Social Policy by Other Means: Alternatives to State Welfare for Redistribution and Insurance – Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Life can be “poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes). To insure their citizens against the hardships of life, Western European governments have since the 1880s introduced social policies such as health insurance or pensions that constitute the core of what we now understand as the modern welfare state. The strong focus on these particular policies has served comparative welfare state research well in analyzing the reduction of life-risks in advanced democracies over the last century. Yet, increasingly, this focus is too narrow. Especially outside the OECD, the old approach falls short. Often, the nation state is not even the main provider of social security. What is more, the political cleavages and mechanisms shaping welfare policies in non-OECD countries are very distinct. Urban-rural and ethnic conflicts tend to play a much larger role for instance than the traditional capital-labor relationship. Depending on the economic and political structure, basic health care or agricultural policies matter more than, say, pension reform. In a similar way, new ways of ensuring equity and risk protection are gaining ground in industrialized countries as well. Policies like consumer protection and the integration of immigrants have at first sight little to do with classic welfare state instruments. What are the political dynamics of such policies and how do they relate to more traditional redistributive and safety net measures? We invite papers that analyze ‘social policies by other means’ in both OECD and non-OECD countries. We thereby aim at a dialogue between traditional comparative welfare state research and other sub-disciplines, theories, historical and geographical lenses.