Within political sociology, the welfare state has received a good deal of attention. This research is influenced by many traditions and, thus, comes in a number of different flavors. There are three main theories of welfare state expansion: 1) the “logic of industrialism”, 2) state-centric theories, and 3) theories of political class struggle. Each of these schools has much to offer to our understanding by addressing factors and processes that the other two ignore. Historically, welfare state research has focused primarily on the effects of national characteristics and domestic circumstances on transfer expenditure in the advanced industrial countries, primarily members of the OECD. Recently, researchers have begun to expand beyond this limited scope to address a more broadly defined welfare state in an internationally connected system of developed and developing countries. This expansion of welfare state research has also opened the door to feminist critiques and analyses of the welfare state. In addition, welfare state researchers, especially more recently, have been attempting to explain both the expansion of welfare states from WWII to the 1970’s and 1980’s as well as its retrenchment following that period.

As noted above, there are three main schools of thought in the welfare state literature. The “logic of industrialism” school focuses on the relationship between social programs and industrial development (Pampel and Williamson; Wilensky). This approach is primarily demand-driven, concentrating on the ways that demographic and socioeconomic expansion creates both the need and capacity for social programs. Work from this school has historically been closely aligned with the broader category of modernization theory and thus has been susceptible to many of the same criticisms. For example, logic of industrialism theories tend often treat welfare state development as an almost inevitable evolutionary process. The explanations offered are almost exclusively structural with little attention payed to the roles of specific actors. Logic of industrialism theories are also predominantly synchronic, paying little attention to the historically situated process of social policy development. Researchers from the other two schools address many of these shortcomings.

As the name implies, the state-centric school focuses on the role of the state and governmental actors in welfare development (Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol 1988). State-centric theorists address both agency and structure. On the one hand, this research tradition gives prominence to state bureaucrats acting somewhat autonomously from societal pressures to enact social policy. On the other hand, the school also acknowledges that this agency is restricted by the structural constraints imposed by past state structures and policies. Bringing the State Back In by Evans, Ruschemeyer, and Skocpol provides numerous examples of these two processes. The focus on past structures and policy has lead state-centric researchers to take a diachronic approach, giving real weight to historical process. The vast majority of work in this vein uses comparative historical method. This focus on historical progression also means that state-centric analysis tends toward path dependence. This path dependence, especially in its strong form, tends to deemphasize the causal role of development or the actions of those outside the governmental bureaucracy.

The political class struggle school focuses on the interplay between various class-based groups competing to realize their interests in the political realm (Korpi; Hicks and Swank; Esping-Andersen 1991). This conflict is often between labor and the Left on one side and business and the right on the other. This school is founded on the Marxist tradition focusing on the role of production regimes, capital, and the working class. More recent versions of these theories, including “power resources” and “power constellations”, break out of strict Marxism to provide a more nuanced analysis of the processes by which the working class mobilizes and affects policy change.

Much previous work, especially quantitative analyses, maintained a relatively one-dimensional view of the welfare state, focusing almost exclusively on transfer payments. This focus was partially theoretical and partially practical. Theoretically, a number of researchers, most notably Wilensky, have made the case that social programs such as education are not the same as social insurance either because they address different goals or follow different dynamics. Practically, obtaining accurate nation-level data is often problematic. The ILO provided a social security benefits measure that was seen as perhaps the most reliable of the available measures. This measure was primarily a measure of transfers.

This one-dimensional approach has changed significantly following the work of Esping-Andersen (1991). Esping-Anderson provides an analysis of welfare regimes that cluster into three types, or “worlds”: liberal democracies, conservative-corporatist democracies, and social democracies based on their approaches to social policy. Conservative-coroporatist regimes take a strong male-breadwinner/family approach to social policy and therefore favor direct transfers to families. Social democracies take a more individualist perspective and therefore offer extensive systems of publicly provided services. Social democracies also tend to use citizenship as a basis for elligibility, whereas liberal and conservative regimes are more worker oriented. Liberal democracies, the least generous of the three, lean toward means-tested systems when they provide them at all. Esping-Andersen’s work provides a more holistic understanding of welfare state development that has had a profound effect on the way welfare state research has been conducted since its introduction.

Feminist research on the welfare state has also added a good deal to our understanding of development and change in social policy (Orloff, “Gender in the Welfare State”). In particular, this work has focused attention on the role of women’s mobilization. For example, Skocpol (“Protecting Soldiers and Mothers”) provides an analysis of the development of the U.S. New Deal that helps to explain the at least one aspect of U.S. exceptionalism. She describes early U.S. social policy as creating a “maternalist” welfare state focused on the needs of mothers and children rather than the more “paternalist” regimes of Europe that provide for families through a male breadwinner. Skocpol and Koven & Michel note the important role that women play not only in pushing for social policy but in designing and administering those social programs.

Recent welfare state work has also moved beyond national characteristics and domestic politics to address the increasing international connectedness of nations in the world. The “globalization hypothesis” generally argues for the decreasing signicance of the nation-state and is the major focus of much of research on welfare state retrenchment. Globalization researchers have argued that this interconnectedness has forced nations to abandon Keynsian policies and retrench their social programs. There is little controversy concerning the effect the global financial crisis of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s had on the economic circumstances of nations around the world. The pervasiveness of this crisis is proof enough of its ties to the interconectedness of nations. Beyond that, there are a number of theories for why international economic relations and trade openness in particular might have positive effects on welfare programs. Work in this vein has been wide-ranging looking at influences of foreign direct investment, trade-openness (Cameron; Katzenstein), and even world culture (Thomas and Lauderdale 1988).

The results of this globalization and retrenchment work have been somewhat inconclusive. Neoliberals charge that trade openness decreases the power of the state to set wages because unregulated capital will seek out countries with the lowest labor costs. But this explanation turns out to be implausible because it predicts that the most open countries, those of northern Europe, would also be the most retrenched, which is not the case. Other researchers exploring international connectedness have found positive effects for the welfare state. Cameron (1979) and Katzenstein (1984, 1985) both look at the effects of trade openness on welfare state development and find that openness increases welfare state spending. Increased economic openness leads to increased vulnerability to external fluctuations which provides an incentive for an expansion of the social safety net.

Given these many disparate threads of research, I believe the most pressing issue in sociological studies of the welfare state is the need for synthesis. Several researchers are already moving in this direction (Swank; Huber and Stephens 2001). Huber and Stephens (2001) provides a good example of this new synthetic approach. Their work synthesizes theory from all three schools as well as feminist theory, trade openness and the multidimensional approach of Esping-Andersen. They a mixed methodology including longitudinal regression analysis and comparative historical case studies to explain both the expansion and retrenchment of the welfare state. Their work finds support for an interplay between aspects of all three theoretical schools. For example, their research shows that a “policy ratchet” effect does play a role in welfare state development but that this effect can be mitigated by long-term political incumbency. In fact, in the final analysis, Huber and Stephens find that political incumbency is the primary determinant of welfare state development and change.