Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. "The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State". International Journal of Sociology, Vol.20, No.3 (1990): 92-123.

Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. "The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State". International Journal of Sociology, Vol.20, No.3 (1990): 92-123.

• Since the creation of welfare states in the end of the 19th Century, the two primary questions driving researchers have been the effect of welfare states on class structures and capitalism, and the historical development of the welfare state. The relationship between capitalism the welfarism remains critical to contemporary debates over the appropriate role of the state and the market in guaranteeing the best access to social services (92-93).
• The three main theories have been established to explain the development and function of welfare states: system theory, also called structural theory; institutional theory; and class mobilization theory.
• Structural theory focuses on the importance of cross-national trends in promoting the development of the welfare state. In this model, the degradation of traditional social structures in family, church, and local community caused by industrialization resulted in the teleological need for a welfare state to provide social services which had previously been provided by those traditional institutions (96).
• This industrialism model for the welfare state make some logical sense and also explains the rise of a modern centralized bureaucracy to manage these resources, but does not explain why welfare systems only appeared maybe a century after traditional structures had been eroded through industrialization (97).
• Marxist analysis has also provided its own take on structural theory. According to this perspective, the capitalist state created welfare states to keep the working class subdued. This argument, however, cannot explain the development of welfare states in non-capitalist countries (97-98).
• Institutional theory argues that welfare states are constructed by rational actors seeking to create the social conditions needed for successful markets. In this model, democracies feature groups who demand protection, in the form of tariffs or social welfare, from market forces, and can demand these changes through elections (98-99).
• Some scholars argue that welfare states, for this reason, are more likely to emerge in states which depend heavily on international trade and markets, because these states will have the most social capital to lose from market fluctuations (98).
• The major issue with institutional theory is that it does not account for the development of welfare states in non-democratic countries. The first welfare states developed under authoritarian systems in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France, with democracies only developing welfare states later (99).
• Class mobilization theory argues that social classes, rather than individuals, are the main component of action in democracies, and that the interests of the lower classes and salaried workers force the state to create welfare programs because they exert political power in society (99-100).
• This model both fails to explain the creation of welfare states in non-democratic and non-capitalist systems, and cannot explain how the internally divided class of wage laborers became internally coherent enough to demand universal welfare states (100-101).
• The author defines the welfare state as a state system of social services which decommodifies labor, treating people as worthwhile humans rather than labor potential; creates new social stratification separate from classes; and existing alongside with the market and traditional structures, such as family (105).
• This is the definition of an ideal welfare state, the most 'welfare state-y'. There are a number of existing welfare states which do not demonstrate this characteristics, and some systems have more welfare than others (106). Moreover, different regimes exist, and all three factors must be taken into account (114).
• Three dominant models of the welfare state exist, each focusing on different aspects of welfare statism. The Liberal welfare state, adopted by most Anglo-Saxon countries, focuses on minimum social benefits in the form of stigmatized poor relief, most social services are expected to come from the private sector. The Conservative welfare state focuses on social status and family, expecting traditional bodies to provide most social services, and having the state provide for individuals based on the amount of taxes they contributed while working. The Social Democratic welfare state, based in the Nordic countries, focuses on universal benefits for individuals who are decommodified (111-112).
• Different systems of distributing social security are the key factor in distinguishing between different types of welfare state. Liberal states tend to depend on minimal poor relief to incentivize return to the market, Conservative states tend to use national pension systems so that higher earners receive more benefits. Social Democratic states tend to provide generous services from national funds regardless of social status (108-109).
• There are a number of different factors which determine whether welfare regimes will form and what shape they will take. Particularly salient causes are the organization and centralization of labor unions, the political relationship between industrial labor and rural economies, and the influence of past reforms on the current welfare system (118).
• The influence of the current welfare state structure on its future development is clearest in the formation of opposition to welfare states. The restriction of welfare benefits in Liberal welfare regimes to the poor and unemployed has limited support for welfare states to a politically marginal group, making opposition more intense compared to larger welfare states, where more people support welfare because more people benefit from it (119).