European Foundations of the Welfare State

While social welfare programs, often inspired by international organizations, are spreading throughout the world, the more far-reaching notion of governmental responsibility for the basic well-being of all members of a political society is not, although it remains a feature of Europe and the former British Commonwealth. The welfare state in the European sense is not simply an administrative arrangement of various measures of social protection but a political project embedded in distinct cultural traditions. This book aims to review the intellectual foundations which underpinned the road towards the European welfare state, to formulate some basic concepts for its understanding, and to highlight how the underlying structural and philosophical conditions in continental Europe differed from those in the English-speaking world. Further, it examines the new challenges of open frontiers, global competition, and aging, if not declining population, which the welfare state is now confronting.This is the first accessible account in English of the European idea of the welfare state.