Drawing on recent work and data on social protection in the developing world, this essay evaluates the current state of the art and suggests several important new lines of research. We first examine the historical origin and evolution of social protection systems in developing countries, arguing that insufficient attention has been paid to the authoritarian roots of developing nations' social policy. As a preliminary effort to remedy this shortcoming in the literature, we offer a political logic for the observed variation in the character of institutions of social policy established by nondemocratic regimes. Next, we explore recent research examining linkages between models of economic development and welfare regimes in developing countries. Finally, we turn to the study of the political determinants of the social policy reforms that occurred in the final decades of the twentieth century, arguing that variation in reform across policy areas has been more complex than is generally appreciated in the literature. To explain this variation, we develop a theory that identifies the political coalitions supporting different policy outcomes.

When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers for various employment‐related risks in the areas of unemployment insurance, accident insurance, and early retirement? This paper challenges the dominant explanations of welfare state development premised on the assumption of business opposition to social insurance. It examines the conditions under which firms support the introduction of a new social policy and specifies the most important variables explaining the variation in the social policy preferences of employers. The model is tested in three episodes of social policy development in Germany, relying on a collection of archival sources and policy documents submitted by business associations to bureaucratic and parliamentary commissions.

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This article examines the adoption of income taxes in Western economies since the 19th century. We identify two empirical regularities that challenge predictions of existing models of taxation and redistribution: While countries with low levels of electoral enfranchisement and high levels of landholding inequality adopt the income tax first, countries with more extensive electoral rules lag behind in adopting these new forms of taxation. We propose an explanation of income tax adoption that accounts for these empirical regularities. We discuss the most important economic consideration of politicians linked to owners of different factors, namely, the shift of the tax burden between sectors, and examine how preexisting electoral rules affect these political calculations. The article provides both a cross-national test of this argument and a microhistorical test that examines the economic and political determinants of support for the adoption of the income tax in 1842 in Britain.

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