Liberalism and the welfare state : economists and arguments for the welfare state

265 Pages·2017·1.399 MB·English

by  Roger E. Backhouse, Bradley W. Bateman, Tamotsu Nishizawa, Dieter Plehwe

Liberalism and the Welfare State

Liberalism and
the Welfare State
Economists and argumEnts
for thE WElfarE statE
Edited by
RogeR e. Backhouse
BRadley W. Bateman
tamotsu nishizaWa
dieteR PlehWe
3
3
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
PART I Varieties of Liberalism and the Early Welfare
State: United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan
1 Liberalism and the Welfare State in Britain,
1890– 1945 25
Roger E. Backhouse, Bradley W. Bateman,
and Tamotsu Nishizawa
2 Liberal Economists and the British Welfare
State: From Beveridge to the New Right 39
George Peden
3 Ordoliberalism, the Social- Market Economy,
and Keynesianism in Germany, 1945– 1974 57
Harald Hagemann
4 From New Liberalism to Neoliberalism: Japanese
Economists and the Welfare State before
the 1980s 75
Tamotsu Nishizawa and Yukihiro Ikeda
PART II Neoliberalism and the Changing
Understanding of the Welfare State
5 Between Business and Academia in Postwar
Britain: Three Advocates of Neoliberalism at
the Heart of the British Business Community 101
Neil Rollings
6 Neoliberalism, New Labour, and
the Welfare State 118
Matt Beech
7 The Initiative for a New Social-M arket Economy
and the Transformation of the German Welfare
Regime after Unification 131
Daniel Kinderman
8 Neoliberalism and Market- Disciplining Policy
in the Koizumi Reform in Japan 152
Juro Teranishi
PART III Varieties of Neoliberalism: International
Dimensions
9 National versus Supranational Collective
Goods: The Evolution of Neoliberal
Federalism 171
Fabio Masini
10 Neoliberal Think Tanks and the Crisis 192
Dieter Plehwe
Conclusion 212
Notes 219
Index 229
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vi Contents
Liberalism and the Welfare State

Introduction
I.1. Economic Arguments and the Cases for
and against the Welfare State
The welfare state has not fared well in capitalist countries since the financial
crisis of 2008, coming increasingly under attack. (A timeline showing some
of the main events related to the welfare state in the three countries stud-
ied here is provided in an Appendix to this chapter. It is selective but serves
to give an idea of the timing of changes.) While capitalism and democracy
expanded in tandem for several decades, social citizenship and equality have
now been relegated to the bottom on the list of agenda items in most democra-
cies. Following the financial crisis of 2008 and the use of government funding
to bail out much of the financial sector, the need for austerity has been used
as a justification for reducing the level of welfare provision. When combined
with the doctrine that tax burdens on business must be reduced to stimulate
growth, this has served to further increase inequality1 and to undermine many
of the ideas on which postwar European welfare states rested, generous wel-
fare states being important for taming both inequality and poverty (Brady
2009). Inequality has also increased in developing countries. Although many
developing countries have succeeded in fighting poverty in terms of reduc-
ing the absolute number of poor according to standard definitions, this has
not served to reduce inequality. Global poverty may have fallen, but this is
mainly an effect of the rapid development of the Chinese economy (Ross
2013), which continues to be governed by a one- party Communist regime
with its own peculiar needs of legitimacy, including the fight against pov-
erty. Generalized notions of global competition, fiscal restraint, and the need
to reduce public debt have been construed to legitimize austerity regimes
in Europe (and the United States), undermine established welfare regimes
in poor peripheral countries, and modify or at least preempt the expansion
of welfare regimes in rich countries (Pierson 2001b; Taylor- Gooby 2005;
Orenstein 2008; Blyth 2013; Schäfer and Streeck 2013).