2011 Scientific Advisory Board

10mins in length

Modernisation theory of the welfare state is a functionalist explanation of the welfare state; that's what brought it about.

Olaf clarifies Durkheim:

• organic solidarity is if people are tied together by virtue of their function
• mechanical solidarity is if people are not tied together by need for exchange, but if they are not functionally differentiated, but have a sense of belonging.

The difference between market and state/association interventions could be construed as

• regulatory policy
• compensating (Olaf), or distributive/allocative policy

Florian brings up the question of how the two big world wars affected the extension of the welfare state

Consider whether this could be a paragraph in my introduction:

• how to define the welfare state? Numerator (spending?, regulatory?, wellbeing? outcomes) vs. denominator (GDP?)
• maybe, this is in fact a futile exercise, and the only thing that makes sense is to look at outcomes and the distribution of outcomes, and to wonder whichever instrument can serve to work on that.