Liberalism and the Welfare State: Economists and Arguments for the Welfare State

The welfare state has, over the past forty years, come under increasing attack from liberals who consider comprehensive welfare provision inimical to liberalism. Yet, many of the architects of the post-World War II welfare states were liberals, many of whom were economists as much as socialists. Liberalism and the Welfare State investigates the thinking of liberal economists about welfare, focusing on Britain, Germany and Japan, each of which had a different tradition of economic thinking and different institutions for welfare provision.This volume explores the early history of welfare thinking from the British New Liberals of the early twentieth century, German Ordoliberals and post-war Japanese Liberal economists. It delves into arguments about neoliberalism under British Conservative and New Labour governments, after German reunification, and under Koizumi in Japan. Given the importance of both international policy collaboration and international networks of neoliberal economists, this volume also explores neoliberal ideas on federalism and the responses of neoliberal think tanks to the global financial crisis.Liberalism and the Welfare State provides a comparative analysis of economists' attitudes to the welfare state. Notwithstanding the differences, in each country support emerged very early on for social minimum standards, but strong disagreements within each country quickly developed. The result was divergence, as the debates shaped different welfare regimes. More recently, the strong impact of efficiency related critiques of welfare regimes has crowded out more nuanced and complex discussions of the past. This volume provides a reminder that neither liberalism nor economic ideas in general are inimical to well-designed welfare provision. The ongoing debate on economics and welfare can be greatly improved by way of stronger consideration of different lineages of both liberal and neoliberal lines of economic thought.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Varieties of Liberalism and the early welfare state: UK, Germany, and Japan 1. Liberalism and the welfare state in Britain, 1880-1945 Roger Backhouse, Bradley Bateman, and Tamotsu Nishizawa 2. New liberalism to the new right: economists and the British welfare state after 1945 George Peden 3. Ordoliberalism, the Social Market Economy, and Keynesianism: Germany after 1945 Harald Hagemann 4. Non-Liberal Capitalism and a Liberal Welfare Regime? Japanese economists and the welfare state before the 1980s Tamotsu Nishizawa and Yukihiro Ikeda Part II. Neoliberalism and the changing understanding of the welfare state 5. Neo-liberalism - from ideas to policy: some preliminary thoughts with particular reference to post-war Britain Neil Rollings 6. New Labour and neoliberalism Matt Beech 7. The Initiative for a New Social Market Economy and the transformation of the German welfare regime after unification? (1990) Daniel Kinderman 8. Neo-liberalism and Market-Disciplining Policy in the Koizumi Reform in Japan Juro Teranishi Part III. Varieties of Neoliberalism: International Dimensions 9. National vs Supranational Collective Goods. The Birth and Death of Neoliberal Pluralism Fabio Masini 10. Neoliberal Think Tanks and the Crisis Dieter Plehwe 11. Concluding Remarks

About the Author :
Roger E. Backhouse is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Birmingham. Bradley W. Bateman is President of Randolph College. Tamotsu Nishizawa is Professor of Economics at Teikyo University. Dieter Plehwe is a Research Fellow at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.

Review :
"This volume sets a new benchmark with its very well-documented investigation into the nature of the interaction between the history of the welfare state and the history of liberalism in all its varieties. It is an original and scholarly account of national cases, deftly orchestrated by the editors to produce a coherent and well-focused picture." -- Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Professor of Political Economy, University of Rome, La Sapienza "Finally setting it straight that liberalism and the welfare state are not at odds with each other at all, but at the very foundations of Western socio-economic reconstruction since at least the 1930s. The editors provide fundamental reading for understanding the origins, history and undermining of the welfare state (and its stubborn resistance to wither away completely). They simultaneously show that many questions remain to be addressed in what is growing into a new field as economic history, political history and intellectual history join forces. This book is a new elementary building block for this history." -- Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University "This book untangles the contributions and criticisms of economists to the welfare state in Britain, Germany, and Japan over the last six decades. Those seeking a field guide to the historical divergences of liberalism and neoliberalism in the twentieth century need look no further. The authors deliver with detail and depth." -- Quinn Slobodian, Department of History, Wellesley College