Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T22:23:11.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theorising the Welfare State: The Case of Unemployment Insurance in Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Richard Disney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines state provision of unemployment insurance (UI) in Britain. State intervention in insurance is normally perceived as stemming from the failure of private markets to meet socially expressed needs, but an examination of the historical development of state provision, and present practice, of UI in Britain suggest that this was not a central concern of state intervention. It is argued that an alternative explanation must stem from a theoretical model of the actions of the state, and various models primarily within a Marxist framework are described. The problems inherent in approaches which emphasize the relation between the needs of capitalist accumulation and the actions of the state are discussed, and it is argued that a more realistic account must take note of the heterogenous nature of the labour market in capitalist society and how, in such a society, the ideology which underpins social welfare policy is constructed. The article briefly examines recent political developments and argues that proposals for reform of UI must be located within a broader political strategy for economic and political transformation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 33 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alvater, E. (1978), ‘Some problems of state intervention’, in Holloway, and Picciotto, (1978), pp. 40–2.Google Scholar
Atkinson, A. B. and Flemming, J. S. (1978), ‘Unemployment, social security and incentives’, Midland Bank Review, (Autumn), 6–16.Google Scholar
Beveridge, W. H. (1930), Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (New Edition), Longmans, London.Google Scholar
Blaustein, S. J. and Craig, I. (1977), An International Review of Unemployment Insurance Schemes, W. E. Upjohn Institute, Michigan.Google Scholar
Block, F. (1977), ‘The ruling class does not rule’. Socialist Review, 7 (May–June), 6–28.Google Scholar
Briggs, E. and Deacon, A. (1973), ‘The creation of the Unemployment Assistance Board’, Policy and Politics, 2:4 (09), 44–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, E. M. (1941), British Unemployment Programs 1920–1938, Committee on Social Security, Social Science Research Council, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Corrigan, P. (ed.) (1980), Capitalism, State Formation and Marxist Theory, Quartet, London.Google Scholar
Creedy, J. (1980), ‘Pension schemes and the limits to redistribution: some policy alternatives’, in Collard, D. A.et al. (eds), The Limits to Redistribution, Proceedings of the Colston Research Society no. 31, Wright & Sons, pp. 103–22.Google Scholar
Department of Employment Gazette (1980), 88 (January), HMSO, London.Google Scholar
Disney, R. (1979), ‘Recurrent spells and the concentration of unemployment in Great Britain’, Economic Journal, 89 (03), 109–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Disney, R. (1981), ‘Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain’, in Creedy, J. (ed.), The Economics of Unemployment in Britain, Butterworths, London, pp. 150–85.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. (1979), Contested Terrain, Heinemann, London.Google Scholar
George, V. and Wilding, P. (1976), Ideology and Social Welfare, RKP, London.Google Scholar
Gilbert, B. B. (1965), ‘The British National Insurance Act of 1911 and the commercial insurance lobby’, Journal of British Studies, 4, 127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, B. B. (1966), The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain, Michael Joseph, London.Google Scholar
Gosden, P. H. J. H. (1973), Self-Help: Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Batsford, London.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, N. (1979), Class, Capital and Social Policy, Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gough, I. (1979), The Political Economy of the Welfare State, Macmillan, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, J. (1978), ‘The state apparatus and social reproduction: elements of a theory of the bourgeois state’, in Holloway and Picciotto (1978), pp. 57–107.Google Scholar
Holloway, J. (1979), ‘The state and everyday struggle’, mimeo, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Holloway, J. and Picciotto, S. (eds) (1978), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate, Edward Arnold, London.Google Scholar
Marshall, T. H. (1963), Sociology at the Crossroads, Heinemann, London.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1976), Capital, Volume 1, Penguin, London.Google Scholar
Meade, J. E.et al. (1978), The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation, George Allen & Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Mesher, I. (1976), Compensation for Unemployment, Sweet and Maxwell, London.Google Scholar
Miliband, R. (1969), The State in Capitalist Society, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London.Google Scholar
Mishra, R. (1977), Society and Social Policy, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, N. (1973), Political Power and Social Classes, NLB, London.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, N. (1975), Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, NLB, London.Google Scholar
Prest, A. R. (1979), ‘The structure and reform of direct taxation’, Economic Journal, 89 (06), 243–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Room, G. (1979), The Sociology of Welfare, Martin Robertson, Oxford.Google Scholar
Rowthorn, R. (1981), ‘The politics of the alternative economic strategy’, Marxism Today, 01, 4–10.Google Scholar
Showler, B. and Sinfield, A. (eds) (1980), The Workless State, Martin Robertson, Oxford.Google Scholar
Swartz, D. (1981), ‘The eclipse of politics: the alternative economic strategy as a political strategy’, Capital and Class, Spring, 102–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P. (1976), ‘Idealism in the study of social policy’, revised version: ‘The boring crisis of social administration’, Times Higher Educational Supplement, 17 February 1978.Google Scholar
Taylor-Gooby, P. (1981), ‘The state, class ideology and social policy’, Journal of Social Policy, 10:4, 433–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, H. A. (1962), Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, George Allen & Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Whiteside, N. (1980), ‘Welfare legislation and the unions during the first world war’, Historical Journal, 23:4, 857–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, T. (1980), ‘Welfare economics and the welfare state’, Swedish Journal of Political Science, 5, 367–73.Google Scholar
Yeo, S. (1979), ‘Working-class association, private capital, welfare and the state in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in Parry, N., Rustin, M. and Satyamurti, C. (eds), Social Work and the State, Edward Arnold, London, pp. 48–71.Google Scholar