A Future for Welfare

One of the outcomes of the Second World War was a political bargain around the issue of welfare and capitalism.  For a group of countries in Western Europe and the Anglo-speaking world (including the US) it was accepted that whilst economies would remain largely capitalists, the states would provide varying degrees of welfare support.  This bargain was first explicitly questioned by the New Right in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet despite the neo-conservative critique of welfare, the combination of voters, political organisation and institutional inertia meant that social spending was rarely reduced.  A second crisis of welfare in the 1990s saw reforms in a number of North European countries particularly around the issue of pensions.  Yet the general trend in public spending was upwards.  New Labour – in a model followed by a number of other countries – in many ways turned around the neo-liberal model by using deregulated markets and credit to fund further welfare expansion.  However the financial crisis of 2008 seemed to derail this new form of social democracy and led to many countries attempting to radically cut social spending.  The question is whether this latest crisis of welfare has undermined a ‘social Europe’ and the postwar bargain.  The paper attempts to show the governments are continuing to have trouble controlling spending but are clearly re-focussing the goal of welfare away from a social democratic concern with justice to a conservative concern with individualism and security.

Lunch will be provided.