Reconstructing Nation, State and Welfare: The Transformation of Welfare States

Abstract

Beginning with the question of ‘what is state welfare?’, this article looks at the conceptual problems encountered in defining this category. Social science literature usually avoids discussion of this point, instead preferring to adopt abstract definitions or rely on causal empiricism. However, neither of these tactics stand the test of comparative synchronic or diachronic analysis. As an alternative approach, a conceptual route to investigating the components of institutional entities are sometimes called ‘assemblies’, ‘constellations’, ‘ensembles’ or ‘articulated formations’. The author analyses this approach, which posits that state welfare is better understood as a formation in which forms of welfare, the state and the nation are articulated. Positioning the nation as the central building block of this formation, the article shows that it is possible for state welfare to play a significant role in the direction and management of peoples and populations, which in turn allows us to understand how different elements are ‘transformed’ when state welfare is in flux.

The article also discusses approaches to defining state welfare that are deemed less helpful, in that they often neglect less conventional aspects that may also be included in contemporary definitions of the welfare state (the promotion of well-being, transport, or policing, criminalisation and the law, for example). It is suggested that thinking about welfare states as formations that express components relating to welfare, the state and the nation has the potential to illuminate the issue of ‘transformation’. Welfare states are shown to be ideas or images that come to be realised in complicated combinations of institutions, policies and practices. The lack of coherence and singularity of objects of analysis that make up contemporary welfare states mean that tracking change is likely to demand more than a singular indicator, strengthening arguments for a more fine-grained approach to the study of welfare states to reflect multiple processes of transformation. Such a view makes visible the different, and potentially divergent, dynamics of transformation that are at stake in the reconstruction of welfare states.