Ripples from the First Wave: The Monarchical Origins of the Welfare State

Abstract

Before the welfare state, people were protected from disabilities resulting from illness, old age, and other infirmities by care work provided within the family. When the state assumes responsibility for care-work tasks, in effect it assumes parental roles, thereby becoming a form of familial government in which the public provision of goods and services is analogous to care work provided in the family. My research pushes back the origins of the state's obligation to care for people to a preindustrial form of government, hereditary monarchies-what Max Weber termed patrimonialism. It explicates how monarchs were cast as the parents of the people, thereby constituting kingship as a care work regime that assigned to political rulers parental responsibility for the welfare of the people. Using historical and quantitative analysis, I establish that retaining the legitimacy of monarchies as the first form of familial government in the course of Western European democratizing makes it more credible to the public and to political elites to accept the welfare state as the second form of familial government. That, in turn, promotes a more robust public sector supportive of social provision. The results reformulate conceptions of the contemporary welfare state and its developmental legacies.

Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type

“…. for a King is trewly Parens Patria, the politique father of his people,” thought James I (quoted in McDonagh, 2015, p. 993). Subjects were exhorted to follow the king or queen for the same reason that they were expected to obey their own father or mother, their grandparents, and communal leaders.…”

“…In the modern era, Menaldo (2012) argues that monarchies are less prone to instability than other forms of government. The influence of monarchy resonates even in countries where hereditary executives no longer rule or no longer exist (McDonagh, 2015). Since monarchy is the usual precursor to democracy and non-monarchic varieties of autocracy it is also central to our understanding of regime-change.…”

What We Talk about When We Talk about Poverty: Culture and Welfare State Development in Britain, Denmark and France

“…The 'power resources' approach examines the political origins, for instance by exploring the role of trade unions and left-leaning parties (Esping-Andersen 1990;Huber and Stephens 2001;Korpi 1983). The institutional origins relate to electoral institutions and associated political co-ordination (Cusack, Iversen and Soskice 2007;Flora and Heidenheimer 1981, 47;Martin and Swank 2012;McDonagh 2015). Lastly, studies stress religious influences on welfare development, such as church/state struggles over state building, the crucial role of Christian democratic parties in continental welfare states and doctrinal differences in religious sects (Kahl 2005;Lipset and Rokkan 1967;Van Kersbergen and Manow 2009).…”

Gender and the American State

“…Such a state construction historically provided points of access to political rule for women and those points of access are obliterated when the family is theorized as cut off from the state. In this account, retaining a country's patrimonial legacy (its monarchy) rather than annihilating it by means of a violent revolution in the course of Western European firstwave democratization has long-term implications, both for the continued access of women to political rule and for the development of the contemporary welfare state (McDonagh 2015). In this formulation, therefore, gender via the institution of the family becomes a variable that defines the most fundamental premises of the state-that shapes the state in ways that makes that institution analogous to the family in terms of the responsibilities of the rulers to provide care work to those in need.…”