Authors: Bogdanor
Summary: In approximately 1,000 words, this entry defines the welfare state, discusses its historical origins, offers interpretations of the welfare state's growth, and analyzes the effects of these developments on the structure and functions of the state itself.
The welfare state is a government system that protects and promotes the basic well-being of its citizens through legislation. Though the roots of the welfare state may be traced to Bismarck's social legislation in the 1880s, the term itself was first used in English in 1941.
The vast upheavals of the Depression and the Second World War spawned the ideology of the welfare state. During the 1940s and 1950s, academic social scientists, including many from the London School of Economics and Political Science, had a tremendous impact on developing social and welfare policies of the time, as well as on continuing debates over such policies. Universal social insurance and security programs, prompted by Bismarck's examples, spread throughout Europe during this era.
Broadly speaking, the welfare state may be interpreted as a response to two separate yet interrelated developments: the formation of nation-states and mass democracies, and the growth of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution. The entry also discusses a variety of other possible ways to interpret the rise of the welfare state.
The entry concludes by exploring transformations of the functions, structures and legitimacy of the nation-state in response to the development of the welfare state and welfare-state ideology.