The Cold War and Welfare State Development in Industrialized Countries

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-899029-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Since the Second World War, the Cold War and the welfare state have been among the largest historical shifts. This book examines the relationship between the two to uncover the impact of international context on social policy developments.

The Cold War and Welfare State Development in Industrialized Countries offers a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective on whether, how, and to what extent the Cold War influenced the development of the welfare state in European and North American countries between 1947 and 1989. Linking the two master-narratives of the postwar era, it provides a systematic analysis of possible causal mechanisms linking the Cold War and the welfare state. It offers an innovative perspective on how the international context framed and affected, first, the massive expansion of social security and welfare programs during the so-called Golden Age of the welfare state, and second, during the period of welfare state crisis and re-structuring since the late 1970s. It considers the systemic competition between capitalism and communism and its influence on welfare state development through five main causal mechanisms.

In so doing, it scrutinizes the Cold War's impact on the same set of policies across a broad selection of comparable industrialized countries and demonstrates both theoretically and empirically that national security and social security developed together during the Cold War era.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Petersen, Klaus

Obinger, Herbert

Mioni, Michele

Schmitt, Carina

Über Autor(innen)

Klaus Petersen is Professor of Welfare State History at the Danish Center for Welfare Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His main research area is Danish and Nordic welfare state history. He is the co-editor of Warfare and Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2018), has edited more than 25 books, and been published widely in journals such as Journal of European Social Policy, Social Science History, American Sociologist, and the British Journal of Political Science. He is currently co-leading a large research project on the Family Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

Herbert Obinger is Professor of Comparative Public Policy and Social Policy at the Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), University of Bremen. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press, 2021), Warfare and Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-author of The Political Economy of Privatization in Rich Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2016). He has published more than fifty peer-reviewed articles in journals such as World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Social Policy & Administration, Politics & Society, Journal of Public Policy, Governance, Journal of European Social Policy, European Journal of Political Research, and the British Journal of Political Science.

Michele Mioni is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice, where he is principal investigator for the project The European Social Model and teaches contemporary history. He is a contemporary historian whose primary research interests concern the history of social policies and the history of labour. His current lines of research scrutinize social policy in the (post-)colonial contexts during the Cold War and the relationship between social policy and European integration. He is also interested in the history of trade unions, and notably how reformist unionists dealt with social security, mutualism and corporatism in Italy and France.

Carina Schmitt is Professor of Policy Analysis at the University of Bamberg in Germany. Her research centres on comparative welfare state research focusing on the legacy of colonialism, exploring both the origins and impacts of social protection, as well as the effects of war on social policies. She is editor of From Colonialism to International Aid: Understanding the Role of External Actors in Social Protection in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has published peer-reviewed books and articles in journals such as World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, and European Journal of Political Research.