Report were enacted’, Fraser, D., Evolution of the British Welfare State, Macmillan, London, 1973, p. 149.Google ScholarJones, Kathleen subsequently commented that ‘…(this)…statement…is surprising when one recalls how much the legislation of the 1940s owed to the Webbs' analysis’, New Society, 7 06 1973, p. 572.Google Scholar

27 See Wilensky, H. and Lebeaux, C., Industrial Society and Social Welfare, Free Press, New York, 1965.Google Scholar

28 See for example, G. Stedman Jones, op. cit., p. 114; he refers to the ‘formulation of theoretical concepts with which to construct history’. From the same volume N. Poulantzas's review of Miliband, R.'s The State in Capitalist Society (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969)Google Scholar appears to criticize the latter for not expressing sufficiently effectively that the Marxist theory of the State exists and is true and must pre-date any empirical analysis; the function of the latter being to rewrite the former (see N. Poulantzas, ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State’ in R Blackburn [ ed], op. cit., pp. 238–53, especially pp. 240–1).

29 M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 197. This argument is not to be confused with the notion that the writing of histories is a value-free and non-ideological process. ‘Without ideology we would never have thought of the question(s)’ as Joan Robinson has observed (in Economic Philosophy, Watts, London, 1962, p. 4)Google Scholar; however, this is not the same as letting ideology also provide all the answers.

30 M. Bloch, op. cit., p. 194.

31 P. Thane, op. cit.

32 Gough, I., ‘State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism’, New Left Review, no. 92, 1975, p. 66.Google Scholar

33 Although the writing of welfare histories is not so long established as other areas of ‘conventional history’.

34 It is likely that international developments will be less readily divided into neat and tidy ‘periods’. Similarly the so-called ‘turning points’ in national histories of welfare may become insignificant in the context of a general picture of international trends in welfare development.

35 J. H. Goldthorpe, op. cit., p. 43.

36 Burns, Eveline M., Social Security and Public Policy, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1956, p. 4.Google Scholar Her conclusion is that ‘by the middle of the twentieth century…extensive social security systems…had come to be characteristic of most industrialised countries’ (p. 9).

37 Gouldner, A., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, Heinemann, London, 1971, Ch. 5Google Scholar, ‘The Shift toward a Welfare State’, pp. 349–50.Google Scholar

38 Rys, V., ‘The Sociology of Social Security’, Bulletin of the International Social Security Association, nos. l-2, 1964, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 4.

40 Galenson, W., ‘Social Security and Economic Development: A Quantitative Approach’, Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 21: 4 (07 1968) 559–69.Google Scholar

41 Cutright, P., ‘Political Structure, Economic Development and National Social Security Programmes’, American Journal of Sociology, 70: 70 (1965) 541 (our emphasis).Google Scholar

42 Wilensky, H., The Welfare State and Equality, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975. P. 10.Google Scholar

43 See Mishra, R., ‘Welfare and Industrial Man: A Study of Welfare in Western Industrial Societies in relation to a hypothesis of convergence’, Sociological Review, NS 21: 4 (11 1973) 535–60Google Scholar, and ‘Convergence Theory and Social Change: The Development of Welfare in Britain and the Soviet Union’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 18: 1 (January 1976) 28–56.Google Scholar

44 R. Mishra (1973), op. cit., p. 554.

46 R. Mishra (1976), op. pp cit., 54–6.

46 Rimlinger, G., Welfare Policy and Industrialisation in Europe, America and Russia, John Wiley, New York, 1971Google Scholar, and ‘Welfare Policy and Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Perspective’, Journal of Economic History, XXVI: 4 (December 1966) 556–71.Google Scholar

47 G. Rimlinger (1971), op. cit, p. 7.

48 These points are made by H. Wilensky, op. cit., Ch. 1.

49 R. M. Titmuss, op. cit., Ch. 2.

50 See respectively P. Outright, op. cit, R. Mishra (1973), op. cit., and H. Wilensky, op. cit.

51 That is convergence in the context of welfare – that industrialization leads to the development of welfare provision and ultimately, because of the similar demands posed by industrialization, to similar sorts of welfare provision.

52 See Kaim-Caudle, P., Comparative Social Policy and Social Security, Martin Robertson, London, 1973, Ch. 3.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., pp. 51–2. It is interesting to note that whilst they are not completely dissimilar there are significant differences in Kaim-Caudle's assessment of ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ by comparison with Wilensky's. (See Ibid. Ch. 9 and H. Wilensky, op. cit., pp. 30–1.) Thus Kaim-Caudle considers the UK and Denmark to be clear ‘leaders’ in the health field above Wilensky's leaders – Austria, Germany and the Netherlands (see P. Kaim-Caudle, op. cit., p. 305).

54 See Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, London, 1963, Ch. 10Google Scholar, ‘Standards and Experiences’; also the following references in The Economic History Review: Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘British Standard of Living, 1790–1850’, 10: 1 (08 1957) 46–68Google Scholar; Hartwell, R. M., ‘Rising Standards of Living in England, 1800–1850’, xiii: 3 (April 1961) 397–416Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J. and Hartwell, R. M., ‘Standards of Living during the Industrial Revolution: A Discussion’, xvi: 1 (August 1963) 120–46.Google Scholar

55 For example, Titmuss referred to ‘social growth’, the indicators of which are essentially unquantifiable…‘these are indicators that cannot be measured, cannot be quantified, but relate to the texture of relationships between human beings. These indicators cannot be calculated. They are not, as my friends the economists tell me, counted in all the Blue Books and in all the publications of the Central Statistical Office’, Titmuss, R. M., Social Policy: An Introduction, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1974, p. 150.Google Scholar

56 Wilde, O., Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III.Google Scholar

57 H. Wilensky, op. cit., p. 50.

58 See for example, Kincaid, J., ‘Poverty and Equality in Britain’, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, Ch. 3Google Scholar, ‘The Subsistence Principle’.

59 H. Wilensky, op. cit., p. 52.

60 See for example Goldthorpe, J. H., ‘Social Stratification in Industrial Society’ in Halmos, P. (ed.), The Development of Industrial Societies, Sociological Review Monograph, No. 8, University of Keele, Keele, 1964, pp. 97–122Google Scholar and Dunning, E. G. and Hopper, E. I., ‘Industrialisation and the Problems of Convergence, A Critical Note’, Sociological Review, NS, 14: 2 (1966) 163–85.Google Scholar

61 G4, Rimlinger (1966), op. cit., p. 566.

62 B. B. Gilbert (1970), op. cit., and The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain, Michael Joseph, London, 1966.Google Scholar

63 See Hay, J. R., The Origins of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, 1906–1914, Macmillan, London, 1975.Google Scholar

64 See G. Rimlinger (1966), op. cit., pp. 567, 569 and 570.

65 Briggs, A., ‘The History of Changing Approaches to Social Welfare’ in Martin, E. W. (ed.), Comparative Development in Social Welfare, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1972, p. 9.Google Scholar

66 Briggs, A., ‘The Welfare State in Historical Perspective’, in Zald, M. (ed.), Social Welfare Institutions, John Wiley, New York, 1965, p. 39Google Scholar (our emphasis).

67 Abel-Smith, B., Value for Money in Health Services, Heinemann, London, 1976, esp. Chs. 1Google Scholar, 2, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

68 P. Kaim-Caudle, op. cit., p. 291.

69 Ibid., p. 290.

70 See for example, G. Stedman Jones, op, cit.; see also what is still regarded as a classic discussion of the a priori/empiricist debate in Durkheim, E., Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1915Google Scholar, Introduction, Parts I and II.

71 The notion of ‘grounded theory’ stresses the avoidance of forcing data into pre-conceived theoretical constructs and places instead an emphasis on theories derived from data gathered and using the categories that participants themselves use to order their experiences. See Glaser, B. and Strauss, A., The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.Google Scholar

72 See H. Wilensky, op. cit, Ch. 2 and p. 86.

73 See J. Carrier and I. Kendall, op. cit., pp. 220–4.

74 This term is used by B. Glaser and A. Strauss, op. cit.

75 A. Gouldner in particular has noted these constraints in his chapter ‘The Shift towards the Welfare State’, op. cit., Ch. 9.

76 Glennerster, H., Social Service Budgets and Social Policy, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1976, pp. 7/8.Google Scholar The effect of comparative study may be to lead one to question the uniqueness of the experience of one's own country. Alternatively, Glennerster found that the use of comparisons called into question what some writers had put forward as a generally applicable set of principles. He notes that ‘a comparative approach is parti cularly revealing precisely because it highlights the way in which different background variables have affected the way ideas have been implemented’. (Ibid., p. 8.)

77 By contrast the Marxist approach is often one of presenting the ‘definitive account’. In the context of capitalist societies the result might be a radical critique but in another social context Marxist ideas may well become both the conventional wisdom and the dominant ideology.

78 We would define social administration as the study of welfare activities.

79 R. M. Titmuss (1974), op. cit., p. 103.

80 Titmuss, R. M., The Gift Relationship, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1970, pp. 241–2.Google Scholar

81 R. M. Titmuss (1974), op. cit., p. 134.

82 The notion of a range of ‘plausible accounts’, by reducing the scientific status of social science writing, makes us aware of the plausibility of other writing about welfare. Perhaps most obviously if we are interested in participants’ knowledge and understanding their accounts take on a new significance. See, for example, Aronovitch, B., Give It Time, André Deutsch, London, 1974.Google Scholar

83 R. M. Titmuss (1974), op. cit., p. 136.