Welfare Through Land Politics: A Historic-Comparative Approach

The historical origins of welfare states are traditionally thought about in terms of social security insuring labor, ignoring the much more important land-based welfare institutions in the predominantly rural and agricultural economies. Land-based welfare includes farm-land access and taxation, agricultural and mortgage credits and insurances, infrastructural and educational policies disproportionately benefitting rural areas and protectionist tariff policies. Building on new historical party manifesto data since 1890, we first show that labor- and land-based welfare policies have historically stood in a trade-off relationship: the more parties favored land-based welfare, the earlier land policy legislation and the larger agrarian economies, the less parties favored labor-based welfare, the later social security legislation and the larger the industrial workforce. Explaining the extent of land-based welfare turns classical welfare explanations upside down: higher GDP, stronger labor parties, and cross-class coalitions are negatively associated with land-based welfare. Extending Prasad’s “Land of the too much” beyond the US-case, we suggest against welfare-laggard views that late developers or liberal market economies designed welfare states around land-based institutions. Through the importance of homeownership policies and the rural comeback in politics, these land-based welfare state have a continuous presence next to labor-based welfare institutions.