Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

This page intentionally left blank Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States This book radically revises establi...

Author: Kees van Kersbergen | Philip Manow

121 downloads 1365 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

This page intentionally left blank

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world. In countries with proportional electoral systems, the absence or presence of state–church conflicts decided whether class remained the dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively based on socioeconomic interests (e.g., religion) was introduced into politics, particularly social policy. The political class coalitions in countries with majoritarian systems, in contrast, allowed for the residual-liberal welfare state to emerge, as in the United States or the UK. This book also reconsiders the role of Protestantism. Reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted modern social policy. The Lutheran state churches positively contributed to the introduction of social protection programs. Kees van Kersbergen is a professor of political science at VU University Amsterdam. He served as director of the Centre for Comparative Social Studies until 2007 and has also been professor of political science at the Radboud University (Nijmegen). He is the author of Social Capitalism (1995), which won the Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science. He has published widely in major journals and books, including the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, The Politics of Post-Industrial Welfare States (2006), and Culture and the Welfare State (2008). Philip Manow is a professor of political science at the University of Konstanz. Previously, he was a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, and visiting Fellow at the Centre for ´ European Studies, Harvard, and at the Centre d’Etudes Européennes, Sciences Po, Paris. His work has been published in numerous journals and collections, including European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Comparative Political Studies, The New Politics of the Welfare State (2001), and Federalism and the Welfare State (2008).

Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion, and Politics Editors David C. Leege University of Notre Dame

Kenneth D. Wald University of Florida, Gainesville

The most enduring and illuminating bodies of late-nineteenth-century social theory – by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and others – emphasized the integration of religion, polity, and economy through time and place. Once a staple of classic social theory, however, religion gradually lost the interest of many social scientists during the twentieth century. The recent emergence of phenomena such as Solidarity in Poland; the dissolution of the Soviet empire; various South American, Southern African, and South Asian liberation movements; the Christian Right in the United States; and Al Qaeda have reawakened scholarly interest in religiously based political conflict. At the same time, fundamental questions are once again being asked about the role of religion in stable political regimes, public policies, and constitutional orders. The series Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion, and Politics will produce volumes that study religion and politics by drawing upon classic social theory and more recent social scientific research traditions. Books in the series offer theoretically grounded, comparative, empirical studies that raise “big” questions about a timely subject that has long engaged the best minds in social science. Titles in the series: Joel S. Fetzer and J. Christopher Soper, Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany Jonathan Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State Anthony Gill, The Political Origins of Religious Liberty Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States

Edited by KEES VAN KERSBERGEN VU University Amsterdam

PHILIP MANOW University of Konstanz

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521897914 © Cambridge University Press 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009 ISBN-13

978-0-511-65067-3

eBook (NetLibrary)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-89791-4

Hardback

ISBN-13

978-0-521-72395-4

Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Preface List of Contributors

page vii xi

1 Religion and the Western Welfare State – The Theoretical Context Philip Manow and Kees van Kersbergen 2 Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage Thomas Ertman 3 The Religious Foundations of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe Kimberly J. Morgan 4 Italy: A Christian Democratic or Clientelist Welfare State? Julia Lynch 5 Religion and the Welfare State in the Netherlands Kees van Kersbergen

1 39

56 91 119

6 A Conservative Welfare State Regime without Christian ´ Democracy? The French Etat-Providence, 1880–1960 Philip Manow and Bruno Palier

146

7 Religion and the Consolidation of the Swiss Welfare State, 1848–1945 Herbert Obinger

176

8 The Church as Nation? The Role of Religion in the Development of the Swedish Welfare State Karen M. Anderson

210

v

vi

9 The Religious Factor in U.S. Welfare State Politics Jill Quadagno and Deana Rohlinger

Contents 236

10 Religious Doctrines and Poor Relief: A Different Causal Pathway Sigrun Kahl

267

Index

297

Preface

This book is the result of a joint project that began in 2001. After having collaborated on a paper on the problem of welfare without work in continental Europe (see Hemerijck, Van Kersbergen, and Manow 2000), we began discussing some intriguing and unresolved big issues in welfare state research, particularly the incomplete – and therefore unsatisfactory – manner in which the role of religion in welfare state development had been studied. Although early work on the history of the welfare state had included illuminating analyses of the pro-welfare role (e.g., via democratization) of Protestantism, later work had primarily focused on the positive impact of social Catholicism as politically represented by Christian democracy on the European continent. We started to consider the possibility that it had been an unfortunate omission not to consider the impact of (social) Protestantism on the development of the European and the American welfare state more generally. We took as our example the German case, and we argued that in the beginning the German welfare state seemed to have been a Protestant project. This project was then ‘ursurped’ and expropriated by Social Democracy and social Catholicism, as a result of which the bourgeois Protestant middle class, the initial reform faction, was alienated from the welfare state venture. The Protestant middle class responded, among other things, with the development of a new ‘Sozialreform’ doctrine, ‘Ordoliberalism’. However, Ordoliberalism – despite the label – was not a simple embracing of the liberal doctrine but contained substantial elements of interventionism with a social reform purpose. Ordoliberalism was concerned with social equality, social harmony, and decent living. It vii

viii

Preface

was against state redistributive programs, but not against a ‘caring state’ in the sense of caring for social peace and justice – even with the help of massive economic interventions and corrections of the free market. In other words, the renowned ‘soziale Marktwirtschaft’ could not – as it usually was – be understood as a compromise between Catholic social doctrine as embodied in the Bismarckian welfare state and economic liberalism. Rather, the soziale Marktwirtschaft should be seen as a compromise between Catholic and Protestant social doctrine. Philip Manow elaborated these theses in several articles on Germany (e.g., 2000, 2001, 2004). This discussion and approach, taken as our point of departure, made us more sensitive to the impact of Protestantism on the trajectory of welfare state development in European countries other than Germany. The Protestant influence had often been ignored because Protestantism was usually not in favor of large-scale welfare expansion. But this did not imply that Protestantism had not been important. Especially where historically the sects and Protestant groups had been significant (e.g., Switzerland, Netherlands, the UK), we argued that one could notice a retarding (delaying) influence as well as a much stronger emphasis on individual responsibility and thrift (an aspect already noticed in the early literature; see Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume). But how exactly had this worked in the relevant cases other than Germany? And why and how, as in the case of the Netherlands, could this retarded development be turned into a frontrunner expansion in the period after World War II? Moreover, and perhaps more disturbingly, if the underemphasized role of Protestantism had to be reinvestigated and reevaluated along the lines we suggested, did this not imply that the very mainstream view of welfare state development – the widely supported Social Democratic power resources and welfare regime model – was also in need of revision? We decided to try and bring together researchers in the field working on these and related issues. With the financial and logistical help of the Max Planck-Institut fur ¨ Gesellschaftsforschung (Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Society) in Cologne, we were able to organize two conferences (April/May 2004 and May 2006) to discuss our main conjecture about the role of Protestantism (and religion more generally) in welfare state development and the many other questions and issues that it inspired. We are extremely grateful to the directors of the Max-Planck Institute, Fritz W. Scharpf and Wolfgang Streeck, and later Jens Beckert,

Preface

ix

for their valuable support of our project. The papers and discussions at the first conference were of high value for further developing our own ideas. We then wrote a first version of a theoretical context paper to be used for the first drafts of the chapters that we discussed at the second conference. After this, we had several rounds of revisions in light of the chapters’ findings, making this enterprise a truly collaborative venture. We want to thank the contributors to the volume and other participants in the conferences for their much-needed and appreciated input. Over several years, we have benefited substantially from critical comments and suggestions given at the many opportunities we had to present our work in progress. We want to thank our colleagues at the Center of European Studies (Harvard); the CEVIPOF (Centre de Recherches Politiques de Sciences Po) and the CEPREMAP (Centre pour la Recherche Economique et ses Applications) (Paris); the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Society (Cologne); Korea University (Seoul); the Political Economy seminar at Oxford University; Cambridge University; VU University Amsterdam; Sichuan University (Chengdu); and the universities of Amsterdam, Bern, Munster, Berlin (Humboldt), Konstanz, Zurich, Helsinki, ¨ ¨ and St. Gallen. In particular, we want to express our thanks to Daniele Caramani, Peter Gourevitch, Silja Haussermann, Torben Iversen, Franz¨ Xaver Kaufmann, Hans Keman, Hans-Peter Kriesi, Gerhard Lehmbruch, Andreas Nolke, Phillippe Schmitter, David Soskice, Peter van Rooden, ¨ and Barbara Vis. We also want to thank the University of Konstanz’s Centre of Excellence, “Cultural Foundations of Integration,” and especially its Institute for Advanced Study, which hosted Kees van Kersbergen in 2008, for their generous hospitality and support for this project. The faculty of social sciences and the members of the Department of Political Science at the VU University Amsterdam were so generous and kind to grant Kees van Kersbergen a one-year leave of absence to finish the book manuscript. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees of Cambridge University Press for their thought-provoking comments. Finally, we acknowledge that the volume as a whole and every single chapter benefited greatly from the unusually stimulating comments and helpful suggestions from the editors of the Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion, and Politics, David C. Leege and Kenneth D. Wald. Kees van Kersbergen and Philip Manow

x

Preface

References Hemerijck, Anton, Kees van Kersbergen, and Philip Manow (2000), Welfare without Work? Divergent Experiences of Reform in Germany and the Netherlands, in Stein Kuhnle (ed), The Survival of the European Welfare State, London and New York: Routledge, 106–127. Manow, Philip (2000), ‘Modell Deutschland’ as an Interdenominational Compromise. Center for European Studies, Harvard University. CES Working Paper, Program for the Study of Germany and Europe, No. 003. Cambridge, Mass. Manow, Philip (2001), Ordoliberalismus als okonomische Ordnungstheologie, ¨ Leviathan 29, 2: 179–198. Manow, Philip (2004), The ‘Good, the Bad and the Ugly’: Esping-Andersen’s Welfare State Typology and the Religious Roots of the Western Welfare State. MPIfG working paper 04/3, Max Planck Institut fur ¨ Gesellschaftsforschung, Cologne.

List of Contributors

Karen M. Anderson is associate professor of political science in the Department of Political Science at the Radboud University (Nijmegen). Her research falls within the field of comparative politics, with a focus on the politics of welfare state change, the relationship between welfare states and labor markets, and trade unions as political actors. She is the coeditor (with Ellen M. Immergut and Isabelle Schulze) of The Handbook of West European Pension Politics (2009). She has published in journals, such as Comparative Politics, the Canadian Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Public Policy, and Comparative Political Studies, and in various edited volumes. Thomas Ertman is associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at New York University (NYU) and the director of NYU in Berlin. He is the author of the much-praised Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1997). He is currently working on a sequel, tentatively titled Taming the Leviathan: Building Democratic Nation-States in 19th and 20th Century Western Europe. He has published in World Politics and was (with Jurg ¨ Steiner) editor of a special issue of Acta Politica on consociationalism (2002). Sigrun Kahl is assistant professor of political science at Yale University. Her research interests include comparative welfare states and religion and politics. In particular, she is interested in how religious principles became embedded into the institutions of the modern (welfare) state. She has published on the religious roots of modern poverty policy in the European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie. xi

xii


Julia Lynch is Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Age in the Welfare State: The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers and Children (2006), which was co-winner of the prize for best book in European Politics and Society from the American Political Science Association in 2007. She has published articles in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Qualitative Sociology, and the Journal of Social Policy, among others. Philip Manow is professor of political science in the Department of Politics and Administration at the University of Konstanz. His research interests are in the fields of comparative welfare state research, European integration, comparative political economy, and political corruption. He has published in Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Socio-Economic Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the European Journal of Political Research, among others. Kimberly J. Morgan is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. Her research interests include child care and parental leave, health policy, taxation, and, more broadly, the politics of the welfare state. She has been a postdoctoral Fellow at New York University’s Institute of French Studies, a participant in Yale University’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program, and a visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Investigators Award program and the National Science Foundation. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics, among others. She is the author of Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies (2006). Herbert Obinger is professor at the Center for Social Policy at the University of Bremen. He has published several books on various welfare state topics. He is coeditor (with Stephan Leibfried and Francis G. Castles) of Federalism and the Welfare State: New World and European Experiences (2005) and coeditor (with Francis G. Castles, Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, and Chris Pierson) of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Welfare States (2010). His articles have appeared in West European Politics, Governance, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, the Journal of European


xiii

Social Policy, the Journal of Public Policy, and the Journal of European Public Policy. Bruno Palier is a researcher at Sciences Po CEVIPOF (Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po). Trained in social science, he has a PhD in ´ political science and is a former student of Ecole Normale Supérieure. He is studying welfare reforms in Europe and is coauthor of several books on the welfare state, including (with Claude Martin) Reforming the Bismarckian Welfare Systems (2008) and (with Robert Sykes, Pauline M. Prior, and Jo Campling) Globalization and European Welfare States: Challenges and Change (2001). He has published widely, both in major French journals (Revue Française de Science Politique and Revue Française d’Administration Publique) and in international journals, including the Journal of European Social Policy, Social Policy and Administration, and West European Politics. Jill Quadagno is professor of sociology at Florida State University, where she holds the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair in Social Gerontology. She is past president of the American Sociological Association and the author of more than fifty articles and twelve books on aging and social policy issues. In 1994, she served as senior policy advisor on the President’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform. She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. In 2006, she received the Eliot Friedson Outstanding Publication Award from the section on medical sociology of the American Sociological Association and, in 2008, the Leo G. Reeder Award, also from the Medical Sociology Section. Her most recent book is One Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance (2005). Deana Rohlinger is a research associate at the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy and an assistant professor at Florida State University. Her current research explores how contemporary elder organizations build social capital within communities and affect cultural change. Her articles have appeared in Social Problems, Sociological Theory, American Behavioral Scientist, the Sociological Quarterly, and Sex Roles. Kees van Kersbergen is professor of political science in the Department of Political Science at VU University Amsterdam. His main research interests lie in comparative political sociology, politics, and economy. He is the author of Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and

xiv


the Welfare State (1995) and winner of the Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science. He is coeditor (with Robert H. Lieshout and Grahame Lock) of Expansion and Fragmentation: Internationalization, Political Change and the Transformation of the Nation State (1999). He has published in the European Journal of Political Research, the European Journal of International Relations, Party Politics, Acta Politica, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics, among others.

1 Religion and the Western Welfare State – The Theoretical Context Philip Manow and Kees van Kersbergen

1.1 introduction Most comparativists who study welfare state development agree that religion has played a role in the development of modern social protection systems. The early protagonists of the power resources approach, however, had only stressed the causal impact of Socialist working-class mobilization on modern social policy (see Esping-Andersen and van Kersbergen 1992). In their view, it was the working class and its Socialist organizations that had been the driving force behind the ‘social democratization’ of capitalism via the welfare state. To them, it came as a surprise that both Social Democracy and (social) Catholicism promoted welfare state development. John D. Stephens (1979: 100), one of the leading spokesmen of this approach, put it in prudent terms when he argued that ‘it seemed possible that anti-capitalist aspects of catholic ideology – such as notions of fair wage or prohibitions of usury – as well as the generally positive attitude of the catholic church towards welfare for the poor might encourage government welfare spending.’ Similarly, Schmidt (1980, 1982) asserted that Social Democracy and Christian Democracy were functionally equivalent for welfare state expansion, at least during periods of economic prosperity. Wilensky (1981) argued that the two movements overlapped considerably in ideological terms and that Catholicism indeed constituted an even more important determinant of We are grateful for extremely helpful comments by Thomas Ertman, Bo Kaspersen, David Leege, Kimberly Morgan, Kenneth Wald, and two anonymous referees from Cambridge University Press.

1

2

Manow and van Kersbergen

welfare statism than left power did. Catholic social doctrine called for a correction of the most abhorrent societal effects of the capitalist order. The Catholic principle of subsidiarity, moreover, posited that in the last instance the (nation-) state had a duty to intervene to correct for morally unacceptable market outcomes. At the center of the doctrine was not the type of workers’ social rights and emancipation argument that one finds in Social Democratic ideology, but rather the conviction that people have the Christian obligation to help the poor and that social policy can help protect a stable and fair social order. However, it was not only the moral obligations defined in social doctrine and the preoccupation with the problem of social order that determined the pro-welfare stance of religious political parties. Stephens (1979) also suggested that there were more straightforward political reasons why Christian Democratic parties were supporters of the welfare state. These parties operated in the political center, were seeking the working-class vote, and hoped to cooperate with the Catholic unions. Social policies promised to secure the support of the Catholic working class. Admitting the possibility that other political movements could be attractive to the working class, however, implied that one of the constitutional assumptions of the power resources model had to be relaxed, namely, that the political identity attached to wage labor in capitalism is inherently and of necessity Social Democratic. But, apparently, workers could also be mobilized and organized as Catholics. Of course, much of the apparent contempt for the continental European welfare state in the comparative literature stems from Marxian notions of a ‘false consciousness’ attached to all forms of political mobilization that do not follow class lines. Through an elaboration of the power resources approach in EspingAndersen’s (1990) regime approach and a specification of the association between Christian Democracy and the welfare state (van Kersbergen 1995), the welfare state literature posited that it was the combination of Christian Democracy and Catholic social doctrine that explained why Christian Democratic welfare states were as generous in terms of social spending as the Scandinavian ones, but were not designed to counter market pressures (to decommodify labor) to the same extent as the Social Democratic welfare states. Christian Democracy−cum−Social Catholicism rather produced and preserved a traditional, patriarchic, statusoriented model of society. It is this reading of the history of the western welfare state – which owes much to the power resources and regime approach – that is challenged in this book because it seems, at best, incomplete. First, an exclusive focus

Religion and the Western Welfare State

3

on the labor question and on worker mobilization ignores other highly contentious issues, particularly whether state or society should be responsible for protecting workers, as well as mothers and families, against the vagaries of life. Here, ‘society’ often had to be read as ‘the church.’ The church and the modern nation-state also waged bitter conflicts over which should be the central agent of socialization, as the Dutch ‘schoolstrijd’ or the similar conflicts over education in France exemplify. These conflicts over education exerted a profound impact on early welfare state building as well, as the chapters in this volume demonstrate. Second, taking into account not only the capital–labor conflict due to the industrial revolution, but also the state–church conflict over education and social policy due to the ‘national revolution’ (in Stein Rokkan’s terms, see Flora 1999), is key to our understanding of modern welfare state development because only in those countries where in the last quarter of the 19th century bitter state–church conflicts were waged did parties of religious defense emerge. These parties later became decisive as political actors that mobilized workers and the middle class not along class lines, but along cross-cutting lines of denominational belonging. To explain why parties of religious defense formed in continental Europe but not in Scandinavia or England, then, is – as we argue in this volume – a precondition for a thorough understanding of why the continental welfare state developed so differently from the Nordic or Anglo-Saxon welfare regimes. Third, it is not easy to reconcile the historical facts with the power resources and regime narrative about European welfare state development. For instance, it was Liberalism and anticlericalism rather than Catholicism or Christian Democracy that prevailed in the formative period of the Italian and French welfare states. In fact, in these countries, much of the early social legislation had an obvious anticlerical momentum because the aim was to establish central national state responsibilities in a domain for which the church had always claimed exclusive competency. Yet, despite their obvious Liberal and anticlerical pedigree, countries such as Italy, Belgium, or France are regularly classified as belonging to the Conservative Catholic welfare state regime. Therefore, the dominant reading in the literature, which explains the specific features of the continental welfare regime as a manifestation of Catholic social doctrine, is historically inadequate and blurs the decisive causes for the institutional variance among Western European welfare states. Fourth, an exclusive focus on Catholic social teaching and Christian Democracy also neglects the influence of Protestantism. For instance,

4


a review of historically oriented studies of the social and political role of Protestantism and Protestant political parties led one of us (van Kersbergen 1995: 254, footnote 1) to reject the idea that Protestantism has had any positive contribution to either Christian Democracy or the welfare state. But this conclusion is only warranted in a limited context, that is, when one indeed focuses on the direct impact of political parties on the emergence and development of social policies and at the same time disregards the differentiation between Lutheran and reformed Protestantism. We have come to the conclusion that a universal statement on the irrelevance of Protestantism for welfare state development is not justified. Historical evidence suggests two things. First, reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted the introduction of modern social policy and therefore had a negative impact on welfare state development. Second, the Lutheran state church in Germany or in Scandinavia held no major reservations against the state playing a dominant role in social protection or at least mounted no substantial resistance against the nation-state taking over this new responsibility. It even often supported and welcomed this development. Lutheran state churches therefore positively contributed to the early introduction of social protection programs and to subsequent welfare state development. In our view, the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism and between the major variants of Protestantism are very important for an accurate understanding of the different directions nations took in their social policy development. The Protestant free churches and other reformed currents (Dissenters, Calvinists, Baptists, etc.) held a strongly antiétatist position, whereas Lutheran state churches never questioned the prerogative of the central state in social policy and education. In contrast, when workers in Southern Europe fought for their political and social rights, and when Liberals in these countries tried to found modern nationstates, they always had to fight against the Catholic clergy as well, which had been closely attached to the ruling elite of the ancien régime. Bitter conflicts between the church and the Liberal elite in the new republican nation-states of Southern Europe were the consequence. It is for this reason that Liberal parties in these countries often introduced new social legislation with explicitly anticlerical motives. This clearly speaks against any unqualified statement that Catholic social doctrine was dominant in the development of the southern or continental welfare state. Christian Democratic parties, which to a large extent were the unintended offspring of the church’s political fight against Liberalism, did play an important role, but only much later. Moreover, these parties did not always exactly


5

play the pro-welfare state role that the literature imagines, as in the case of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana that used the welfare state primarily as a clientelist resource in its effort to mobilize voters and as a means of becoming more independent from the official church hierarchy. In sum, according to the power resources and regime analysis, Protestantism has not played a significant role in modern welfare state development, and Catholicism did so only insofar as Christian Democracy possessed a Catholic social doctrine and was successful in organizing and mobilizing Catholic workers. In this volume, we argue that the impact of political Catholicism and reformed Protestantism on welfare state development in the western world was quite different from what the literature so far has suggested. The role of religion in the development of the western welfare state is far more than just a variation of the dominant ‘strength of the worker movement’ theme or a question of doctrine influencing policies. In this introductory chapter, we begin by reviewing how the impact of religion on modern welfare state development was first conceived in modernization theory – in both its ‘bourgeois’ and its Marxist variants (Section 1.2). We then continue by positing our own argument of the role of religion in modern welfare state development within the broader political economy literature, which explains the welfare state as the outcome of different political class coalitions (Section 1.3). This provides the theoretical framework for the studies brought together in this volume. We then briefly summarize these contributions and put them into broader perspective (Section 1.4). We end by pointing to further implications of our argument for comparative welfare state research and for the renewed interest in the role of religion in modern welfare state development (Section 1.5).

1.2 protestantism, secularization, and the welfare state The issue of the relationship between religion and the development of social policy came up in the context of the theory that pointed out modernization as the major driving force of welfare state development. Generally speaking, the origin of the welfare state and its development were largely interpreted as effects of modernization, which encompasses industrialization and democratization. The ‘question’ to which the welfare state was an ‘answer’ concerned the increasing demands for social and economic equality, that is, the demands that completed the Marshallian

6


triad of civil, political, and social rights. In catering to such demands, the scope of state intervention was increased tremendously and the nature of the state was transformed: With the structural transformation of the state, the basis of its legitimacy and its functions also change. The objectives of external strength or security, internal economic freedom, and equality before the law are increasingly replaced by a new raison d’être: the provision of secure social services and transfer payments in a standard and routinized way that is not restricted to emergency assistance. (Flora and Heidenheimer 1981: 23)

The increased demand for socioeconomic security came from a system of industrial capitalism that dislodged masses of people and made them dependent on the whims of the labor market, thus rapidly destroying traditional forms of social protection. Welfare state development was related to the problem of social disorder and disintegration that was created by the increasing structural-functional differentiation of modern societies. Such differentiation ‘involves a loosening of ascriptive bonds and a growing mobility of men, goods, and ideas. It leads to the development of extensive networks of exchange and greater disposable resources. As differentiation advances and breaks down traditional forms of social organization, it changes and exacerbates the problem of integration . . . ’ (Flora and Alber 1981: 38). Modernization caused social disintegration and reinforced the functional requirement of intervention by social organizations and the state. Modernization involved rapidly changing working conditions, the emergence of the free labor contract, and the loss of income security among weak groups in the market and through unemployment. The market did not provide the collective goods needed to cope with these problems and neither did the family. At the same time, large parts of the population were mobilized and organized as a consequence of the increasing concentration of people in factories and cities and the extended means of communication. Mobilization was expressed in public protest and violence or in social and political organizations, thus making the specter of disorder and disintegration directly visible and perceptible for the state elites. In addition, there emerged a pressure generated by the power of organization itself, especially the organization of workers. The causal link between industrialization (or modernization more generally) and welfare state development was not always elaborated well theoretically. The theory that modernization (especially industrialization


7

and its correlates) is the root cause of the welfare state is a functionalist theory that understands the growth of the welfare state in developed nations by and large as the response of the state to the growing needs of its citizens. This theory stresses that industrialization generates demands for social security that can only be met by rational means of state intervention. Similar problems demand similar rational solutions. Consequently, social welfare was seen as a function of industrialization, which created the preconditions for welfare state development in the sense of generating both the need and the resources for intervention. It was technical rationality rather than political conflict that governed this response to the transformation of societies. We believe that modernization theory is right in constructing a causal link between industrialization and the growing need for social policy, with two crucial modifications: 1) the association must be understood in a somewhat different manner, and 2) it is not the only link of causal importance. First, it is not industrialism per se, but the establishment of a full-fledged labor market that links the modern market economy to the welfare state. Second, not only the industrial revolution, but also the national revolution, has been of extreme importance for the advent of modern systems of social protection. We focus on the first aspect, the labor market–welfare state nexus, and inquire into the national revolution as a causal factor in modern welfare state formation in Section 1.3. According to the original theory, a ‘normal’ development would be that modern social policy, usually conceptualized as social insurance, originated as an effect of the dislocation that industrial capitalism caused. The theory pointed to societal problems that emerge from the wide disruption created by the industrial revolution and the advent of capitalism. However, theoretically the reference to ‘industrialism’ was not always well thought out. In our view, the root cause of the demand for modern social policy does not lie in industry but rather in the advance of a full-fledged and self-regulating market on which labor could be bought and sold as a commodity. This, of course, is the single most important characteristic of industrial capitalism as Karl Polanyi (1944 [1957]: 40–41) understood it: . . . once elaborate machines and plant(s) were used for production in a commercial society, the idea of a self-regulating market was bound to take shape. . . . Since elaborate machines are expensive, they do not pay unless large amounts of goods are produced. They can be worked without a loss only if the vent of the goods is reasonably assured and if production need not be interrupted for want of the primary goods necessary to feed the machines. For the merchant, this

8


means that all factors involved must be on sale, that is, they must be available in the needed quantities to anybody who is prepared to pay for them. Unless this condition is fulfilled production with the help of specialized machines is too risky to be undertaken both from the point of view of the merchant who stakes his money and of the community as a whole which comes to depend upon continuous production for incomes, employment, and provisions.

Polanyi’s point was that such conditions did not exist in agricultural society, but had to be brought about. The transformation needed was fundamental and required that the economic market logic took over all other social motives – gain rather than subsistence – and all other social institutions. A market economy could only function in a market society. Highly regulated markets as places for trade and barter, of course, existed everywhere and since long ago, but a self-regulating market system was a new and unique phenomenon. ‘Self-regulating implies that all production is for sale on the market and that all incomes derive from such sales. Accordingly, there are markets for all elements of industry, not only for goods (always including services), but also for labor, land, and money . . . ’ (Polanyi 1944 [1957]: 69). This implied that land, money, and labor were assumed to be produced for sale, that they could be bought and sold; that is, they functioned as commodities. Polanyi stressed that labor was obviously not produced for the sole purpose of selling. It was a fictitious commodity; it was forced to function as if it were a commodity. It was therefore also subject to the forces of supply and demand, embodied in the price mechanism, and nothing (and especially not state intervention) ought to prohibit its functioning as a commodity. But labor could simply not function as a commodity because if it really did so on an unrestrained market, it would destroy society. For the alleged commodity ‘labor power’ cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without also affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man’s labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. (Polanyi 1944 [1957]: 73)

Labor had to be adapted to the demands of the market system. And this implied a complete reorganization of society itself, as a result of which human society became an ‘accessory of the economic system’ (75). The results were disastrous and ‘human society would have been annihilated but for protective countermoves which blunted the action of this self-destructive mechanism’ (idem). Although Polanyi nowhere used the


9

words, his thesis is, of course, that the commodification of labor was necessarily followed by its decommodification. This, then, is the ‘double movement’ that Polanyi identified as being so characteristic of the social history of the nineteenth century: ‘society protected itself against the perils inherent in a self-regulating market system . . . ’ (76). Following Polanyi, it is the timing of the industrial transformation and the development of a self-regulating market for industrial labor (the first movement) that determine whether the countermovement in the form of social protection arises in a country. We can understand 19th-century developments in social legislation in terms of the creation of a self-regulating market, the social dislocation this caused, and the counteraction in the form of social protection this provoked. This is the common experience of all countries in which the self-regulating market did its destructive work. This is Polanyi’s brilliant analysis of the double movement of commodification, also of labor power, under capitalist markets and of decommodification as the inevitable response to this. In fact, Polanyi (1944 [1957]: 147) made a historical-comparative statement to this effect: Victorian England and the Prussia of Bismarck were poles apart and both were very much unlike the France of the Third Republic or the Empire of the Habsburgs. Yet each of them passed through a period of free trade and laissez-faire, followed by a period of antiliberal legislation in regard to public health, factory conditions, municipal trading, social insurance, shipping subsidies, public utilities, trade associations, and so on. It would be easy to produce a regular calendar setting out the years in which analogous changes occurred in the various years. . . .

Polanyi (147–148) provided such a list and subsequently observed how divergent the supporting forces had been . . . in some cases violently reactionary and antisocialist as in Vienna, at other times ‘radical imperialist’ as in Birmingham, or of the purest liberal hue as with the Frenchman, Edouard Herriot, Mayor of Lyons. In Protestant England, Conservative and Liberal cabinets labored intermittently at the completion of factory legislation. In Germany, Roman Catholics and Social Democrats took part in its achievement; in Austria, the Church and its most militant supporters; in France, enemies of the Church and ardent anticlericals were responsible for the enactment of almost identical laws. Thus under the most varied slogans, with very different motivations a multitude of parties and social strata put into effect almost exactly the same measures in a series of countries in respect to a large number of complicated subjects.

Polanyi’s theory of the double movement explains why all nations, irrespective of regime type or the political-ideological leanings of the ruling

10


elites, developed social protection against the social disruption caused by the creation of the capitalist labor market. However, neither the theory of industrialism nor Polanyi’s theory of the double movement appears satisfactory when it comes to explaining the varying forms the welfare state countermovement took. Their incapability to explain why the state responses to the challenges posed by the full ‘marketization’ of modern societies varied so much is due to their lack of a microfoundation because they never detail how exactly pressures of social misery and dislocation were actually translated into some social policy response or ‘the’ welfare state. In both the modernization approach and the Polanyian explanation, it remains obscure how needs and demands can create their own fulfillment. There is little or no account of the causal mechanisms or the societal actors producing the political responses. This is why – implicitly or explicitly – they are also theories of convergence, arguing that societies were increasingly becoming alike as they approached a certain level of industrial development and as they developed a self-regulating labor market. Therefore, both theories have little to say empirically about cross-national variation among developed nations, why the responses to the social disruptions caused by modern capitalism were so different from each other with such long-lasting socioeconomic effects for these societies. In our view, it mattered a great deal who exactly executed, so to speak, the countermovement. It is here that political actors, like parties as the organized expression of social cleavage structures, gain relevance. Among those cleavages that have structured the party systems of Western Europe, the religious one has been of particular importance. This cleavage has been the result of state–church conflicts in the wake of the national revolution when state-building elites challenged the position of the church in domains perceived crucial for the creation of modern nation-states, particularly education, but also social protection. Of course, the 1970s generation of welfare state researchers, inspired by the (functionalist) theory of modernization and masterfully represented by Peter Flora, already claimed that religion influenced modern welfare state development, but again they rather emphasized the role of religion as a structural factor and in the longue durée. Modernization theory cherished the claim that secularization (as a correlate of industrialization and urbanization or as a phenomenon of modernization in general) and Protestantism were sources of welfare state development. It was the decline of religion, the impact of Protestantism, and the rise of the secular nation-state − as a consequence of the ‘surrender’ of the church to the state or as a result


11

of the retreat of the church into the ‘private’ realm − that governed the development of the welfare state. Secularization was taken to refer to the decline of the categorical impact of religion on human conduct (Chadwick 1975) and pointed to the increasing powerlessness of organized religion in temporal affairs, coupled with the decreasing plausibility of the religious interpretation of the world (Martin 1978). Or, in Bruce’s (2002: 3) summary of the secularization paradigm, r The declining importance of religion for the operation of nonreligious roles and institutions, such as those of the state and the economy r A decline in the social standing of religious roles and institutions r A decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practices, display beliefs of a religious kind, and conduct other aspects of their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs Religious institutions lost their dominance over society and culture, and Protestantism ‘served as the historically decisive prelude to secularization’ (Berger 1990: 113). Christianity was believed to be related to welfare capitalism only so far as Protestantism involved a first step in the process of secularization and individualization, because this belief caused ‘an immense shrinkage in the scope of the sacred in reality’ (Berger 1990: 111). Protestantism qualitatively changed church–state relationships, which, in turn, facilitated the construction of the welfare state. Protestantism and secularization influenced the transformation of traditional societies into mass democracies, and this process affected the institutional arrangements of modern welfare states. Thus, Flora’s generalization of the Rokkan macro model of European history asserted that the protestant nationalization of the territorial culture in the North favored the mobilization of voice ‘from below’: the early development of literacy encouraged the mobilization of lower strata into mass politics, and the incorporation of the church into the state apparatus reduced one potential source of conflict and produced a clear-cut focus for the opposition of the dominated population. By contrast, the supra-territorial influence of the catholic church favored a mobilization ‘from above’: the late development of literacy retarded spontaneous mass mobilization and the conflicts over the control over the educational system led to efforts by the church to mobilize against the state. (Flora 1983: 22)

In nations in which the reformation had a lasting impact and in which state–church relations gradually developed, the conditions for collective welfare services were argued to be most favorable, the more so as

12


the decline of religion was believed to facilitate the growing political salience of class. In contrast to the argument that the power of reformed Protestantism delayed welfare state development (cf. Manow 2004), the modernization scholars were convinced that in those nations where Catholicism continued to shape culture and politics, the conflict between state and church inhibited, or at least retarded, the emergence of a welfare state. This contrast between the Protestant and Catholic nations was then taken to explain the difference in timing and variation in the quality of the welfare states. These latter differences concerned the degree of ‘stateness’ (the level of centralization, the level of state–church integration, the degree of state intervention in the economy) and the degree of institutional coherence (universalism vs. fragmentation). The ideal type of the welfare state that Flora and others at the time had in mind referred to a historical combination of universalism and stateness, and was taken to comprise characteristics such as political centralization; nationalization of the church; cultural homogeneity; advanced agriculture; lack of, or at least, limited absolutism; smooth democratization; and a limited division of state and society. This ideal type of welfare state development was found in Europe’s periphery, that is, in Scandinavia, where the physical distance from Rome was greatest. In other words, what Peter Flora discovered as the differentia specifica of the ‘Protestant welfare state’ was later rediscovered by Walter Korpi and his followers (notably GPsta Esping-Andersen) as the ‘Social Democratic welfare state.’ In an important article, Heidenheimer (1983) focused on the relationship between religion and secularization patterns on the one hand and what he called the ‘westward spread’ of the welfare state on the other. His article was in the form of two imaginary dialogues, the first between Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch, taking place in 1904, and the second between Ernst Reweb and Max Schroeltt, the modern impersonations of the two great analysts of religious doctrines. The birth of the welfare state was dated 1883, the year of the introduction of the first workers’ insurance in Bismarckian Germany. The question to Weber and Troeltsch was ‘whether the spread of social insurance is at all related to the religious ethos prevalent in different countries and if so, how do the different branches of Christianity compare in the degree to which they have welcomed or opposed this trend?’ (6). In the Weberian perspective, it was expected that the adoption of social insurance occurred in an early stage in Protestant countries because both doctrine and the intimate relationship between state and church were favorable to paternalist types of social policies. Catholic countries


13

were expected to be laggards because Catholicism inhibited economic development. In the account of Troeltsch, in contrast, there was a crucial difference between Calvinist and Lutheran countries, the latter probably more willing to accept social insurance as a tolerable intervention, the former, because of the association with liberal capitalism, probably even slower in their embracing of the welfare state than the Catholic nations. Secularization patterns were assumed to affect national experiences by altering the velocity with which social insurance schemes were introduced (cf. Manow 2004). In the Weberian perspective, secularization was assumed to accelerate the development of the welfare state because it was viewed as a concluding phase of western rationalization. According to the Troeltschian interpretation, however, secularization was a multidimensional process by which religion lost its influence entirely in some domains, whereas in other domains traditional values were transplanted into secular structures and processes (Heidenheimer 1983: 9). The link between religion and the welfare state that van Kersbergen (1995) advanced consisted of four theses: 1) Christian Democracy is the heir of the (social) Catholic parties that mobilized roughly between 1870 and 1914; 2) Christian Democracy fostered a distinctive welfare state regime labeled ‘social capitalism’; 3) this regime was both the medium and outcome of Christian Democratic power mobilization through the ‘politics of mediation’; and 4) the specific configuration of interests (including denominational interests), representation, and accommodation within Christian Democratic parties explained different outcomes in terms of social policy performance, that is, within regime variations. The explanatory problem did not concern the possible association between religion(s) and welfare state’s emergence, timing, or development. Rather, the question was to what extent an institutionally distinct welfare state regime could be explained in terms of the impact of Christian Democratic power mobilization and to what extent the successful founding of ‘social capitalism’ implied increasing returns for Christian Democratic power mobilization. In the wake of this argument, the thesis of the irrelevance of Protestantism came to refer to the issue of the distinctive regime and to the minimal contribution of Protestants to Christian Democracy. The main argument was based on the conviction that it was in the social motivation or concern that we find not only the origins of the ` distinctiveness of Christian Democracy (especially vis-a-vis conservatism) but also the cause of the movements’ success in terms of electoral competition and policy performance. The religious inspiration of Christian Democratic parties distinguished them not only from conservative or

14


secular center parties but also from Liberal and Social Democratic parties (van Kersbergen 1994, 1995, 1999). The social concern of Christian Democratic parties was related directly to their main historical ancestor, Social Catholicism. Even where the Protestant influence was discernible (Germany, the Netherlands), Catholic social teaching was a prominent property of the political ideology of Christian Democratic parties and, through them, impinged on the welfare state. In summary, in contrast to Polanyi, we argue that it did matter who politically executed ‘the countermovement.’ And following Flora, Heidenheimer, and others, we emphasize the importance of religious cleavages when it comes to the question of which kind of class or party coalitions were able to formulate the welfare state response to the Great Transformation. In the following paragraph, we outline two possible narratives of how political class coalitions have shaped the welfare state response to the challenges posed by the industrial revolution. We then continue by developing the outlines of our own cleavage theory of political class coalitions, emphasizing the importance of the religious cleavage in continental Europe as well as the importance of the absence of a religious cleavage in Scandinavia for the diverging paths of welfare state formation and development in these two regions. In this introductory chapter, we do not spell out in detail which kind of institutional consequences the different party political coalitions behind the welfare state in continental Europe and in Scandinavia had. This is, among other things, the task of the various contributions to this volume, which are briefly introduced at the end of this chapter.

1.3 party political correlates of the countermovement We argue that it is important to account for the kind of political coalitions that were behind the national formulations of the Polanyian countermovement. For this reason, we look at national party systems and how they have led to different strengths of the left and the right. The power resources approach in the comparative welfare state literature argues that the welfare state was a project of the left, of Social Democratic parties and unions. Where the left was strong, the welfare state became generous and encompassing. Where the left was weak, the welfare state remained residual. Yet, Social Democracy nowhere was able to achieve an electoral majority on its own (Przeworski and Sprague 1986). The left always remained dependent on coalition partners who would join them in their


15

struggle for more social justice and equality, for workers’ better living conditions, and for the decommodification of labor. Therefore, ‘the history of political class coalitions [is] the most decisive cause of welfare state variations’ (Esping-Andersen 1990: 1). In the first chapter of his seminal The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Esping-Andersen (1990) set out to provide us with such a stylized history of political class coalitions. He highlighted three elements of such an account: the ‘nature of class mobilization (especially of the working class), class political coalition structures, and the historical legacy of regime institutionalization’ (29). With respect to the mobilization of the working class, he was quick to add that working-class strength itself does not help explain much of the history of welfare state development: ‘It is a historical fact that welfare state construction has depended on political coalition-building. The structure of class-coalitions is much more decisive than are the power resources of any single class’ (30). He then went on to stress the importance of the pro-welfare state support coalition between Social Democracy and agrarian parties in the Nordic countries, a coalition that could be expanded after World War II to include the middle class. Esping-Andersen explained the specific success of Swedish Social Democracy in building a generous welfare state with the fact that it succeeded to broaden the political support for a new kind of welfare state that ‘provided benefits tailored to the tastes and expectations of the middle classes’ (31). Without pointing out possible causes, EspingAndersen went on to state that in Anglo-Saxon countries ‘the new middle classes were not wooed from the market to the state,’ and therefore, these countries ‘retained the residual welfare state model’ (31). ‘In class terms, the consequence is dualism. The welfare state caters essentially to the working class and the poor. Private insurance and occupational fringe benefits cater to the middle classes’ (31). The continental welfare states, finally, also depended on the support of the middle classes, but because of ‘historical’ (ibid.) – again not particularly well explained – reasons the outcome was different. ‘Developed by conservative political forces, these regimes institutionalized a middle-class loyalty to the preservation of both occupationally segregated social-insurance programs and, ultimately, to the political forces that brought them into being’ (31–32). As valuable as the distinction of the three regimes has proven for the comparative analysis of welfare states and as critical as the emphasis on the importance of political class coalitions is, Esping-Andersen does not provide us with an explanation of why these groups of countries followed such different institutional trajectories of development. His account

16


rather ‘comes across as a post-hoc description’ (Iversen 2006: 609), in particular, because Esping-Andersen gives no systematic reasons why some welfare states were able to include the middle class while others were not. In a more recent paper, Torben Iversen and David Soskice (2006) proposed a different version of a political class coalition theory of welfare state formation and growth. They start from the basic observation that in multiparty systems the left is in government more often, whereas the right more often governs in two-party systems (Table 1.1). Why is this so? At the risk of oversimplification, their argument may be summarized as follows. Their model assumes three classes – the lower, middle, and upper classes – and a system of (nonregressive) taxation and redistribution. Their model’s key variable is the electoral system. With majoritarian electoral rules, a two-party system emerges with a center-left and a center-right party; with proportional representation, a multiparty system emerges. In a two-party system, the middle class can either vote for a center-left party or a center-right party. If the left governs, the middle class has to fear that the left government will tax both the upper and middle classes for the exclusive benefit of the lower class. If a right party governs, the middle and upper class will not be taxed, and redistribution will be marginal. Therefore, in a two-party system, the middle class has the choice of either to receive no benefits but to be taxed, if the left governs, or to receive no benefits but then also not to be taxed, in case that the right should govern. Obviously, it would then prefer not to be taxed. In a multiparty system, however, the middle class’s choice is different. If a middle-class party enters into a coalition with the left party, the lower and middle class can tax the rich and divide the revenue. From this simple and highly stylized account, it is clear that the middle class will more often vote together with the lower class in multiparty systems. To be more precise, middle-class parties will more often enter into coalitions with lower-class parties in multiparty systems than in two-party systems, the left will be in government more often, redistribution will be higher, and the welfare state will be more generous.1 As in Esping-Andersen’s sketch of different welfare state coalitions, Iversen and Soskice also develop a class-coalitional approach, but they

1

The crucial assumption in the Iversen and Soskice model is that center-left parties in a two-party system cannot credibly commit themselves to a political agenda tailored to median voter interests, whereas problems of credible commitment are more easily solved in coalition governments.


17

table 1.1. Electoral Systems and the Number of Years with Left and Right Governments (1945–1998)∗ Government Partisanship

Electoral system

Proportion of Right Governments

Left

Right

Proportional

342 (8)

120 (1)

0.26

Majoritarian

86 (0)

256 (8)

0.75

∗

Whether ‘years in government’ is a good measurement for the effects of electoral rules remains an open question. Because one of the effects of PR in Scandinavia is the frequent occurrence of minority governments, where parties supporting the government nonetheless can have substantial policy influence, the measure might underestimate the importance of informal party coalitions between left and center parties. Therefore, vote shares can also be considered when assessing the potential for policy influence of different parties, which, however, does not alter the picture substantially (see Manow 2009). Number in parentheses: number of countries that have an overweight (more than 50 per cent) of center-left or center-right governments from 1945 to 1998. Source: Iversen and Soskice 2006: 166.

provide us with a clearer mechanism that explains the formation of different class coalitions. The authors stress electoral rules as the most important mechanism because these either lead to multiparty systems–cum– generous welfare state or two-party systems–cum–residual welfare state. Therefore, the critical analytical distinction is the distinction between plurality and proportional representation (PR). In essence, Iversen and Soskice provide us with an elegant explanation for the well-known fact that the left more often governs in countries with PR systems (and it is here that the welfare state tends to be bigger and more redistributive), whereas the right more often governs in countries with majoritarian electoral rules – countries in which the welfare state tends to be less generous and more residual (Table 1.1). Yet, ever since the contribution of Esping-Andersen, we know that the level of spending per se is not what should interest us most, but rather the profound differences in the institutional setup of European welfare states with their substantially differing socioeconomic effects. However, is there a way to combine the class coalition model of Iversen and Soskice with the three regimes approach of Esping-Andersen? Yes, there is such a link or nexus, but it is one that becomes apparent only once we give

18


due credit to the importance of societal cleavage structures, especially prominent among them the religious cleavage.2 Our argument runs as follows. We agree with Duverger and Iversen and Soskice that majoritarian electoral rules lead to a two-party system and that here the middle class more often votes for center-right parties. In such a two-party system, mainly one societal cleavage is present, namely, the one dominant in all advanced industrial countries, the left–right or labor–capital cleavage. All other cleavages are absorbed, latent, or ‘incorporated’ in this basic cleavage.3 A good example would be the fierce conflict between the Anglican high church and the Protestant dissent in Britain in the last quarter of the 19th century. This was a virulent conflict line between the Tories and the Liberal Party (Parry 1986) that quickly receded into the background once the Labour Party crowded out the Liberal Party in the 1890s and the first two decades of the 20th century. The religious dissent then lost its own strong political representation in the party system, the Liberal Party split, and, subsequently, Nonconformism became influential both within the Tories and within the Labour Party, where it strongly influenced the Labour Party’s social policy program (see Pelling 1965; Caterall 1993). It is here where the basic mechanism described by Iversen and Soskice (2006) applies: with only two parties, it is the economic cleavage that is predominantly represented in the party system, and within this setting, the middle class more often votes for Conservative parties. The welfare state remains residual. In PR systems, in contrast, a larger (effective) number of parties allows for the representation of more than the one dominant cleavage dimension in advanced industrialized countries, that is, more than the conventional labor–capital cleavage (Neto and Cox 1997; Clark and Golder 2006). Which kind of additional cleavages are represented in the party system

2

3

Korpi (2006) recognizes the importance of the PR electoral system for the strength of the left, but does not reach the conclusion we present here on the translation of cleavage structures and societal interest representation and their impact on welfare state development. He replicates the power resources thesis that ‘European confessional parties were organized as explicitly cross-class parties intended to undercut the class base of Socialist parties and compete for workers’ votes by strengthening the role of religious cleavages. In association with the Catholic Church, they supported the state-corporatist institutional model of welfare states’ (194). The analysis of the impact of religion does not become irrelevant in this context, however, because it is of interest how the religious cleavage has played itself out within the dominant left–right divide. The role of Christian Socialism and Nonconformism within the British Labour Party and the substantial influence of these currents on the social policy program of Labour are examples.


19

depends on the cleavage structure of the country in question. Here, the distinction between the Nordic and the Continental countries and their welfare states achieves particular relevance. In the north of Europe, a religious cleavage did not become politicized and ‘particized’ (see Stoll 2008) because neither were these societies religiously heterogeneous nor did the ‘national revolution’ (Rokkan) lead to strong state–church conflicts. ‘All the Nordic countries belong to (and, indeed, collectively constitute) Europe’s sole mono-confessional Protestant region’ (Madeley 2000: 29). The northern Protestant churches as Lutheran state churches, in contrast to the Catholic Church in southern Europe, did not feel fundamentally challenged when the new nation-state started to take over responsibilities that had previously fallen under the responsibility of the church. Anticlericalism never became a strong political current in the Scandinavian countries. A cleavage that did become politicized and particized was the cleavage between agrarian and industrial interests because the agrarian sector was still very strong at the moment of mass democratization in the late industrializing Scandinavian countries. It is in Europe’s north where strong parties of agrarian defense emerged and where they received a substantial share of the votes over the entire postwar period. The Finnish Agrarian Union (Malaisliitto), renamed Centre Party in 1965, won between 21 and 24 per cent of the vote in all elections between 1945 and 1970. Even in the 1970s and 1980s, the Centre Party never received less than 17 per cent of the vote. In the general elections of 1991, the agrarians even became the biggest party with a vote share of almost 25 per cent, 3 per cent more than the Social Democrats (see Caramani 2000: 275–289). Electorally less successful, but still with an impressive ¨ electoral record, was the Swedish agrarian party, the Bondeforbunet, renamed Centerpartiet in 1957. It gained between 12 and 16 per cent of all votes in the 1950s and 1960s, and then even increased its vote share substantially in the 1970s, gaining up to 25 per cent, thereby becoming the second largest party behind the Social Democrats. In the 1980s and 1990s, the agrarian party then again lost much of its former strength and had a vote share of 15 per cent in the early 1980s and went down to 5 per cent in the late 1990s. The Norwegian Bondepartiet (since 1961 Senterpartiet), smaller than its Finnish or Swedish counterparts, received around 9 per cent on average throughout the 1950s and 1960s, had slightly more than 10 per cent of the vote in the 1970s, and then fell back a bit and remained between 6 and 8 per cent in subsequent elections (with the exception of the 1993 election when the agrarian party got 16.7 per cent and was the third

20


largest party in the Storting) (see Caramani 2000: 762–775). In Denmark, the agrarian vote was first very much concentrated in the Liberal Party, the Venstre or ‘Agrarian Liberals’ (Johansen 1986: 351), established in 1870 as ‘a derivation of the Bondevennerne, the peasants’ friends’ (Caramani 2000: 204). However, it was not the Venstre, but a split from the Venstre/Liberals, det Radikale Venstre established in 1905, which became part of the Danish red–green pro-welfare coalition. Whereas the Liberals represented the interest of large farms and were in strong opposition to the Social Democrats, the radical liberals defended small farm interests (Huber and Stephens 2001: 141) created by a land reform in 1920. Over the entire postwar period, the radical liberals gained on average 7.3 per cent of the vote, with particular electoral success in the late 1960s and early 1970s (with almost 15 per cent in 1968). Over time, this party lost its agrarian affiliation because small farms disappeared due to their lack of competitiveness, and the party looked for a new constituency. In sum, the distinguishing feature of the Scandinavian party systems is the strong role that agrarian parties play in them. Over the entire postwar period from 1945 to 1999, agrarian parties in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark gained on average 20.6, 13.9, 8.9, and 7.3 per cent of the vote.4 No comparable figures can be found in any other European party system except in Switzerland, where the Schweizerische Bauern-, ¨ Gewerbe-, und Burgerpartei (since 1971 Schweizerische Volkspartei) gained more than 10 per cent of the votes in each election in the postwar period (cf. Caramani 2004: 181).5 In all other European countries, ‘the urban–rural cleavage was incorporated into other party alignments – state–church and left–right in particular – and did not give rise to specific political parties’ (184). Given the strong position of the agrarian parties, it comes as no surprise that almost all accounts of the historical development of the Nordic welfare state stress the importance of red–green coalitions for the formation and the subsequent expansion of the welfare state (see Olson 1986: 5, 75; Esping-Andersen 1990: 30) or see agrarian parties even as the driving force of early welfare state development (Baldwin 1990: 55– 94). The influence of the agrarian or center parties was due to their pivotal position within the Scandinavian party systems. When not themselves a part of the government coalition, center parties tolerated the minority

4

5

On average, the Venstre party gained 18.5 per cent over the entire postwar period (see Caramani 2000). ¨ The Bauern-, Gewerbe-, und Burgerpartei, however, is much more regionally concentrated and much less nationally dispersed than the Nordic agrarian parties.


21

governments often led by Social Democrats, especially in Norway and Sweden (see Bergman 2000; Narud and StrPm 2000). Social legislation depended on their consent and, therefore, was tailored to the agrarian needs and interests. One could say that the place occupied by agrarian parties in the north is occupied by Christian Democratic parties on the continent. The German ¨ CDU, the Dutch CDA, the Austrian OVP, the Belgian CVP/PSC (Parti Social-Chrétien or Christelijke Volkspartij), the Italian Democrazia Cristiana, and the Swiss Christlich-Demokratische Volkspartei are parties with their roots in political Catholicism. They are the offspring of the fierce state–church conflicts in the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th century – in the Belgian case, offspring of the national independence movement of the Catholic southern provinces against the Protestant northern provinces of the Low Countries (Kalyvas 1996). In these countries, which all introduced PR no later than 1919, the party system contains a relatively high (effective) number of parties and, subsequently, represents more than one cleavage (Neto and Cox 1997). However, instead of the urban–rural cleavage, which was prominent in the religiously homogeneous Protestant north, here in the religiously mixed or homogeneously Catholic countries (e.g., Belgium and Austria), it is the state–church conflict that is prominently represented in the party system in addition to the left–right cleavage. Both with respect to vote shares and time in government, the Christian Democratic parties have been dominant (if not hegemonic like the Italian Democrazia Cristiana) in the continental countries. Because Christian Democratic parties combined the religious and large parts of the bourgeois vote, their electoral fate was better than that of the Nordic agrarian parties. Only counting the vote shares of the Catholic parties ¨ such as the Osterreichische Volkspartei, the Christlich-Demokratische Union, the Democrazia Cristiana, the Christen Demokratisch Appèl (and its former member parties such as the Katholieke Volkspartij),6 and the Parti Social-Chrétien or Christelijke Volkspartij of Belgium (and ignoring the Protestant parties in these countries for a moment), it becomes evident that Christian Democracy was much more successful than the agrarian parties in Scandinavia. On average, the Belgian PSC or CVP

6

Because the joined Christen-Democratisch Appèl was comprised partly of the AntiRevolutionary Party and partly of the Christlijk-Historische Unie since 1977/1980, we cannot speak of a purely Catholic party. Numbers from before 1977, however, refer to ‘purely’ Catholic parties, mainly the Katholieke Volkspartij.

22


received 34.9 per cent of the vote in all elections that took place between 1945 and 1999, the German Christlich-Demokratische Union gained an average of 44.2 per cent of the vote during this period, the Katholieke Volkspartij (and later the Appèl) gained on average 28.6 per cent of the vote in the same period, the Austrian Volkspartei received 41.5 per cent, and the Italian DC received 33.8 per cent of the vote. If we do not count the elections after the breakdown of the first Italian republic – that is, if we discard the elections after 1992 – then this share rises to 37.9 per cent. The Swiss Christlich-Demokratische Volkspartei won around 20.9 per cent of the vote. At the same time, parties of agrarian defense remained largely absent in continental Europe. The urban–rural cleavage dimension remained latent and was not politicized and particized in the continental welfare states. Put pointedly, according to our history of political class coalitions, we find liberal welfare states in countries with a majoritarian electoral system in which only one political cleavage dimension is present (exemplary case: the UK). The Social Democratic generous welfare states, which we find in the Nordic countries, however, have been the result of a coalition between Social Democratic parties and parties of agrarian defense (red– green coalition). One important precondition for this coalition has been the absence of a strong religious cleavage in the Scandinavian countries. On Europe’s continent, in turn, we find welfare states that are the product of a coalition between Social and Christian Democracy (red–black coalition). This is due to the fact that the second cleavage represented in the party systems of continental Europe, besides the dominant left–right or labor–capital cleavage, has been the religious cleavage, a cleavage inherited from the state–church conflicts in the wake of the national revolution, in which Liberal state elites challenged the church in its former domains such as education or poor relief.7 What we propose here, in other words, is a Rokkanian complement to the Iversen and Soskice (2006) model of 7

Within this broader picture, France is an outlier case. It shares many features with the social insurance states of other continental European nations. However, in France, a Christian Democratic party did not emerge in the critical period of mass democratization (Kalyvas 1996), and then, after its late foundation (MRP in the year 1944), proved to be only very short lived. If one considers the continental or conservative welfare states to be a product of a coalition between left Social Democrats and center-right Christian Democrats, then the French case obviously does not fit particularly well into this broader picture (see, for an explanation of the French case, Manow and Palier, Chapter 6, this volume). The other obvious outlier – Switzerland – is explained by its strong federalism, which itself was a way to pacify a fierce religious conflict, see Obinger’s contribution (Chapter 7, this volume).


23

welfare state class coalitions. In our view, Iversen and Soskice are perfectly right in stressing the importance of a class coalition between lower and middle class, but once we look at the party political coalitions behind the Nordic and continental welfare states, we are also able to identify which type of middle class party has entered into a coalition with Social Democracy. This insight also allows us to explain the type of welfare state to which these party political class coalitions have led. Similarly, the variation in Christian Democracy on the European continent – sometimes being hegemonic like in the case of the Italian DC, sometimes having vanished over the course of the postwar years like the French Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) – allows us to address systematically the question of the within-type variation in the case of the Conservative, Christian Democratic welfare state predominant on the continent. To be clear, there have been and still are religious parties in the Nordic countries, such as the most important and electorally successful Norwegian Kristelig Folkeparti founded in 1933,8 and there have been agrarian parties in continental Europe. But both remained marginal, without political influence and impact, especially when it comes to welfare state formation and growth. We also want to emphasize that we do not claim that the PR electoral systems can explain the formation of either agrarian parties or parties of religious defense. In numerous cases, these parties were founded before the introduction of PR, which in most countries occurred only after World War I. However, in contrast to the simple majority system in force in Britain, the two-ballot/two-round majority system in place before the Great War in almost all other European countries has the non-Duvergian tendency to sustain a higher effective number of parties, despite its ‘Duvergian drive’ toward the formation of two blocks or party camps (cf. Blais et al. 2005). This was a crucial difference between Britain and the rest of Western Europe in the period of suffrage extension. It is necessary to briefly address two important issues concerning the argument outlined in the preceding paragraphs. The first concerns the choice of electoral rules. We have argued that the adoption of proportional representation explains why in some countries cleavages other than the basic socioeconomic, capital–labor cleavage found representation in the party system. Yet, one prominent position in the literature on the choice of electoral rules (associated with the work of Stein Rokkan, too; 8

The Finnish Christian League, Suomen Kristillinen Liitto, was founded in 1958; the Swedish Kristen Demokratisk Samling was founded in 1964; and the Danish Kristeligt Folkeparti was founded in 1970.

24


cf. Rokkan 1970) holds that societal cleavage structures themselves can explain electoral system choice. In particular, Rokkan argues that countries with a high degree of societal fragmentation were more likely to adopt proportional representation. We therefore need to address this potential endogeneity of electoral rules. The second issue concerns our (implicit) assumption about the long-term effects of church–state conflicts for much of the post–World War II period of welfare state formation and growth. How do we reconcile this with secularization and with the fact that most of the once vehement state–church conflicts seem to have receded into the background of national politics in the 1950s and 1960s? More to the point, if we explain the ‘Christian Democratic welfare state’ as the outcome of a cross-class coalition with which Christian Democratic parties fabricated electoral majorities bringing together Catholic workers and the Catholic middle class, how do we explain that Catholic workers were not wooed away by Social Democrats with more generous welfare promises? In other words, what explains the relative stability of the confessional vote in post-1945 continental Europe? We briefly address both points in the following paragraphs. With respect to the potential endogeneity of electoral rules, we want to start by underlining one central statement of a recent state-of-the art review, namely, that ‘questions of how electoral systems originate and change form a field which . . . remains underdeveloped’ (Benoit 2007: 364). Although we have learnt much about the political consequences of electoral rules, the research on ‘electoral laws as political consequences’ is still in its ‘developmental stage’ (ibid.). Therefore, we are not able (and cannot be expected) to settle this issue in the context of our study. We can only state our position as clearly as possible. In our study, we indeed treat electoral rules as exogenous. We start from the observation that by 1919, most Western European nations except Britain and France had adopted proportional representation (see Caramani 2000: 60).9 In light of greatly varying cleavage structures, different levels of economic development, and the large cross-national differences in the electoral success of social democratic or Socialist parties the attempts to explain the adoption of electoral rules either with reference to economic interests (Cusack et al. 2007), with reference to the degree of societal fragmentation (Rokkan

9

Belgium 1900, Finland 1907, Sweden 1911, Netherlands 1918, Austria 1919, Germany 1919, Italy 1919, Luxembourg 1919, Switzerland 1919. Denmark (1920), Norway (1921) Ireland (1922), and Greece (1926) followed suit. Spain and Portugal had plurality systems until they turned into military dictatorships in the 1930s (cf. Caramani 2000: 48, 60).


25

1970), or with reference to the left’s electoral threat (Boix 1999), are in our view without much promise. Instead, we understand the adoption of PR to have been a secular phenomenon because PR was simply perceived to best secure fair representation. As Blais et al. (2005: 183) argue, In a basic sense PR was adopted in many countries in the period . . . (1865– 1938) for the very simple reason that the ‘idea’ of PR existed, methods of its implementation had been devised, and it had come to be considered the most ‘democratic’ electoral system. In many countries, the switch to PR came at the same time as universal manhood suffrage. Not surprisingly, at the same time as people came to agree with the ‘one man/one vote’ principle, they also came to accept the view that the number of seats a party gets should be proportional to its votes.

Thus, in most countries, there was broad consensus over PR. In fact, in this perspective, the research question itself is in need of reformulation: we should not try to explain the adoption of PR, but rather explain why some countries did not introduce proportional representation. Here, two groups of countries stand out. First, the UK and other commonwealth countries stuck to the plurality of their first-past-the-post systems. We ascribe this to a particular influence of British constitutional thought. Given that not the Parliament, but the constitutional trias of King/Queen, House of Lords, and House of Commons was supposed to represent society, fair representation in the House of Commons alone was never considered to be of particular importance in the British electoral reform debates (Hart 1992). In fact, securing a high degree of fair representation at the same time would have meant to seriously delegitimize the other elements of the constitutional arrangement.10 A second group of countries consists of democracies (e.g., France, the United States) that could look back on a long record of democratic elections before PR had, in the 1880s, been seriously considered for the first time as a viable alternative to the majoritarian electoral principles (Carstairs 1980). Here, it was the political legitimacy stemming from a long national tradition of democratic elections combined with simple institutional stickiness that hindered the move to PR. For almost all other Western European countries, PR had become the ‘natural’ choice by the end of World War I. In response to the question of why the Catholic vote proved stable even when the conflicts between nation-state and Catholic Church had 10

In our view, it is no surprise that in the process of high treason against Thomas Hardy, the main accusation was that he had intended to bring ‘representative government’ to the United Kingdom.

26


lost much of their fervor, we should start by pointing to the empirical evidence that clearly confirms the surprising stability of religion as a determinant for party choice in continental Europe. For instance, Lewis-Beck, in his analysis of postwar France covering elections up to the mid-1980s, finds that as a determinant of voting ‘religious practice appears twice as important as social class’ (1984: 438; see Lewis-Beck and Skalaban 1992), and in their analysis of the German elections over the same time period, Pappi and Mnich state that ‘religion/church attendance is by far the most important single determinant of party choice’ (1992: 193). Until the late 1960s, the party choice of Dutch voters could be accurately predicted by simply asking two questions: what is your income and to what church or denomination do you belong (Thomassen et al. 2000). Similar findings for Italy (Mackie et al. 1992: 242) or Belgium (Mughan 1992: 89) could easily be added. Again, a large and controversial literature has tried to detect the causes for electoral stability in the immediate postwar decades and the (slowly) increasing electoral volatility since the 1970s (Dalton et al. 1984; Franklin et al. 1992). Party system theory in the tradition of Rokkan (Gallagher et al. 2005) suggests that cleavages and their party political translations tend to persist for four interconnected reasons. First, cleavages are based on real conflicts that do not disappear overnight. Secularization is a long-term process and involves at least one, and most likely two, generations. Second, since the introduction of universal suffrage, all voters are mobilized and politically aligned, and parties work hard to keep their voters, especially when the organic link between party and voter is diluted. Third, PR helps parties survive and compete, even if they face declining popularity, whereas in plurality systems such parties would disappear faster. Finally, parties employ various techniques, strategies, and activities to ‘establish a presence in many different areas of their individual supporters’ lives, organizing social clubs, welfare services, recreational facilities, and the like, thus offering adherents a range of services to sustain them “from the cradle to the grave” (243). Even when the ideological ties weaken, the social bonds may survive for quite some time. In the context of our study, however, we want to highlight that it was often not so much the lack of competition between Christian and Social Democrats for the workers’ vote that explains why Catholic workers continued to vote for Christian Democracy. Often more important was the left’s Marxian legacy of vehement anticlericalism because Catholic workers were often repelled by the left’s articulate anti-church position. In Germany, it was only after the 1961 Godesberg program of the SPD


27

` that the party toned down its aggressive position vis-a-vis the Catholic Church, and in France, the highly contentious school question pitted left parties against the MRP and later the Gaullist party far into the 1960s. Also in Italy, a compromise between the anticlerical left and the Democrazia Cristiana was only becoming a realistic option in the early to mid-1970s. In this perspective, it seems noticeable that once, by the early 1970s, much of the former ideological heat had evaporated, sharper party competition via welfare promises set in. For instance, the late, but steep take-off of the Dutch welfare state has to be seen in connection with the postwar competition between Social Democrats and Catholics and later the depillarization of Dutch society, which increased competitive pressures (see van Kersbergen, Chapter 5, this volume). However, it is also to the desideratum of a systematic analysis of the nexus between electoral politics and social policies to which our study points. Although it might be true that social protection has increasingly substituted for the comfort and feeling of security that people had previously found in religion (Norris and Inglehart 2004), it might also be that parties increasingly have used social policies to tie those electoral groups to them that they could not tie any more on ideological, in particular, religious grounds only. This however, would be a topic for future research. In this introductory chapter, we do not deal with the many institutional consequences that the different welfare state coalitions in Europe’s north and on its continent had. We restrict ourselves to simply mentioning some of the more important ones, whereas the chapters that follow provide the reader with much richer empirical accounts of the institutional variations between the Nordic and continental regime types. One important difference, however, is evident from the outset: agrarian parties in the north voiced resistance against the income-differentiated social benefits that Social Democrats favored (cf. Johansen 1986; Olson 1986). Instead, they preferred universalist, flat-rate benefits because many small landholders had no long history of steady income and therefore feared that they would actually be unable to benefit from welfare entitlements that were contribution financed with contribution-related benefit levels (cf. Baldwin 1990: 55–94). Christian Democratic parties, however, which mobilized workers as did their Social Democratic counterparts, had far less reasons to object to differentiated, wage-based contributions and entitlements. Social insurance contributions promised to ease the partyinternal conflict over social policy between Catholic workers and the middle class because contributions ‘naturally’ seemed to limit the extent of welfare state redistribution. Moreover, during the severe economic

28


crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which had particularly affected Scandinavian agriculture, many farmers became less interested in unemployment payments, which would bridge the spells without work. Rather, they demanded active labor market policies to ease the transition to the second and third sector. The problem was perceived as one of sectoral change, in which the loss of employment in the first sector had to be compensated through employment growth in industry and services. Another important difference was the integration of the churches in the continental welfare states in the provision of social services (e.g., hospitals, old-age homes, kindergartens) as compared to state provision of these services in the Nordic countries. This had long-term consequences not only for female labor force participation but also for the relative ease with which child rearing and dependent employment could be combined. Agrarian parties were also strongly in favor of financing the welfare state through indirect taxes because this promised to shift ‘the expense of meeting risk from the most progressively assessed levies of the day – the direct land taxes they (the agrarians) paid to underwrite the poorrelief system – to the consumption habits of their urban political opponents’ (64). It is therefore in the most crucial dimensions of the welfare state – the mode of financing, the benefit structure, the provision of social services – that we see the varying impact of the different party political coalitions in the North and on the continent. In the following section, we briefly outline how the various contributions to this volume address the issues raised in our broad theoretical framework.

1.4 contributions to the volume Thomas Ertman’s contribution, with which this volume starts, provides us with a thorough, concentrated analysis of party system formation in Western Europe since the mid-19th century and emphasizes the centrality of state–church conflicts within this process. Ertman details, in particular, how Liberal national state elites challenged the traditional social role of the church in education and poverty relief in the last quarter of the 19th century and how the ensuing state–church conflicts led to the formation of parties of religious defense in a number of European countries. Most crucial for the subsequent analyses of this volume, he shows why in Scandinavia, despite occasional intense conflicts among state, Lutheran state churches, and revivalist movements, no parties of religious defense emerged in the important period of mass democratization.


29

Kimberly J. Morgan’s comparative investigation into the origins of family policy in Western Europe offers an explanation for the unexpected – and within the conventional regime approach unexplained – pattern that a number of countries usually categorized as typical Christian Democratic welfare states (e.g., Belgium, France, Italy) nonetheless established a strong role of the state in child and family policy. The strong state role in child and family policy led to a progressive, completely ‘unCatholic’ policy profile of these countries. This is, for instance, reflected in a relatively high labor force participation rate of mothers in these three countries, a rate that in some cases even surpasses that in the presumably most ‘women-friendly’ welfare states of Scandinavia. Had we followed the mainstream account, we would have expected that these allegedly conservative welfare states would assign a strong role to the male breadwinner model and support traditional familialistic models of the division of labor between the sexes. Morgan elegantly explains the surprisingly un-Catholic policy profile as the outcome of the strong political conflicts between the Liberal nation-state and the Catholic Church around the turn of the 19th century, in which the nation-state gained the upper hand. Julia Lynch in her provocative treatment of the Italian case, often conceived of as the prototypical Catholic welfare state, unveils a partypolitical logic behind Italian welfare state development rather than any straightforward influence of Catholic social doctrine. She observes that the formative period of welfare state development was a period of Liberal political domination with a program of social legislation that had an explicitly anticlerical momentum. Although early social legislation was in line with church interests, Julia Lynch argues that it was nevertheless not this agreement that caused the legislation. She shows that many of the policy outcomes of the Italian model, in particular, it being a pensioners’ state, as well as the high degree of program fragmentation, are largely unintended and unanticipated outcomes of a clientelistic policy mode for which the Democrazia Cristiana became notorious. Her analysis highlights political Catholicism’s influence on Italian welfare state development, but at the same time demonstrates that one cannot assume a direct impact of Catholic social doctrine on policy outcomes. One rather needs to investigate closely the party political channel through which this influence became pertinent. Kees van Kersbergen focuses on two puzzling features of the Dutch case. First, given the level of economic development, social policy was late to emerge and remained underdeveloped for a long time. Second, after World War II, the Dutch welfare state rapidly expanded to become

30


one of the most comprehensive and generous of its sort. If anywhere, it was in the Netherlands that the mobilization of the socioeconomic cleavage via Socialist or Social Democratic parties was suppressed by the pervasive presence of the religious cleavage and religious fragmentation. It brought orthodox Protestants to power who were uninterested in, if not openly reluctant to, developing modern social policy. Liberal antiinterventionism lined up with the Protestants’ mistrust of the state, and the still vulnerable Catholics and weak Socialists were unable to gather enough support for social policy. The explanation for the speedy expansion of the welfare state after World War II is the mirror image of late development. Because Calvinist and Liberal politics were marginalized in the immediate period after the war, the way was paved for a pro-welfare red–black (called Roman–red in the Netherlands) coalition between Social Catholics and Social Democrats. This coalition explains an important phenomenon of the Dutch welfare state: the generous yet extremely passive nature of the transfer regime. In the 1960s, politics mattered less under favorable economic conditions, and mechanisms of ‘automatic adjustment’ contributed to the further expansion of the Dutch welfare state. Similarly, Philip Manow and Bruno Palier, in their chapter on the French welfare state trajectory, are confronted with two puzzles. The first puzzle is why is there no Christian Democracy in France given that the state–church conflict had been so virulent in France around the turn of the 19th century. Second, why does the French welfare state largely resemble the Bismarckian blueprint if political Catholicism could not have been the driving force? By focusing on the two formative moments of French welfare state formation, the decade between 1890 and 1920 and the early years after World War II, Manow and Palier show that it was not social insurance, but social assistance through which the French state began to define its social policy responsibilities and to crowd out the church around the turn of the 19th century. This allowed voluntary self-help organizations, caisses and mutuelles, to enter and occupy the field of accident, health, unemployment, and old age insurance. After World War II, these groups, especially where they were linked to the Catholic milieu, could have been a natural electoral resource for French Christian Democracy, but the MRP was never able to tap this resource systematically and to establish stable electoral ties to the Catholic unions, the Catholic farmers’ organizations, and the plethora of cooperatives and funds surrounding them. Manow and Palier point to the feebleness of French parties in the twoballot majority electoral system, the precarious legitimacy of a Catholic party, and the Gaullist strategy to woo away these organizations from the MRP with a strong corporatist party platform as explanations both


31

for the MRP’s lack of electoral success and of the corporatist design of the French welfare state (with e´ tatist elements interspersed). In his treatment of the complex Swiss case, Herbert Obinger shows that the fierce religious conflicts in Switzerland, culminating in the Sonderbund war between Protestant and Catholic cantons in 1847, could be pacified with the devolution of political power in Swiss federalism. It is then via this federalist character of the Swiss state that many of the specific features of Switzerland’s welfare state and of its evolution can be explained. This chapter also explores the impact of the referendum on social policy development because the referendum developed into an instrument that protected the Catholic minority against the Liberal Radicals, which for more than 40 years dominated the Swiss Bundesrat and challenged the Catholic Church with secularization. Obinger shows how the supermajoritarian features of Swiss federalism had long-term consequences for welfare state development in this country, with a referendum that tends to block initiatives that aim at expanding the welfare state as well as those that aim at cutting it back. Karen M. Anderson, in her investigation into Swedish social policy, underlines the importance of an absence. She shows why it is so important to take the lack of a visible state–church conflict in the Scandinavian countries into account when attempting to understand the developmental path of the Nordic welfare state, here demonstrated with the exemplary case of Sweden. Her reconstruction of the Swedish political debates in the early 20th century, especially looking at the position of the Swedish state church on social policy, shows that the state church is sometimes opposed to public social policy, and often simply disinterested. However, the state intrusion into the domain of social protection never became an issue of high priority for the Lutheran Swedish church. When the anticlericalism of the Swedish Social Democrats was finally perceived to be endangering the church’s strong role in society, it was too late for the church to protect its former domains of exclusive competency. The state had already become the largely uncontested provider of social protection for all Swedish citizens. Jill Quadagno and Deana Rohlinger take the analysis to the contemporary period. In their investigation into the role that the Christian right played in U.S. welfare reform of the past 30 years, they address another important research question generated by the general explanatory approach of this volume: how can the religious cleavage regain political importance in a two-party system like the U.S.-American system? That the religious cleavage has regained relevance is shown in much detail in Quadagno’s and Rohlinger’s thorough account of the social

32


policy debates of the recent past. In their explanation of the surprising resurgence of moral and religious controversies that have come to dominate U.S.-American politics, the authors point to the shift in electoral competition from interparty to intraparty competition. Very high incumbency return rates due to gerrymandering and to the ‘personal vote’ have shifted party political conflicts increasingly from being conflicts between Democrats and Republicans toward conflicts between middle-of-the-road Republicans and much more extremely positioned candidates and voter groups of the Christian right. Finally, Sigrun Kahl complements our approach that restricts itself to the analysis of party coalitions by focusing on religion as a cultural force that comes clearly to the forefront in such highly morally grounded issues as care for the poor and destitute. Because here the basic moral economy of a society is affected, the role of religious doctrines cannot be overestimated. Her comparative account of poor relief policies across Western Europe shows the different impact of three broad, religiously grounded social doctrines, namely, those of reformed Protestantism or the Protestant sects, of the Lutheran state churches, and, finally, of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Her comparison of the different treatment of the poor in countries with either more Protestant-Liberal, Lutheran-étatist, or Catholic-corporatist traditions highlights how important it is to differentiate among the Protestant family of nations in order to account for the fundamental differences between Lutheran and reformed Protestant social doctrines.

1.5 outlook The evidence presented in the contributions to this volume challenges the conventional wisdom of the comparative welfare state literature. In it, the role of religion and religious cleavages, of parties of religious defense, and of the legacies of fierce state–church conflicts tended to be neglected. Where addressed at all, the influence of religion was perceived as largely restricted to political Catholicism, and here most of the emphasis was put on the influence of Catholic social doctrine. The contributions to this volume acknowledge the importance of social doctrines, but stress the role of parties of religious defense more generally. The following chapters focus on the role that parties have played as those central political actors that translated religious concerns into the realm of modern democratic politics, and – even more important – as those actors that represent different societal interests and therefore backed different


33

types of cross-class compromises embodied in different redistributive regimes. With this, we do not mean to say that we see the impact of religion on modern welfare state development restricted to work through this partypolitical and electoral channel. As one important ‘transmitting’ channel, parties were never simple porte-paroles of religious doctrines (or other ideologies), but above all interested in maximizing votes, seats, or office. Parties usually need to attract specific electoral groups and have to satisfy specific societal interests if they are to be elected. Welfare state regimes can then be explained as formulas of political compromise between different electoral and societal groups, a compromise between farmers’ and workers’ interests in Scandinavia, and both an interparty and intraparty compromise between workers and the Catholic middle class on Europe’s continent. Yet, to understand which kind of political class compromises were struck in the different European countries, we need to analyze systematically the presence or absence of different societal cleavage lines. This perspective directs attention to the different logics of redistributive politics in different party system settings – something we hope to analyze in some more detail in future work. Our reassessment of the impact of religion on western welfare state development is an invitation for a renewed debate on the causal sequences behind the different institutional setups of contemporary welfare states. Contributions to the volume show that the threefold categorization between Social Democratic, Conservative, and Liberal welfare states hides rather than elucidates the causal factors in the development of the various welfare state regimes as we know them today. Taking into account the role of religion in welfare state development allows us to better understand some of the important features of various welfare states that in mainstream analyses are either treated as anomalies, remain only poorly explained, or are simply ignored. Among these features are, for instance, the ‘women friendliness’ of the French and Belgian welfare states (Morgan’s contribution), the liberal character of the Swiss welfare state (Obinger’s contribution), the ‘belated’ generosity of the Dutch welfare state (van Kersbergen’s contribution), or the strong role of voluntary organizations in the United States (Quadagno and Rohlinger’s contribution) versus a highly organized church-run third sector in continental Europe. Although we focus on the impact of religion on the welfare state, the findings of our book may also contribute to the debate on the reverse causal arrow that focuses on the impact of the welfare state on religiosity.

34


The central message of this evolving literature is that public policies affect religiosity to the extent that a large welfare state has a negative impact on religious activity and overall religiosity. Particularly intriguing is the finding that ‘religious social mobilization and political involvement are more likely in countries with less extensive welfare systems and, conversely, that the expansion of state-sponsored social welfare will diminish, though not eliminate, the role religion will play in politics’ (Gill and Lundsgaarde 2004: 401). We also accept this literature’s rejection of the crude modernization perspective on secularization, just as we have amended the modernization account of welfare state emergence and development. Although we cannot elaborate on this here, we feel that further research on this issue will benefit from the position we defend here by better specifying both the independent and dependent variables. Operationalizing the welfare state as the independent variable in terms of social spending probably fails to specify its impact very well. Taking more seriously the well-established criticism of the spending variable and including the qualitative regime specification are likely to improve the explanation of the cross-national variation in the welfare state’s impact on religiosity. Similarly (e.g., as Norris and Inglehart 2004 do), distinguishing between Catholicism and Protestantism and between Protestantism’s variants along the lines we propose in this book would specify the dependent variable much better. Our understanding of the link between the welfare state and religiosity would benefit from applying the insights we develop here for the reverse causal story. To conclude, the main problem that gave occasion to this book is that comparative research on religion and the welfare state has been incomplete because it has fairly exclusively, but mistakenly, focused on the role of political Catholicism in the development of social protection systems, wrongly interpreted or simply ignored the role of Protestantism, failed to differentiate between different strands of Protestantism, and put an undue emphasis on the impact of religious ideas on welfare state institutions. This volume corrects this view, fills a gap in the literature on religion and the welfare state, and introduces an adapted model of political class coalitions that takes into account societal cleavage structures to show how contrasting church–state constellations and conflicts in the north, center, and south of Europe; variation in the party-political representation of those cleavages; and differences in the social and political teachings of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and reformed Protestantism have led to different coalitions between lower and middle classes, which became manifest in the distinct institutional paths of welfare state development in the West.


35

References Alexander, Gerard (2004), France: Reform-Mongering between Majority Runoff and Proportionality, in Josep M. Colomer (ed), Handbook of Electoral System Choice, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 209–221. Baldwin, Peter (1990), The Politics of Social Solidarity. Class Bases of the European Welfare State 1875–1975, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benoit, Kenneth (2007), Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions, Annual Review of Political Science 10: 363–390. Berger, Peter L. (1990), The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York: Doubleday. Bergman, Torbjorn ¨ (2000), Sweden: When Minority Governments Are the Rule and Majority Coalitions the Exception, in Wolfgang C. Muller and Kaare Strom ¨ (eds), Coalition Governments in Western Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 192–230. Blais, André, Agnieszka Dobrzynska, and Indridi H. Indridason (2005), To Adopt or Not To Adopt Proportional Representation: The Politics of Institutional Choice, British Journal of Political Science 35 (1): 182–190. Boix, Carl (1999), Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies, American Political Science Review 93 (3): 609–624. Bruce, Steve (2002), God Is Dead: Secularization in the West, Oxford: Blackwell. Caramani, Daniele (2000), Elections in Western Europe since 1815: Electoral Results by Constituencies. The Societies of Europe, Basingstoke, Oxford: Macmillan. Caramani, Daniele (2004), The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press. Carstairs, Andrew McLaren (1980), A Short History of Electoral Systems in Western Europe, London: Allen & Unwin. Catterall, Peter (1993), Morality and Politics: The Free Churches and the Labour Party between the Wars, The Historical Journal 36 (3): 667–685. Chadwick, Owen (1975), The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, William Roberts, and Matt Golder (2006), Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory: Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws, Comparative Political Studies 39 (6): 679–708. Cusack, Thomas R., Torben Iversen, and David Soskice (2007), Economic Interests and the Origins of Electoral Systems, American Political Science Review 101 (3): 373–391. Dalton, Russell, Scott Flanagan, and Paul Beck (eds) (1984), Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Elgie, Robert (2005), France: Stacking the Deck, in Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell (eds), The Politics of Electoral Systems, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 119–136. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.

36


Esping-Andersen, GPsta, and Kees van Kersbergen (1992), Contemporary Research on Social Democracy, Annual Review of Sociology 18: 187– 208. Flora, Peter (1983), State, Economy and Society in Western Europe, 1815–1975, 2 vols. Chicago: St. James. Flora, Peter (with Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin) (1999), State Formation, Nation-building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan Based on His Collected Works, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flora, Peter, and Jens Alber (1981), Modernization, Democratization, and the Development of the Welfare State, in Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, New Brunswick, London: Transaction Books, 37–80. Flora, Peter, and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (1981), Introduction, in Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, New Brunswick, London: Transaction Books, 17–34. Franklin, Mark, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen (eds) (1992), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press. Gallagher, Michael, Michael Laver, and Peter Mair (2005), Representative Government in Modern Europe: Institutions, Parties, and Government, 3rd edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Gill, Anthony, and Erik Lundsgaarde (2004), State Welfare Spending and Religiosity: A Cross-National Analysis, Rationality and Society 16 (4): 399–436. Hart, Jennifer (1992), Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System 1820–1945, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Heidenheimer, Arnold J. (1983), Secularization Patterns and the Westward Spread of the Welfare State, 1883–1983: Two Dialogues about How and Why Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States Have Differed, in R.F. Tomasson (ed), The Welfare State, 1883–1983: Comparative Social Research vol. 6, Greenwich and London: JAI Press, 3–65. Huber, Evelyne, and John D. Stephens (2001), Development and the Crisis of the Welfare State. Parties and Policies in Global Markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Iversen, Torben (2006), Democracy and Capitalism, in Donald Wittman and Barry Weingast (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 601–623. Iversen, Torben, and David Soskice (2006), Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More Than Others, American Political Science Review 100 (2): 165–181. Johansen, Lars Norby (1986), Denmark, in Peter Flora (ed), Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States since World War II. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 293−381. Kalyvas, Stathis (1996), The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Korpi, Walter (2006), Power Resources and Employer-Centered Approaches in Explanations of Welfare States and Varieties of Capitalism: Protagonists, Consenters, and Antagonists, World Politics 58 (2): 167–206.


37

Lewis-Beck, Michael (1984), France: The Stalled Electorate, in Russell Dalton, Scott Flanagan, and Paul Beck (eds) (1984), Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 425–448. Lewis-Beck, Michael, and Andrew Skalaban (1992), France, in Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen (eds), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 167–178. Mackie, Tom, Renato Mannheimer, and Giacomo Sani (1992), Italy, in Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen (eds), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 238–254. Madeley, John (2000), Reading the Runes: The Religious Factor in Scandinavian Electoral Politics, in David Broughton and Hans-Martien ten Napel (eds), Religion and Mass Electoral Behaviour in Europe, London: Routledge, 28– 43. Manow, Philip (2004), The ‘Good, the Bad and the Ugly’: Esping-Andersen’s Welfare State Typology and the Religious Roots of the Western Welfare State, MPIfG working paper 04/3, Cologne, Germany: Max Planck Institut fur ¨ Gesellschaftsforschung. Manow, Philip (2009), Electoral Rules, Class Coalitions and Welfare State Regimes, or How to Explain Esping-Andersen with Stein Rokkan, SocioEconomic Review 7 (1), 101–121. Martin, David (1978), A General Theory of Secularization, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Mughan, Anthony (1992), Belgium, in Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen (eds), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 83– 100. Narud, Hanne Marthe, and Kaare StrPm (2000), Norway: A Fragile Coalitional Order, in Wolfgang C. Muller and Kaare StrPm (eds), Coalition Governments ¨ in Western Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 158–191. Neto, Octavio Amorim, and Gary W. Cox (1997), Electoral Institutions: Cleavage Structures and the Number of Parties, American Political Science Review 41 (1): 149–174. Norris, Pippa, and Inglehart, Ronald (2004), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, Sven (1986), Sweden, in Peter Flora (ed), Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States since World War II: Volume 1, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1–116. Palier, Bruno (2004), The Politics of the Reforms in Bismarckian Welfare Systems, Paper presented at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, May 16. Pappi, Franz Urban, and Peter Mnich (1992), Germany, in Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen (eds), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 179–204.

38


Parry, J. P. (1986), Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pelling, Henry (1965), Origins of the Labour Party, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Polanyi, Karl (1944 [1957]), The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. Przeworski, Adam, and John Sprague (1986), Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rodden, Jonathan (2005), Red States, Blue States, and the Welfare State: Political Geography, Representation and Government Policy around the World, Manuscript, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. Rogowski, Ronald (1987), Trade and the Variety of Democratic Institutions, International Organization, 41 (2): 203–223. Rokkan, Stein (1970), Citizens, Elections, Parties, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Schmidt, Manfred G. (1980), CDU und SPD an der Regierung. Ein Vergleich ¨ ihrer Politik in den Lander, Frankfurt and New York: Campus. ¨ Schmidt, Manfred G. (1982), Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik unter burgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen, Frankfurt and New York: Campus. Stephens, John D. (1979), The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, London: Macmillan. Stoll, Heather (2008), Social Cleavages and the Number of Parties: How the Measures You Choose Affect the Numbers You Get, Comparative Political Studies 41 (11), forthcoming. Thomassen, Jacques, Kees Aarts, and Henk van der Kolk (2000), Politieke veranderingen in Nederland 1971–1998: Kiezers en de smalle marges van de politiek, Den Haag: SDU. van Kersbergen, Kees (1994), The Distinctiveness of Christian Democracy, in David Hanley (ed), Christian Democracy in Europe: A Comparative Perspective, London and New York: Pinter. van Kersbergen, Kees (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State, London, New York: Routledge. van Kersbergen, Kees (1999), Contemporary Christian Democracy and the Demise of the Politics of Mediation, in Herbert Kitschelt, Gary Marks, Peter Lange, and John D. Stephens (eds), Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 346–370. Wilensky, Harold. L. (1981), Leftism, Catholicism, and Democratic Corporatism: The Role of Political Parties in Recent Welfare State Development, in Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 345– 382.

2 Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage Thomas Ertman

Karl Marx has long cast his shadow over the study of European political development. Beginning with the appearance of Barrington Moore’s classic The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, leading theorists of long-term political change in Western Europe have centered their analyses around class actors and coalitions. More recently, however, newer explorations of comparative party formation and consolidation have begun to take into account the central role played by religious conflict across the continent during the 19th and 20th centuries. Although such conflicts led to the creation of large and powerful ‘parties of religious defense’ in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy, no such parties emerged in Britain, France, the Iberian peninsula, or Scandinavia, despite high levels of religious tension there. Instead, in these latter cases, religious cleavages were absorbed into existing, often bipolar, party landscapes. As Philip Manow and Kees van Kersbergen argue in Chapter 1, such differences in party configuration with respect to religion, when combined with the effects of contrasting electoral regimes, go a long way toward explaining variations in welfare states found later in the 20th century. Building on the writings of Stein Rokkan and the more recent studies of Hans Righart, Stathis Kalyvas, and Andrew Gould, this contribution will attempt to account for the divergent ways in which both religion and class came to shape European party systems between the Congress of Vienna and World War II. Despite the significance of religious issues to most western Europeans throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, such issues played little or no role in the pioneering theoretical works that sought to make sense of the continent’s rocky road to modern liberal democracy and 39

40

Ertman

the party landscape that arose along the way. Both Barrington Moore’s (1966) attempt to account for divergent political outcomes in England, France, Germany, and Italy and Rueschemeyer et al.’s (1992) extension of Moore’s project to eight additional European states rely on a class coalition framework in which socioeconomic interests alone determine political behavior (Ertman 1998). Hence, it is hardly surprising that the only reference to religion in Moore’s (1966: 99) sections on Europe are a few sentences on the sale of church lands during the French Revolution. Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 50, 67) mention religion as a possible explanatory factor in their theoretical introduction and, in their discussion of the European cases, point to possible differences in patterns of peasant mobilization between Protestant and Catholic countries, but in the end argue that these differences are less significant than those between weak and strong agrarian elites (101–102). Michael Mann, in the second volume of his The Sources of Social Power (1993), sees Europe’s long 19th century (1760–1914) as marked by the rise of not only classes but also nations, yet once again religion figures little in these processes. This picture becomes more complicated when we turn to Gregory Luebbert’s ambitious, complex Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy (1991). Like all the authors mentioned previously, he views classes as fundamental political actors, but he sees them as operating principally through parties. For Luebbert, a key determinant of interwar party constellations and the political outcomes influenced by them is the strength of liberal movements prior to 1914. Such movements were strong, as in Britain, France, and Switzerland, where ‘their most natural potential constituency, the middle classes, were not politically divided by antagonisms rooted in religious, regional, linguistic and urban–rural differences’ (7). In these cases, he argues, religion tended in fact to reinforce middle-class liberal cohesion vis-a-vis conservatives (108). In Scandinavia, however, ` religious as well as territorial and cultural conflicts undermined this cohesion, thereby opening the door to social democratic victory in the 1930s; in Germany, Italy, and Spain, in contrast, middle-class liberal weakness paved the way for fascism, although for reasons rooted entirely in class coalition politics (66, 303–305; see also Ertman 1998). Both Mann’s attempt to broaden a class-based analytical framework through a complementary focus on nationalism and Luebbert’s effort to do the same through a consideration of parties and of nonclass (including religious) cleavages owe much to the work of Stein Rokkan, one of the few classical theorists of European politics to have taken religion seriously. Indeed, at the heart of his ‘geoeconomic-geopolitical model’ of

Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage

41

European development (Rokkan 1981) stands the impact of two revolutions – the industrial and the national – but his understanding of what the latter entailed is much more far reaching than that of Mann or Luebbert. Rokkan defines the national revolution as ‘the conflict between the central nation-building culture and the increasing resistance of the ethnically, linguistically, or religiously distinct subject populations in the provinces and peripheries . . .’ (1970: 102 [italics in original]; also Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 14). Furthermore, he sees this revolution as independent, rather than merely an epiphenomenon, of the industrial revolution and claims that it ‘produced the deepest and bitterest oppositions. The decisive battle came to stand between the aspirations of the mobilizing nation-state and the corporate claims of the churches. This was far more than a matter of economics’ (Rokkan 1970: 103 [italics in original]; also Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 15). Rokkan goes on to illustrate what he means by describing the emergence of Calvinist and Catholic ‘parties of religious defense’ in the Netherlands in response to state attempts to gain control of education. The result was the emergence of a ‘pillarized’ society in that country made up of self-contained politicoreligious communities built around networks of exclusive professional and leisure-time associations (see van Kersbergen, Chapter 5, this volume). He then suggests that the pattern of social and political organization that arose in 19th-century Scandinavia and Britain in the wake of nation building differed from that found in the Netherlands (Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 15–18; Rokkan 1970: 103–105). This point receives further elaboration in an earlier article by Rokkan (1967) on his native Norway. He shows there how an opposition movement to the central government emerged beginning in the 1830s that united urban professionals outside the state administration with a rural population seeking to defend its language and customs from state attempts at cultural centralization. An important element in this movement, which in the 1860s organized itself into a party known as the Venstre (Left), was opposition to the established Lutheran Church by those in both town and country inspired by Haugist revivalism (370–375). Hence, in this case, mobilization against state cultural policy did not lead to the emergence of a ‘party of religious defense’; rather, opposing religious groups were part of broader, rival political coalitions (the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ [Hoeyre]). As we have seen, Rokkan’s concern with nation building and the central role of religious conflict within it was not shared by subsequent theorists of European political development. This might have been otherwise had his ‘geoeconomic-geopolitical model’ actually succeeded in

42

Ertman

accounting in a parsimonious way for the pattern of democratic and nondemocratic outcomes in interwar Western Europe. This, however, it could not do. As Rokkan (1981: 88) himself was forced to admit, ‘One conclusion is clear; our five cases (of democratic failure, i.e., Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Portugal) fall into several distinctive cells on the (conceptual) map; they do not form one single cluster.’ This was even truer of the other western European states that did not succumb to dictatorship. Fortunately, the thread of Rokkan’s argument has been taken up once again in monographs by Hans Righart, Stathis Kalyvas, and Andrew Gould, all of whom explore in greater detail aspects of the relationship between national building and religious conflict only briefly touched on by the Norwegian political scientist. As such, they represent an indispensable starting point for any attempt to bring religion into the understanding of divergent European party landscapes. In 1986, historian Hans Righart published his comparative study De katholieke zuil in Europa (The Catholic Pillar in Europe), which has not received the attention it deserves because it appeared only in Dutch. In this work, Righart shows how, beginning in the 1880s, members of the lower clergy and lay activists in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands slowly built up a network of Catholic social, economic, leisure-time, and interest organizations as an act of defense against what was perceived as the relentless forward march of secularization brought about by social change – and above all by industrialization. In so doing, they took as their model the organizations of their political and ideological rivals, the liberals and the Socialists. This process faced extensive though ultimately futile resistance from both the ecclesiastical hierarchy and established, often patrician or aristocratic, Catholic elites fearful of its democratic potential. It culminated in the formation, first in Austria (1890/1907), and then in Switzerland (1912), Belgium (1921), and, finally, the Netherlands (1926), of precisely those ‘parties of religious defense’ mentioned by Rokkan above (Righart 1986: 28, 274). In his prize-winning book The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (1996), political scientist Stathis Kalyvas goes beyond the work of Righart by including the cases of Germany, Italy, and France, in addition to Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, although he does exclude Switzerland. If, for Kalyvas, the liberal, anticlerical policies of the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s feature more prominently as a direct cause of Catholic mobilization than they do for Righart, this is because his primary focus is on the process of party formation rather than the broader social activism and interest organization building (‘pillarization’) studied by his Dutch counterpart.


43

Kalyvas makes a number of points about this process that are relevant to our concerns. First, he illustrates the extent to which political conflict in much of Western Europe from the 1860s until World War I was dominated by questions of church–state relations, especially as they affected education. Second, he shows that the events surrounding the formation of confessional parties were extremely complex, involving autonomous actions and calculations by many groups of Catholic actors – the lower clergy, the national church hierarchy, the Papacy, and political and social activists – as well as by their liberal opponents. Third, once in existence, confessional parties both helped redefine what it meant to be Catholic and altered the dynamics of the entire party landscape surrounding them. Finally, he stresses that the mere presence of Catholics did not dictate the emergence and consolidation of a Catholic party. Although such parties did indeed appear in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, they did not do so in equally Catholic France (or in Spain or Portugal, not included in the study). Kalyvas explains the French ‘puzzle of nonformation’ by the existence there of a ‘regime cleavage’ that coincided with the clerical–anticlerical divide. As a result of this cleavage, the origins of which go back to the French Revolution and beyond, supporters of the Church tended to be monarchists and their opponents partisans of a republic. Hence, opposition to anticlerical measures during the crucial period from 1876 to 1889 was spearheaded by already organized monarchist conservatives. Given the fact that these forces had won the elections of 1871 and could possibly return to power again, it seemed more reasonable for the Church, according to Kalyvas, to entrust its defense to this political grouping rather than embark on the risky and costly strategy of building a new confessional party. By the time the French hierarchy realized that the monarchists had no future, the opportune moment to create such a party had passed (Kalyvas 1996: 137–141). Andrew Gould agrees that it was the ‘regime cleavage,’ first between neoabsolutist and constitutional monarchy, and then between monarchy and republic, that dominated French politics throughout the 19th century. He also traces in much greater detail than Kalyvas the way in which the clerical–anticlerical divide was at the heart of that cleavage: views on the Church and its proper place in society served to bind together otherwise economically, geographically, and ideologically diverse Conservative/Monarchist/Nationalist and Liberal/Republican camps until as late as Vichy (Gould 1999: 56–64). Gould further argues that the unifying focus provided by anticlericalism made possible the long periods of Liberal

44

Ertman

dominance in Belgium (1847–1884) and Switzerland (1848–1914 – not studied by Kalyvas), and that opposition to the privileged position of the Church of England served a similar function for the British liberal movement in its heyday under Gladstone (Gould 1999: 31–32, 88, 109, 120–123). What is more, it was the failure of the (overwhelmingly Protestant) German Liberals to win over the established Protestant churches to their cause, despite a common antagonism to Catholicism, that substantially weakened them when compared with their Swiss counterparts (77–78, 83). The picture of 19th- and early 20th-century European politics painted recently by Righart, Kalyvas, and Gould is quite different from that found among previous theorists with the exception of Rokkan. It is one in which the struggle between Protestants and Catholics, nation-building states and a reinvigorated Papacy, dissenting and established Protestant churches, and secular and religiously inspired worldviews were for most of the period as salient, if not more so, than the class struggle. What, then, might an alternative framework for understanding political – and especially party – development in Western Europe look like, one that, by building on the work of these three authors, Rokkan, and countless historians would give the role of religion its due? I suggest we start with the distinction mentioned previously between countries where ‘parties of religious defense’ emerged between 1870 and 1926 – Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and Germany – and those where they did not – Britain, France, the Scandinavian kingdoms, Spain, and Portugal. This distinction is significant because it correlates almost exactly (the Italian case is ambiguous) to differences between those European states that after 1945 developed ‘consociational’ or ‘concordance’ forms of democracy characterized by ‘oversized’ coalitions of left and right, negotiated settlement of disputes and a proportional distribution of offices, and those whose democracies could better be classified as ‘pluralist’ or ‘competitive,’ where majority rule has tended to dominate (Lehmbruch 1974; Lijphart 1975; Schmidt 1997: 231–240). Furthermore, it has, I would argue, deeper historical roots because Europe’s ‘consociational zone’ largely overlaps with the core area of the continent once occupied by the medieval and early modern Holy Roman Empire, which from the 11th century through (de jure) 1648 stretched from the Low Countries through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to the Pope’s domains in central Italy (and under Frederick II further south still). In contrast, the competitive democracies can be found to the west and north of this core on the lands of the western Carolingian


45

Empire and on Western Europe’s ‘periphery’ (Otto Hintze) – the British Isles, Iberia, and Scandinavia. Why does this geohistoric division matter? It matters because east Carolingian rulers and their successors – unlike their western Carolingian counterparts – were never able to recentralize power in a durable manner after the political collapse of the 9th and 10th centuries. As a result, the Holy Roman Empire developed as an area of political fragmentation and, after the Reformation, religious pluralism. Whereas rulers in France and in the periphery were engaged in state building and precocious nation building for centuries prior to the 19th century, it was only between 1830 (collapse of United Kingdom of the Netherlands and emergence of separate Belgium and Dutch states) and 1874 (creation of federal Switzerland 1848–1874, Italian unification 1861–1870, German unification 1867–1871, and Austrian Ausgleich 1867) that modern nation-states (Cisleithanian Austria in part excepted) finally appeared in the core zone. The formal creation of these polities was only the beginning, however. Their leaders now faced enormous tasks of state building, nation building, and economic integration. Between the 1840s and 1870s, the most common model chosen for this project was, as Kalyvas and Gould note, the liberal one: nations built around the rule of law, free markets, and the political participation of those citizens who were economically independent, but also around a state superior to all other institutions (especially the Church) and outfitted with a nonreligious education system reflecting that superiority. After his own traumatic experiences during 1848 – he was driven from Rome by revolutionaries – Pope Pius IX came to see this project as directed above all against the Church and religion more generally. The result was the ultramontane counteroffensive of 1864 to 1870 (Syllabus Errorum and Declaration of Papal Infallibility) that in turn helped provoke the new anticlerical backlash of the next two decades (Chadwick 1975: 111–113). In Austria (1868–1869), the Netherlands (1878), and Belgium (1879), this backlash mainly took the form of initiatives to secularize the school system, whereas governments in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy imposed more wide-ranging restrictions on the Church’s freedom to maneuver (Kulturkampf ). It was in the first instance these liberal attempts to use the ultramontane threat to drive forward their own nation-building projects that, as Kalyvas has argued, led to political mobilization and, ultimately, party formation on the part of Catholics and, in the Netherlands, fundamentalist Protestants (Anti-Revolutionary Party of Abraham Kuyper, 1879) opposed to the supposed liberal goal of a secular, godless state. Although

46

Ertman

centralized Catholic parties appeared relatively late in Switzerland (1912), Belgium (1921), and the Netherlands (1926), local and regional electoral organizations were active in these countries by the 1880s. Meanwhile, another group opposed to the economic face of the liberal state – social democratic workers – had begun to organize not only parties but also trade unions; cooperatives; and women’s, youth, and leisure-time associations. As Hans Righart (1986) and others showed, this challenge from a movement even more ungodly than liberalism spurred the religious to create their own, vast associational infrastructures of which the confessional parties became merely the political arm. Hence, by the eve of World War I, all six successor states of the medieval Holy Roman Empire had come to possess, despite their great differences in size, culture, and level of economic development, political landscapes that shared a striking common feature: the presence of at least one (in the Netherlands: two) politically organized religious subcultures that were in most respects mirror images of the social democratic subcultures with which they were in electoral and ideological competition. Both Catholics/Calvinists and social democrats had succeeded within their respective camps or ‘pillars’ in creating something like self-contained life worlds, alternative communities that shielded their members to some extent from the secular, free market state that many of them rejected. As such, they had realized an opposition strategy best articulated not by Marx, but by the Dutch fundamentalist Protestant Abraham Kuyper whose battle cry had been soevereiniteit in eigen kring, or sovereignty within one’s own sphere of life (Ertman 2000: 168). It was in that portion of the political spectrum outside the religious and social democratic camps that these six cases differed among themselves. In Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands before 1914, liberal movements offered the only alternatives to confessionalism or Socialism, although these movements were fissiparous, most often divided into conservative, moderate, and radical wings. Competition from their increasingly well-organized opponents, however, forced some degree of liberal consolidation: in Switzerland, it led to the founding of the powerful Freisinnig-demokratische Partei der Schweiz (Freethinking-Democratic Party [FDP]) in 1894 (Gruner 1977: 54–55, 74–78). In Belgium (1900) and the Netherlands (1912), such competition forced liberal factions to unite around common programs of universal and equal manhood suffrage, free trade, and the defense of public schools (Lamberts 1993: 371; Taal 1980: 527–528). Although the liberal milieu in all three countries also possessed its own network of associations, newspapers, and interest


47

groups, these remained smaller and less dense than those of the confessionals or social democrats (Ertman 2000: 170–173). The contribution of the confessional camp in Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the democratization of their lands is an ambiguous one. It was the cantons that would later form the bastions of the Swiss Catholic party that opposed the creation of a federal and democratic state promoted by the Radicals, thereby provoking the short civil war of 1847. Thereafter, however, this milieu became a firm supporter of the new Confederation. In Belgium, it was radical liberals and Socialists who after 1881 began to demand the transformation of a parliamentary monarchy with limited suffrage into a (male) democracy. The Catholic party was split over this demand, but following a general strike in 1893, a compromise was reached that allowed for the introduction of universal manhood suffrage, but with plural voting. To stem the decline of the liberals and prevent the polarization of the country into a (Dutchspeaking) Catholic Flanders and a (French-speaking) Socialist Wallonia, the progressive faction of the dominant Catholic parliamentary group broke ranks in 1899 to permit the introduction of proportional representation. Plural voting was finally removed with the support of all parties in the wake of World War I in 1919, but liberals and Socialists blocked Catholic party attempts to extend the vote to women as well, fearful that the latter would vote overwhelmingly for the confessionals. As a result, universal suffrage was delayed until 1948 (Gilissen 1958: 121–141). In the Netherlands, as in Belgium, Socialists and left liberals campaigned most tirelessly for universal manhood suffrage, whereas the religious parties were divided on the issue, with the Catholics generally opposed and the Calvinist ARP split. All men finally received the vote in 1917 through an all-party compromise (the Pacificatie) that called for the state to subsidize on an equal footing all three national school systems (public, Catholic, and fundamentalist Calvinist). Women were enfranchised 3 years later (Kossmann 1978: 326–328, 350–361, 555–556). If the record of the confessional parties in promoting full democratization was mixed, their support for it during the troubled interwar years was crucial and unambiguous. The basis of this support was the willingness of former rivals – liberals and Catholics in Switzerland; liberals, Catholics, and Calvinists in the Netherlands; and liberals, Catholics, and Socialists in Belgium – to work closely together in defense of the democratic system. Thus, the formerly hegemonic Swiss FDP shared power on the federal executive with the Catholic Conservative People’s Party through this period, and seven of the nine interwar Dutch cabinets

48

Ertman

were composed either of the confessional parties alone (4) or the latter in coalition with the liberals (3). The degree of cross-party cooperation in Belgium was even more remarkable: half (9 of 18) of the cabinets between 1918 and 1940 contained representatives of all three camps, with six more formed by Catholics and liberals and two others by Catholics and Socialists (Kossmann 1978: 718–733; Gould 1999: 87; Capoccia 2005: 108–137). Gerhard Lehmbruch pointed to the historical precedents for this willingness to share power in many institutional arrangements unique to Europe’s Holy Roman ‘core’: the periodic meetings of the Swiss cantons (and, one might add, the Estates of the Low Countries) and the interaction among members of the German Confederation (post-1815) and the Empire itself (pre-1806) (Lehmbruch 1974). Although cross-class confessional parties clearly played a crucial role in consolidating and defending democracy in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, they were unable or unwilling to accomplish the same task, despite the traditions of accommodation and concordantia cited by Lehmbruch (1974), in Italy, Germany, and Austria. Why was this so? To answer this question, we must look once again at the character of the political forces outside the Catholic and Socialist camps. As we have seen, in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, it was above all alliances between confessional parties and their former liberal enemies that served to protect democracy during the crisis-filled interwar decades. This was so because the Socialist camp, even in Belgium, was not yet accepted as a fully ‘normal’ coalition partner, a development that would only occur after World War II. In Germany, Austria, and Italy, however, the non-Catholic and non-Socialist forces were weak and divided, a result, I would argue, of the ‘rule rigging’ employed in all three countries before 1914 to aid these forces in the face of the threat posed by highly organized, disciplined confessional and social democratic political forces. In the end, the rejection of parliamentarization (Germany, Prussia, Austria), the use of voting by tax class (Prussia, Austria pre-1907), or of the technique of trasformismo combined with government-sponsored electoral manipulation (Italy) only left liberal and conservative parties less able to face up to the pressures of truly open electoral competition after 1918/1919. In both Italy and Germany, the consequences were similar: a weak and fragmented liberal and moderate conservative ‘camp’ unable to provide consistent and effective support to those Socialists and Catholics attempting to defend democracy. Worse still, it was precisely this growing vacuum on the moderate right that created the political space for charismatic


49

fascist leaders who argued that only they were capable of uniting all those outside the red and black (clerical) subcultures into a movement that would break the power of these enemies of the nation once and for all by putting an end to all encapsulated subcultures, creating thereby the single national community or Volksgemeinschaft. In Austria, the situation was more complicated. The ‘third force’ there had always been represented by German nationalism, but this camp was weakened after the creation of the Republic both by the endorsement on the part of all parties of unification with Germany and the simultaneous ban on that unification in the Versailles Treaty. The result after 1920 was a dangerous polarization between the Socialists and the governing Christian Socials that only became worse in the late 1920s with the rise of the Austrofascist Heimwehr and National Socialism. Faced with perceived threats from both the powerful Socialist camp and a victorious Hitler, that faction of the Christian Social party was able to gain the upper hand, which favored an alliance with the Heimwehr, thereby leading to the creation in 1933/1934 of a ‘clerico-fascist’ dictatorship allied with Italy and to civil war with the Left (Simon 1978). Hence in Austria, as in Germany, a Catholic party that had supported the democratic system during the 1920s turned away from it after 1930, although in this case in the direction of outright dictatorship rather than the presidentialism or mild authoritarianism favored by some in the Zentrum. This is less surprising in light of the legacy of right-wing populism and antisemitism that the Christian Socials’ dominant figure Karl Lueger had bequeathed to the party. In summary, then, the contribution of religious parties to the advent and consolidation of democracy in these three cases was on the whole negative when compared to the role played by their counterparts in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium: in Italy, because the long papal ban (until the eve of World War I) on national political activity prevented the Partito Populare from becoming the hegemonic force its Christian Democratic successor would later be; in Germany, because the support of the entire Catholic political movement for democracy had never been unequivocal, certainly before 1918 but also thereafter; and in Austria, because it was the clerical party itself that, despite its positive role in the 1920s, ultimately led the country down the road to dictatorship. Yet, it is important to remember that confessional parties in the first three cases were also not on the whole advocates of democracy prior to World War I. What transformed them into unwavering supporters of that cause thereafter, I would argue, was the broader political context, one in which

50

Ertman

they benefited from strong and reliable democratic allies, especially on the center right. And this was precisely what their counterparts in Italy, Germany, and Austria lacked. However, after the defeat of 1945, all three countries reintroduced a (far more durable) form of democracy that, in the case of Austria, was clearly consociational and, in Germany and Italy, exhibited strong consociational features. The integration of religious groups and concerns into political life followed a very different pattern outside Western Europe’s historical ‘core.’ Despite the presence of three nations (France, Spain, Portugal) that, like Belgium, were overwhelmingly Catholic, and a fourth (the United Kingdom) that, like the Netherlands, possessed both large Catholic and Protestant dissenting minorities, no confessional parties appeared there before the 1930s, and if they did emerge thereafter (CEDA in Spain, MRP in France), they were short lived. Rather, the political landscape tended to be divided throughout most of the 19th century into two broad groupings, Liberals and Conservatives (or Liberal-Conservatives) in Spain (where the terms originated), Portugal, and Britain; Liberals, then Republicans and Conservatives in France; and Left and Right in Scandinavia. The root cause of this contrasting binary structure (as opposed to the confessionalsSocialists-liberals and/or conservatives model present in the ‘core’) can be found, I would argue, in the much earlier onset – during the late 17th and 18th centuries – of something like nation building in these countries. It was during this period that some segments of an emerging public sphere began demanding – and some statesmen tried to implement – reforms aimed at improving the quality of state administration, spreading education, modernizing the economy, and, in some cases, limiting the prerogatives of the crown. Such reforms inevitably required the curtailing or even elimination of privileges enjoyed by powerful institutions and groups such as the monarch, the Church, existing officeholders, and noble landowners, and, hence, they provoked strong resistance. The eventual result was the emergence of a cleavage around supporters and opponents of reform, which often overlapped with that between supporters and opponents of the Church. Yet, since the reform agenda at this time was filled with so many items, this cleavage was not driven during the 18th and early 19th centuries primarily or exclusively by religious issues. However, as ever more tasks on the reform agenda – the introduction of constitutional monarchy, the end to ‘feudal remnants,’ the freeing of markets, administrative professionalization – were accomplished, the lingering privileges and influence of the established churches, especially in the area of education, loomed ever larger. This, along with the aggressive


51

(although ultimately defensive) ultramontanism of Pius IX, explains the ever greater role that anticlericalism came to play from about the 1850s in holding together the disparate elements of the Liberal/Republican camp in Britain, France, Iberia, and even Scandinavia. Yet, the role of religious issues and identities in structuring the political landscape went further than this: it also introduced a crucial ‘cross-cutting cleavage’ that softened class and regional antagonisms and ensured that the opposing liberal/conservatives or left/right blocks would be economically and geographically diverse in character, thereby preventing the kind of polarization that could lead to instability and even civil war, as well as rendering the alternation of the two camps in power more palatable. Mention has already been made of the way Republicans in France used anticlericalism to create a broad-based movement uniting peasants and local notables in regions traditionally hostile to the Church with urban democrats in support of the new regime. Historians have also recently come to recognize the absolute centrality of religious issues to 19th-century British politics as well (e.g., Parry 1986). Thus, from the 1860s, the most important component of the Liberal Party was comprised of dissenting Protestants from the Midlands and the North who furnished the party with its most fervent activists and reliable voters. Liberal leader W. E. Gladstone then skillfully used a number of issues with a religious component – Church rates, Irish disestablishment, state support for confessional schools – to bind this group to the more moderate (and aristocratic) Whig-liberals who shared the nonconformist wish to limit the privileges of the established church. At the same time, however, the image of the Liberals as dominated culturally by ‘killjoy’ teetotalers and puritan moralists drove many in the working class to vote for the Tories, who cleverly positioned themselves as the party willing to defend the English working man’s traditional pleasures of beer and skittles and held many meetings in public houses (Nossiter 1970: 177–180; Parry 1986: 5–8, 80–81, 199–204; Harrison 1996: 181–182). It was the mixed-class support base of both parties, to a significant degree induced by the religious cleavage, that led both groupings to support suffrage extensions in 1867 and 1884 to 1885. Political dynamics in 19th-century Scandinavia bear a certain resemblance to those in Britain, and with good reason. From the 1830s onward, the evangelical revival that began in England in the late 1700s began to arrive there, sometimes brought directly by Methodist preachers. The spread of dissenting ‘free churches’ above all among peasants across rural Norway, Sweden, and Denmark led to calls by their supporters

52

Ertman

both to broaden political participation and to limit the privileges of the state Lutheran churches. It was these groups that created a solid base for reformist Left (Venstre) parties in all three countries, whereas the supporters of the established political, economic, and ecclesiastical order supported the Right (Hoeyre). This identification between the Left and dissent was strengthened with the appearance of strong temperance movements across Scandinavia, which, as in Britain, drove antitemperance voters to the Right. While, again as in Britain, the Venstre parties would increasingly cede their position after the 1890s to Labor parties, the latter would also continue to draw support from the dissenting/temperance milieu. In all three cases, it was pressure from the liberal/social democratic left (in the broadest sense) with its hard core of religiously motivated members and voters that brought full (male) parliamentary democracy to Norway in 1898, Denmark in 1901, and Sweden in 1917 (Rokkan 1967: 372–379, 391–395, 415–420; Derry 1979: 229–232, 257–268; Lundkvist 1992; Pettersson 1996). As Philip Manow and Kees van Kersbergen imply in Chapter 1, it was the switch from majoritarian electoral systems to proportional representation in Sweden in 1909, Denmark in 1920, and Norway in 1921 that pushed these countries away from the dualistic party landscape characteristic of older nation builders like Britain toward a four-part configuration: Conservatives, right and left Liberals, and Social Democrats in Denmark and Conservatives, Liberals, Social Democrats, and agrarian Center parties in Norway and Sweden (Derry 1979: 261; Caramani 2004: 136–142). Although the positive contribution of dissenting and antiestablished church groups to both the advent and consolidation of democracy in Britain, France, and Scandinavia is clear, why did a religiously conditioned bipolar political landscape not protect the republican regime in interwar Spain? The answer lies once again, as with the German, Italian, and Austrian cases, with the endemic use of electoral manipulation after 1876 in a way that undermined the potentially beneficial effects of a two-party system with a strong clerical–anticlerical cleavage. Such a cleavage was, as in France, central to the struggle between Liberals and Conservatives in Spain between 1815 and 1874 and, even more than in France, this struggle led to numerous revolutions and coups as one side and then the other gained the upper hand. In 1876, however, in the wake of the collapse of the First Republic and the restoration of the monarchy, the conservative politician Antonio Canovas del Castillo introduced a political system devised to defuse this ´ conflict and bring stability to the country. It involved the systematic


53

alternation of liberals and conservatives in office (the turno), an alternation ensured by widespread electoral manipulation and a reliance on local strongmen (caciques). Both parties in effect converted themselves into patronage machines and put the divisions between them, especially on the issue of the Church, to one side (Linz 1967, 198–205; Callahan 1984, 273–277). This “freezing” of the political landscape with the help of clientelistic methods, a development that spread to Portugal for similar reasons soon afterward (Tavares de Almeida 1991), had the unfortunate effect of preventing the emergence of modern parties of the moderate center and right until well after 1900. As in Italy, Germany, and Austria, it was the marked weakness of such parties in 1930s Spain, and specifically the collapse of the centrist Radicals at the 1936 elections when they lost 100 of their 104 seats in the Cortes, which brought about the extreme political polarization that was the proximate cause of the July 17 military coup against the Republic (Payne 2006). Interestingly, however, Spain after the death of Franco eventually returned to a two-party system, but this time an honest one capable of protecting the new democracy. As the social science literature has come increasingly to realize, the religious cleavage stood at the center of political life during the formative period of the Western European party landscape. In the older nation builders such as Britain and the Scandinavian kingdoms, this cleavage both shaped and was absorbed into a dichotomous division between left and right camps that from the 1890s onward gave way to a tripartite (Labour/Liberal/Conservative) party configuration. The introduction of proportional representation in the later polities between 1909 and 1921 then permitted the emergence and consolidation, unlike in majoritarian Britain, of a fourth, agrarian-based political force that, as both Peter Baldwin (1990) and this volume argue, played a crucial role in construction of Esping-Andersen’s social democratic welfare state. In the newer nation builders, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Austria, in contrast, confessional conflict led directly to the formation of ‘parties of religious defense,’ to use Rokkan’s term, that from the start also indelibly marked the social policy regimes of these states. References Baldwin, Peter (1990), The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State 1875–1975, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Callahan, William (1984), Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

54

Ertman

Capoccia, Giovanni (2005), Defending Democracy: Reactions to Extremism in Interwar Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caramani, Daniele (2004), The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chadwick, Owen (1975), The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Derry, T. K. (1979), A History of Scandinavia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ertman, Thomas (1998), Democracy and Dictatorship in Interwar Western Europe Revisited, World Politics 50 (3): 475–505. Ertman, Thomas (2000), Liberalization, Democratization and the Origins of a ‘Pillarized’ Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Belgium and the Netherlands, in Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (eds), Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 155– 178. Gilissen, John (1958), Le Régime représentatif en Belgique depuis 1790, Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre. Gould, Andrew (1999), Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gruner, Erich (1977), Die Parteien in der Schweiz, 2nd edition, Bern: Francke Verlag. Harrison, Brian (1996), The Transformation of British Politics 1860–1995, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kalyvas, Stathis (1996), The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kossmann, E. H. (1978), The Low Countries 1780–1940, Oxford: Clarendon. Lamberts, E. (1993), België sinds 1830, in J. C. H. Blom and E. Lamberts (eds), Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden, Rijswijk: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 341–416. Lehmbruch, Gerhard (1974), A Non-Competitive Pattern of Conflict Management in Liberal Democracies: The Case of Switzerland, Austria and Lebanon, in Kenneth McRae (ed), Consociational Democracy: Political Accommodation in Segmented Societies, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 90–97. Lijphart, Arend (1975), The Politics of Accommodation, 2nd edition, Berkeley: University of California Press. Linz, Juan (1967), The Party System of Spain Past and Future, in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: CrossNational Perspectives, New York: Free Press, 197–282. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan (1967), Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction, in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free Press, 1–64. Luebbert, Gregory (1991), Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lundkvist, Sven (1992), Die Volksbewegungen und das ‘Modell Schweden’, in Robert Bohn and Michael Engelbrecht (eds), Weltgeltung und Regionalitaet: Nordeuropa um 1990, Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 261–267.


55

Mann, Michael (1993), The Sources of Social Power. Vol. II. The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, Barrington (1966), The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston: Beacon Press. Nossiter, T. J. (1970), Aspects of Electoral Behavior in English Constituencies, 1832–1868, in Erik Allardt and Stein Rokkan (eds), Mass Politics: Studies in Political Sociology, New York: Free Press, 160–283. Parry, Jonathan (1986), Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party 1867–1875, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Payne, Stanley (2006), The Collapse of the Spanish Republic 1933–1936: Origins of the Civil War, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pettersson, Lars (1996), In Search of Respectability: Popular Movements in Scandinavian Democratization. The Swedish Case, in Lars Rudebeck and Olle Toernquist (eds), Democratisation in the Third World, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 77–94. Righart, Hans (1986), De katholieke zuil in Europa, Amsterdam, Meppel: Boom. Rokkan, Stein (1967), Geography, Religion, and Social Class: Crosscutting Cleavages in Norwegian Politics, in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free Press, 367–444. Rokkan, Stein (1970), Nation-Building, Cleavage Formation and the Structuring of Mass Politics, in Stein Rokkan (ed), Citizens, Elections, Parties, New York: David McKay, 72–142. Rokkan, Stein (1981), Territories, Nations, Parties: Toward a GeoeconomicGeopolitical Model for the Explanation of Variations within Western Europe, in Richard Merritt and Bruce Russett (eds), From National Development to Global Community, London: George Allen and Unwin, 70–95. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John Stephens (1992), Capitalist Development and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Schmidt, Manfred (1997), Demokratietheorien, 2nd edition, Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Simon, Walter (1978), Democracy in the Shadow of Imposed Sovereignty: The First Republic of Austria, in Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (eds), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 80–121. Taal, Gerrit (1980), Liberalen en Radicalen in Nederland, 1872–1901, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ˜ e Caciquismo no Portugal OitocenTavares de Almeida, Pedro (1991), Eleiçoes tista (1868–1890), Lisbon: Difel.

3 The Religious Foundations of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe Kimberly J. Morgan

European countries are increasingly under pressure to help parents, and particularly mothers of young children, combine paid work with family life. Low fertility rates and the prospect of future labor shortages as the baby boom generation retires have put the problem of balancing work and family onto the political agenda. Even so, the pace of change has been slow in many countries. In Germany, for example, skepticism about mothers working when their children are young and the fact that local governments and the voluntary sector claim responsibility for social services have slowed large-scale changes in family policy (Evers et al. 2005). In the Netherlands, governments have sought to increase women’s workforce participation, but this has largely been through encouraging part-time work, thereby preserving much maternal care at home. At the same time, other European countries – the Nordic countries, France, and Belgium – have a longer tradition of helping mothers work for pay through parental leave, child care, and working-time policies, and they tend to have both higher rates of female labor force participation and higher fertility rates (Table 3.1). These policy differences and their apparent stability raise questions about why countries went off on diverging policy trajectories and stayed on those paths. This chapter traces the origins of these diverging pathways by exploring the historical roots of policies for working mothers. Temporally, the focus is on two periods: 1) the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a critical time in Western Europe for the formation of political parties and early social programs; and 2) the three decades following World War II, when policy legacies and the nature of party systems would influence public policies toward working mothers. 56

Religious Foundations of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe

57

table 3.1. Employment of Mothers by the Age of Their Youngest Child and Fertility Rates (2002, 2004) Percentage of Employed Mothers with Children

Sweden Austria Denmark Netherlands Belgium France Switzerland Germany Italy Finland

Younger Than 3 Years

Ages 3–6 Years

Fertility Rates

72.9 80.1 71.4 74.2 70.4 66.2 58.2 56.0 54.4 32.2

82.5 70.3 77.5 68.2 67.4 63.2 64.5 58.1 51.7 74.7

1.75 1.40 1.78 1.73 1.64 1.91 1.42 1.36 1.33 1.80

Note: These figures overstate the proportion of women who are actually at work in countries such as Sweden or Austria, where women on a lengthy parental leave are counted as employed, whereas they do not count women on care leaves in France, Germany, or Finland as employed, even though they hold on to their jobs while on leave. Although at first glance it appears that Austrian mothers work in very high numbers, more than half are on parental leave, and only a small proportion work full time. Thus, a recent study showed that although 71.9 per cent of Austrian mothers with a youngest child younger than 3 years were counted as ‘employed’, 40 per cent were on parental leave, 17.2 per cent worked part time, and 14.7 per cent worked full time.1 The figures also do not distinguish between full- and part-time work. Source: OECD 2005.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were three patterns of religious practice, religious divisions, and related political conflict that would have lasting significance for gendered aspects of the welfare state: 1) a Nordic model, consisting of religious homogeneity, church– state fusion, and a resulting lack of religiously based conflict; 2) a clerical– anticlerical mode of contestation, found in Catholic countries with strong anticlerical forces (Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume); and 3) an accommodationist model in countries where religious forces emerged preeminent and would have their interests accommodated. During a formative stage of European political development, these different patterns of church– state relations and religious cleavages shaped the strength of religious forces in both politics and society, affecting political parties and the strength of a religiously based voluntary sector. 1

Babies and Bosses: Reconciling Work and Family Life. Volume 2: Austria, Ireland, Japan (Paris: OECD, 2003: 48).

58

Morgan

These patterns also influenced law and early public policies for women, children, and families in a way that was indicative of emerging ideologies about gender roles and the appropriate relationship between the state and the family. In turn, the varying policy approaches laid the foundations for the way states would respond to family change and mothers’ employment during the ‘golden age’ of welfare state expansion. In the Nordic countries, a statist family policy tradition reflected the fusion of church and state, which essentially transferred responsibility for the family from the church to secular political authority. Secularization also shaped the conceptualization of women as individuals with rights independent of their familial ties and thus contributed to the decline of patriarchal law. It is of little surprise, then, that in many Nordic countries the state would take an active role in promoting gender equality and dismantling the male breadwinner model in the late 20th century. In continental Europe, in contrast, patriarchal familialism was more entrenched, and state involvement in family affairs was circumscribed by a long-standing practice of leaving family welfare to religious authorities and civil society. The exception was in some of the more strongly anticlerical countries, such as France, where the state took control of this domain and was more actively involved in policies for children and families. In addition, anticlericalism made the left more willing to challenge the traditional gender ideologies of conservative parties and actors. In contrast, in countries such as Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands, not only did Christian Democrats hew to a conservative vision of the family, but left parties were weak challengers to these views. To develop this argument, this chapter first lays out broad differences in gendered welfare regimes, proceeds to a discussion of the historical roots of these regimes, and then discusses policy change during the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, a period when some countries began adopting policies to support mothers’ employment. The chapter wraps up with a brief discussion of why change in work-family policies has been slow in many European countries.

3.1 explaining patterns of work-family policy Feminist research on the welfare state has highlighted various ways to conceptualize and measure the gendered effects of social policy (Orloff 1993; O’Connor et al. 1999; Gornick and Meyers 2003). This chapter focuses on policies for mothers’ employment because they address a


59

period of economic vulnerability in women’s lives – that of childbirth and the years of raising (young) children. Enabling mothers to remain in paid work assures access to the more generous benefits and programs of the welfare state, reduces dependence on familial relations, and diminishes the likelihood of poverty in the event of single parenthood. Given the difficulty of securing these protections in private markets, this is precisely where the welfare state can have a tremendous impact on women’s autonomy and well-being. Countries differ significantly in their policies for working mothers. Some scholars label the Nordic countries ‘woman friendly’ because of their extensive public child care systems and generous parental leave policies. In addition, individual taxation and entitlement to social benefits remove disincentives to women’s labor force participation. Norway and Finland differ in that their supply of public child care has been more limited and they both provide long care leaves for parents with children younger than 3 years (Leira 2006). Although Sweden and Denmark also offer lengthy parental leaves, they have rejected these longer care leaves as detrimental to women’s place in paid work.2 The situation in continental Europe is more varied. Countries such as Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands long exemplified the male breadwinner model: joint taxation of married couples, entitlement to social benefits, and the lack of full-time child care deterred mothers from paid work while their children were young. Many European countries provide preschool education for nearly all eligible age categories (Table 3.2), although these programs are often open for only part of the day and cannot serve as a reliable form of child care. In recent years, governments in some of these countries have sought to encourage mothers’ employment through supportive public policies. Nonetheless, the imprint of past policy orientations is still visible in the low provision of public day care in these countries (Table 3.2). Although Dutch child care provision seems more extensive, nearly all children attend programs part time, and so the supply of places is actually half that listed in Table 3.2. In 2007, the German government enacted plans to significantly expand the number of day care places for children younger than 3 years. A continuing problem 2

The difference between a ‘care leave’ and a ‘parental leave’ is the following: care leaves usually pay flat-rate, relatively low benefits (e.g., $500/month), for 2 to 3 years for each child. These leaves aim to encourage mothers, at least those who make fairly low wages, to leave paid work for a long period of time. Parental leaves are usually paid as a percentage of income and are shorter, ranging from 4 months in France to 13 months in Sweden.

Morgan

60 table 3.2. Percentage of Children in Formal Child Care Services, 2004–2005

0–2 Year Olds Austria Belgium Denmark

Finland

France Germany

Italy Netherlands Norway

Sweden

13 31 61∗ r 15 (younger than 1) r 85 (ages 1–2) 25∗ r 1 (younger than 1) r 37 (ages 1–2) 41 9 r 3 Western Lander ¨ r 37 Eastern Lander ¨ 23 26 35∗ r 2 (younger than 1) r 62 (ages 1–2) 45∗ r 0 (younger than 1) r 67 (ages 1–2)

3–5 Year Olds (or Until School Age) 85 100 95

69

100 90 r 88 Western Lander ¨ r 100 Eastern Lander ¨ 94 91 91

95

∗

Author’s estimate based on data from NOSOSCO. Latter data are used for Nordic countries because in some cases figures reported to the EU are only for children ages 1 to 2 years. Formal child care includes preschool, compulsory education, center-based services outside school, collective day care, family day care, and professionally certified child minders. Sources: European Commission, Employment and Social Affairs DG (2006). On the subnational breakdown in Germany, see National Action Plan for Employment Policy (2004: 91) and NOSOSCO (2007).

for working parents, however, is the lack of full-time kindergartens for 3- to 6-year-olds and the short primary school day. As for parental leave, Austria has a long, ill-paid care leave that encourages mothers to take long absences from paid employment, and Germany had a similar leave policy in place until 2006, when a major reform was enacted (discussed more as follows). France, Belgium, and Italy fit imperfectly in a third category that overlaps with the Christian Democratic cluster. These welfare states have maintained a male breadwinner flavor, which is evident in the continuing


61

reliance on joint taxation and entitlement to benefits through marriage in some cases.3 All three have long offered a fairly short parental leave (although Italy extended its leave to 10 months in 1999), and France has developed a long and badly paid care leave, the effect of which has been to reduce mothers’ labor force participation (Bonnet and Labbé 1999). However, one commonality of these countries is their universal preschool provision for 3- to 6-year-olds and, in the case of France and Belgium, substantial child care subsidies or services for children younger than 3 years. Preschools are open for 8 hours a day in Italy and match the lengthy school day in Belgium and France.4 Although this does not entirely cover the work day, these programs are free and universally available. How can we explain these patterns of public policy? One approach argues that where social democratic parties are politically powerful, they have created ‘woman-friendly’ welfare states that support mothers’ employment (Esping-Andersen 1999; Huber and Stephens 2000). The Scandinavian countries offer proof for the argument because they have powerful social democratic parties, widely available child care, and high rates of mothers’ employment. A related view holds that the key for the Scandinavian countries was the mobilization of women within labor unions and social democratic parties, which persuaded these actors to embrace mothers’ employment (Bergqvist et al. 1999; Naumann 2005). These studies have much to recommend them, particularly as the extensive public sector of the Nordic welfare states has been a major draw, and support, for working mothers. Nonetheless, juxtaposing one particularly quantifiable outcome – publicly provided or funded child care provision for children younger than 3 years – with social democratic power resources shows a mismatch between social democratic power and child care provision (Figure 3.1). The historical record also reveals that social democratic parties have not always been very committed champions of gender equality. Instead, these parties have behaved differently on gender issues in different countries, at different time points (Quataert 2001).

3

4

France has mandatory joint taxation of married couples, Italy does not, and Belgium has optional joint taxation. See O’Donoghue and Sutherland (1998). Joint taxation tends to depress married women’s employment because in a steeply progressive tax system, the ‘second income’ that is piled on top of the first is taxed at high marginal rates. This effect is mitigated in France by the relatively low proportion of people who pay any income tax. Often 8:30 am–3:30 pm in Belgium, 8:30 am–4:30 pm in France, and sometimes with one afternoon off per week.

Morgan

62 90 80 70

percentages

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Austria Belgium Denmark Finland Social Democratic power

France

Germany

Italy

Norway

Sweden

Children in public child care

figure 3.1. Social democratic political power and child care provision. Social democratic power is a measure of the average percentage of cabinet seats held by Social Democrats, 1960–2000. The child care measure is the percentage of children younger than 3 years in publicly provided or funded programs. Source: Evelyne Huber, Charles Ragin, and John D. Stephens, Comparative Welfare States Data Set, Northwestern University and University of North Carolina, 1997; child care data: see table two. German data are for West Germany only.

Rather than assume social democratic parties to be inevitable enthusiasts for mothers’ employment, we need to understand why their behavior has differed in various contexts and time periods. An alternative approach takes into account the deeper cultural or historic factors that have shaped attitudes toward mothers’ employment and thus influenced political parties’ ideology and behavior. In the case of mothers’ employment, social class shapes views on this issue such that working-class people often hold more traditional orientations toward mothers’ employment than middle-class, white collar workers. For that reason, it is logical that social democratic parties would not be enthusiastic champions of public child care or parental leave policies while their base is largely blue collar. With the decline of the working class, however, these parties must seek middle-class support to survive, creating an opening for a more feminist perspective on women’s employment and other gender equality issues.


63

The ability of social democratic parties to make this ideological shift is likely to be affected by the presence or absence of parties that champion more conservative gender orientations and could politicize the issue of working mothers. If conservative parties have the potential to lure working- and middle-class voters, this could make it especially difficult for social democratic parties to adopt a more ‘postmaterialist’ stance toward gender issues. More generally, the presence of powerful Christian Democratic parties in a political system is indicative of the strength of traditional values in the population and could influence the strategies of their political competitors. Strong agrarian parties could have a similar effect: these parties were important allies of Nordic social democrats in the construction of universalistic social programs, but would not necessarily favor expanded public child care, for which their rural voters often had less use. Thus, although the decline of the agrarian party in Sweden created an opening for policies to promote mothers’ employment, the strength of the agrarian party in Finland had the opposite effect, producing a somewhat more traditional cast to work-family policies (Sipila¨ and Korpinen 1998; Bergqvist et al. 1999; Hiilamo and Kangas 2005). The behavior of political parties may also be affected by the landscape of public policies that were created in an earlier time period. Many welfare states have deep historical roots, their foundations having been laid in the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries. During that time, social democratic parties were often excluded from the political system, whereas others – including liberal, agrarian, republican, and religious parties – were more significant. Yet, it was in that period that many states first became involved in education and family policies, including preschool education, maternity leaves, and family assistance programs. These early decisions institutionalized the state’s role in certain policy domains and also established norms about state responsibility for children and the family. For example, the incorporation of preschool education into a national education ministry in France not only created an institutional actor that would defend and expand these programs but also generated popular expectations about the state’s responsibility in this area. More generally, decisions in the first half of the 20th century created a division of labor between the state and often religiously based voluntary sector, either squeezing out these voluntary groups in favor of state provision or else giving them a privileged role in the delivery of education and/or social services (Schmid 1995). To uncover the roots of party systems in Western Europe, and these early public policies for children and families, we can employ the seminal

64

Morgan

work of Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967; see also Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume). Nineteenth-century cleavages and conflicts were central to the creation of modern political systems in Western Europe. Although many welfare state scholars have focused on the class cleavage generated by the industrial revolution, the national revolution often produced cleavages over religion that were just as important in shaping European political development. The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the creation and expansion of the nation-state all challenged the hegemony of the Catholic Church and generated sectarian divisions in many countries. The resulting conflicts, and their resolution, shaped the structure of European party systems. Where religious conflicts were intense, parties of religious defense generally formed, whereas the absence of these divisions impeded the creation of such parties. Clerical– anticlerical divisions also affected the nature of left and liberal parties, influencing the strength of their anticlericalism and whether they would develop an accommodating stance toward religious actors. Patterns of religious conflicts also influenced early public policies for women, children, and families. In many countries, conflicts between secular and religious forces – and/or between competing religious groups – crystallized around the development of mass education systems in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because education was long in the province of churches, the expansion of state responsibility in this area, and the aspiration of liberals that it be wrested away from churches, often generated fierce fights. There also were disputes over the division of labor between the state and religious charities in other forms of welfare provision (Schmid 1995). Such conflicts did not occur everywhere, however, and different patterns of church–state relations and religious conflicts shaped the roots of contemporary educational and welfare provisions. In the Nordic countries, the state would assume responsibility for children’s education and family welfare, directly providing services where deemed necessary. In countries marked by clerical–anticlerical divisions, anticlerical forces pushed for expanded state responsibility for child and family affairs, and were most successful in achieving this in France. Religious forces would gain more influence over policy in Belgium and Italy, but would face contestation by the anticlerical left. In accommodationist countries, religious forces would preserve their influence, which would be guaranteed in Germany and the Netherlands through the devolution of responsibility for education and social services to the voluntary sector. In Austria, the central state would preserve a more direct role in education and family


65

policies, but given the weight of Catholics in politics, state policy would reflect their beliefs.

3.2 the religious origins of gendered welfare regimes 3.2.1 Church–State Fusion and Religious Homogeneity in the Nordic Countries The roots of the Nordic countries’ ‘passion for women’s equality’ lie in their distinctive religious heritage (Graubaud 1986). When the Reformation came to Scandinavia in the 16th century, Protestantism became the state religion, but the state gained the upper hand. The subordination of religious to civil authority, and the religious homogeneity of these countries, minimized the development of religious cleavages (Martin 1969). Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, political authority was gradually secularized. Although at times national churches fought these developments, the Nordic countries were generally spared the kind of strife caused by the religious question in the rest of Europe (Stephens 1979). Instead, a ‘beneficent circle’ of secularization ensued (Martin 1969; Gustafsson 1987). The de facto incorporation of the Lutheran Church into the state machinery put these countries on a trajectory of relatively peaceful secularization and political centralization. This is not to imply that these countries were devoid of religious divisions or that their pathways to secularization were identical. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, revivalist political movements emerged in reaction to the ‘spiritual deadness’ of the established churches (Madeley 1977; Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume). These dissenting Free Church members became politically engaged and supported left parties, but ultimately would not form powerful, religiously based political parties as occurred in much of continental Europe. In Norway, in contrast, rural revivalism overlapped with center–periphery cleavages and helped ensure a greater politicization of religion than in other parts of Scandinavia. Although Denmark and Sweden were already culturally uniform at the time of peasant mobilization in the 19th century, Danish domination of Norway (until 1814) produced a governing elite that endured through the 19th century and resided in the cities, spoke Danish, and attended the high church. This created a combination of economic, cultural, territorial, and religious grievances of peasants in rural areas, which had a lasting impact on Norwegian politics (Rokkan 1966). Sundbeck (1994) argued that Finnish secularization was also less beneficent, reflecting distinctive

66

Morgan

elements of Finnish state building. One consequence is that levels of religiosity have been higher in Finland and Norway than in Sweden or Denmark, even though church attendance had dropped significantly in these countries by the mid-20th century. These patterns of religious divisions, or lack thereof, critically shaped Nordic political development in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Norway, the aforementioned religious and center–periphery cleavages endured through much of the 20th century, producing the only Christian Democratic party of electoral significance in Scandinavia, the Christian People’s Party (KrF) (Rokkan 1966: 74–78; Stephens 1979: 136–137). The KrF became one of the four main parties on the center-right, serving in governments and at times providing prime ministers for these governments as well. In the rest of Scandinavia, small, Christian-based parties formed in the decades following World War II, but with the exception of the Norwegian Christian party, these parties have been fairly weak (Madeley 1977: 269–70; Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume). More generally, religion came to play an increasingly marginal role in society and politics in the 20th century. Many scholars trace the early and advanced secularization of the Nordic countries to the early fusion of church and state and relatively minor conflicts around religion. Such divisions are usually seen as promoting competition for the loyalties of the population, which in turn generates institutional vigor. Instead, the established churches of the Nordic countries became mere bureaucracies that steadily lost influence over the population (Martin 1969; Sundbeck 1995: 87–91; Anderson, Chapter 8, this volume). Although most people remained members of the established church, actual church attendance plunged.5 The lack of a strong religious cleavage, and weakness of societal religiosity, also affected the political left. The working class was not divided between secular and religious unions and parties, as in continental Europe, enabling Scandinavian social democratic parties to build a unified working-class base. The lack of religiously based mobilization also enabled the greater centralization of political power, something that would be advantageous for social democrats. Across Europe, left parties

5

The high rates of church membership in these countries reflect the close connection between church and state, making citizenship coterminous with church membership. However, although most people belong to a church, they hardly ever attend services (see Halman and Riis 1999: 6–7).


67

often favored state intervention over subsidiarity or deference to civil society, and the Scandinavian social democrats were better able to realize this vision through unified systems of social provision. The exception here was Norway, where a religiously based voluntary sector continued to play an important role in both the education system and the provision of social services (Nicolaysen 2001). The Nordic pattern of church–state fusion, weak religious cleavages, and advanced secularization affected child- and family-related policies of the early 20th century. With the fusion of church and state, the traditional responsibility of churches for family well-being was gradually transferred from the church to the state. Although religious actors initially maintained their involvement in family matters as state officials, they lost this influence with the secularization of public authority (Anderson, Chapter 8, this volume). This is evident in the development of mass education: in Sweden, for example, the school administration thoroughly fused secular and religious authorities, giving the latter continued influence over schools (Sundbarg ¨ 1904). As education was progressively secularized, however, the National Church progressive lost this influence (Gustafsson 1987: 166; Boli 1989: 68, 84, 139–140). Although there were conflicts between Lutherans and secularists over education and social welfare policy, these disagreements in no way replicated the heated, polarizing disputes that occurred elsewhere in Europe (Anderson, Chapter 8, this volume). The growing secularization of these societies and polities also shaped family policies early in the 20th century. The Scandinavian countries were pioneers in the development of family laws that assigned equal status to men and women (Therborn 1993; Bradley 2000). For example, marriage reform laws in the first three decades of the 20th century made spouses fully equal in marriage, allowed divorce by mutual consent, and made husband and wife equal property owners (Wetterberg et al. 2002: 10). The declining influence of religion also contributed to the individualization of welfare state entitlements. In the rest of Europe, a women’s entitlement to social benefits was usually tied to her marital status. In Scandinavia, in contrast, women were individually entitled to some early social programs through citizenship and not by their status as wives (Sainsbury 1996: 63–64). These individualizing elements of family policy would develop further in later decades, but were important in establishing the principle that women exist independent of their familial relations. At the same time, however, the assumption early in the 20th century was that women were economically reliant on men and that state policy

68

Morgan

should neither support nor encourage mothers to work. In this, the Nordic countries were no different from any others in Western Europe, but they were unique in that they also lacked the preschool services that were developing in much of the European continent. The lack of educational services for young children reflects the absence of religiously based disputes over education. Without competition between clerical and anticlerical forces, or between competing religious groups, there was no imperative to extend the education system beyond 6- or 7-year-old children – the age at which primary school began. As the succeeding sections show, in countries with sharper religious cleavages and competition between churches and secularists over education, these conflicts spilled over into the domain of early childhood education and spurred the growth of these programs (Morgan 2002). In the Nordic countries, in contrast, where there was little such competition, such programs remained very underdeveloped as education authorities focused their attention on mass education for children older than 7 years. In summary, secularization and the fusion of church and state produced an active state with regard to family matters, albeit one that had not yet engaged in questions of mothers’ employment and the care of young children. Instead, we can see the potential for state intervention in reshaping gender relations and affecting family life through the individualization of some welfare benefits and pioneering, gender-egalitarian changes in family law. These secular polities and societies, with their tradition of state involvement in family affairs, would later be transformed into the ‘women-friendly’ welfare states that we know today. 3.2.2 Clerical–Anticlerical Divisions in Belgium, France, and Italy Belgium, France, and Italy are Catholic countries with a long history of conflict between clerical and anticlerical forces. The tug-of-war between clericalism and anticlericalism is reflected in a policy profile that mixes the subsidiarity and familialism typical of Christian Democratic regimes with active state involvement in the care and education of young children. The balance between these two orientations varies by country according to the relative influence of Catholic and secular political forces. Although the Italian welfare state came to be characterized more by ‘passive familialism,’ the sharp clerical–anticlerical divide in France and Belgium produced a greater state role in children’s lives and family affairs. In addition, anticlericalism shaped left parties such that they would often challenge conservative parties on education and family issues, distinguishing them


69

from their counterparts in other continental European countries. In addition, the weakness of Christian Democracy in France fragmented a repository of traditional gender ideologies on the right, enabling a pragmatic approach to working mothers later in the 20th century. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, clerical–anticlerical divisions were dominant features of political and social life in France, Belgium, and Italy. The French Revolution brought the first, most violent attack on the Catholic Church, and the reverberations of the Revolution throughout the 19th century spurred challenges to clerical authority. These conflicts shaped the ideologies of left and right parties. Belgium and Italy were typical of the rest of continental Europe in that the growing friction between religious and secular authority generated political movements designed to preserve the influence of the Catholic Church (Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 15). This initially took the form of voluntary associations dedicated to winning the Church’s goals through social welfare activities, but religion also became the basis of some early political parties. These religious movements evolved into the Christian Democratic parties that dominated politics in the post–World War II era, accompanied by a network in civil society of religiously based associations, clubs, newspapers, etc. (Kalyvas 1996). In France, in contrast, Christian Democracy struggled to develop under the opposition of intransigent, antidemocratic forces on the right, the anticlericalism of much of the rest of the political spectrum, and a majoritarian electoral system. Together, these factors impeded the development of a moderate, Christian party early in the 20th century (Irving 1973; Kalyvas 1996; Manow and Palier, Chapter 6, this volume). The participation of Catholics in the resistance made possible the birth of the MRP after 1945, and its continued existence was facilitated by a PR electoral system. As Manow and Palier note, the MRP was a frequent governing party throughout the 1950s and was able to put a strong stamp on the French welfare state. Yet, the MRP collapsed with the French Fourth Republic and the return to a majoritarian electoral system in the Fifth Republic (1958–present). The dominant party on the right became a Gaullist one that violated many of the tenets of Christian Democracy. De Gaulle was technocratic and statist in his orientation toward public policy, in opposition to the Catholic principles of subsidiarity. He was also anti-American and suspicious of European integration. This hardly sat well with Christian Democratic sympathizers at the time, although they often voted for De Gaulle and his party for lack of better alternatives (Irving 1973: 231).

70

Morgan

In addition, France did not develop the Catholic civil society found in Belgium and Italy. There was a religious subculture in certain parts of France (e.g., Normandy, Brittany), which included Catholic voluntary organizations (Berger 1987). Such organizations were more limited in the rest of France, reflecting the weak reach of Catholicism into large parts of the country. One important set of voluntary actors would be family associations, some of which were religiously based. These groups emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, and championed policies for large families (e.g., family benefits). Similar associations developed in Belgium, but not Italy (Martin and Hassenteufel 1997). The secular–religious divide infused left parties with a potent anticlericalism. In Belgium, both the Socialist and Liberal parties became strongly anticlerical, with the Liberal Party particularly concerned about secular control over education (Lorwin 1966: 147; Gérard-Libois and Mabille 1981: 128).6 Liberals and left parties in Italy were also anticlerical and would often mobilize around educational or family issues (Halperin 1947). In France, both the Socialist and Communist parties donned the anticlerical mantle and fought public funding for Catholic schools. As in Belgium and Italy, the emotions aroused by the schools issue in the postwar decades is indicative of the continuing anticlericalism of liberal and left parties (Orlow 2000). These political conflicts shaped education and family policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In both Belgium and France, competition for control over education not only focused largely on primary schools but also came to concern the preschool programs run by the Catholic orders. Rather than leave any educational services in the hands of the Catholic Church, anticlerical Republicans in Belgium and France took control of these programs in the late 19th century, incorporating them into national education systems as nonmandatory services (Mallinson 1963: 83–85; Delhaxhe 1989: 24–25; Dajez 1994: 161–165). Henceforth, the education of children ages 3 to 6 years would be a state responsibility, although the implementation of this vision would differ based on the relative power of Catholic political forces. In Belgium, Catholics regained political power in 1884 and decentralized control over the education system so that local communes could decide whether to finance a Catholic or secular school (Mallinson 1963: 99–102). This meant that religious voluntary associations would continue to play a major role in the provision 6

Although a 1958 compromise on the school issue helped mitigate tensions, education continued to be a sensitive issue through at least the 1960s (Mallinson 1967: 276).


71

of publicly funded education (Fix 2000) and ensured that there would be fierce competition between laic and clerical groups over educational provision for the succeeding decades, which in turn helped bring about an expansion in the total number of services available (Morgan 2002). In France, in contrast, secular republicans won their battles with religious forces, and a ‘reverse principle of subsidiarity’ developed in education and social welfare (Archambault 1996: 15–17; Manow and Palier, Chapter 6, this volume). Both pre- and primary education became an entirely state-run service, for example, and the congregations that had traditionally run these programs were initially barred from any role in the education system. After decades of conflict, a 1959 law finally allowed publicly funded religious schools to exist alongside the secular, public ones, although these schools remained far less prevalent than in neighboring Belgium.7 Initially, there was a more collaborative relationship between the state and civil society in the area of social welfare, with charities continuing to run crèches and other welfare services in parts of the country (Weiss 1983; Smith 1998). Nonetheless, the expansion of the welfare state in 1945 involved a substantial increase in state responsibility for family welfare and a marginalization of the voluntary sector’s role in the provision of crèches and other family-related programs. Clerical–anticlerical conflicts also spurred the expansion of family benefits in France. As declining fertility rates in the late 19th and early 20th century spurred fears of depopulation in France, conservative Catholics blamed republican attacks on religion and traditional values (Talmy 1962: 60–61). The republican response was pronatalism – a secular, nationalist doctrine that promoted large families in the name of national greatness (Antomarchi 1996: 41; Lenoir 2003: Chapter 4). As anxieties over population decline mounted, Catholic conservatives and Republican pronatalists made common cause on the need for generous family policies, including aid to large families, tax measures, efforts to promote infant and maternal health, and, in the 1930s and 1940s, a system of generous family allowances that gave a higher per child benefit to large families (Pedersen 1993; Antomarchi 1996: 39–40). These policies thus signified a further expansion of the state’s role in the lives of families. Belgium developed similar family policies at roughly the same time, reflecting demographic and economic conditions after World War I, as well as the 7

In the mid-1990s, about 60 per cent of students in Belgium attended Catholic schools; in France, less than 14 per cent of preschool and primary students are in private schools today.

72

Morgan

push by Catholic and Socialist laic family associations for such policies (Martin and Hassenteufel 1997: 29–31, 116).8 In Italy, in contrast, Catholics were better able to preserve their control over education and social welfare services than they were in France, and there was no similar development of family benefits programs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anticlerical liberals created a public education system (in which religious teaching would be optional), repressed religious congregations, and secularized the institution of marriage (Halperin 1947: 22–24). Their larger drive to regulate the Church’s vast network of charities would ultimately fail, however, reflecting weaknesses in the Italian state as well as the lack of an ambitious social agenda among the reigning liberals (Quine 2002: 293–295; Lynch, Chapter 4, this volume). Responsibility for social welfare programs, including the precursor to the modern preschool, was largely left to religious charities (Pistillo 1989: 157). Although the fascist regime later sought to develop a more coherent set of family and education policies – largely in the service of pronatalism and inculcation of fascist values – this was done in a way that accommodated Church interests. For example, the 1929 Concordat with the Catholic Church required religious instruction in public elementary and secondary schools, and although the fascist regime prioritized preschool education for the first time, the religious orders preserved their monopoly over the scuole materne (Marraro 1936: 46–52; Wolff 1980). The Church would maintain its hegemony over preschools and social welfare programs until well into the 1960s, when it would finally face a spirited challenge from the left (discussed more as follows). Although secularist republicans challenged Church authority over the socialization of children, the left was often less forceful on women’s issues. In France, for example, republicans at times contested women’s legal subordination, but did not embrace this cause with the enthusiasm they brought to the education issue. Republican governments in the first decades of the Third Republic brought some changes in family law that improved women’s rights, but quite a few patriarchal elements of the Napoleonic code remained on the books for many more decades, as they did in Belgium (Antomarchi 1996: 39; Marques-Pereira and Paye 1998: 111). One reason may be that some republicans in these countries believed women were under the sway of the Catholic Church. This was all the 8

The Catholic groups preferred state funding to support charitable initiatives, whereas the Socialist associations pushed for an expanded state role in providing benefits and services to families.


73

more reason to make sure that their children received a secular education as early as possible, but did not produce much interest in extending women’s political rights (because it was assumed that they would vote for Catholics). Instead, republicans embraced familialist policies with luster in both France and Belgium, creating generous family allowances that employed the family, and not the individual, as the defining unit of social policy. Notably, France, Belgium, and Italy were among the last countries in Western Europe to grant women the right to vote. To sum up, clerical–anticlerical divisions produced an expanded state role in education that shaped the development of preschools in Belgium and France. These programs would later be an important set of services for working parents, albeit ones that were seen primarily as education rather than day care. Italy began developing a similar set of services during this period, although churches were more successful in preserving control over these and other social welfare programs. However, although republicans could agree that Church influence over the socialization of children should be diminished, they did not attempt a wider challenge to patriarchal familialism. Indeed, republicans ‘laicized’ the family in their competition with Catholics over family policy, but they eschewed the individualist conceptions that were emerging in Scandinavia. Other legacies of the clerical–anticlerical divisions of the early 20th century include the weakness of Christian Democracy in France and the strength of anticlericalism in all three countries. 3.2.3 Accommodation of Religious Forces in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands Germany and the Netherlands resemble Belgium in that they both experienced religious conflict in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and a resulting mobilization of religiously based voluntary associations and political parties. They differ in that conflicts were not solely between Catholics and anticlericals, as in Belgium, but also between Protestants and Catholics. They also differ in the way these conflicts were resolved. Ultimately, religious forces gained the upper hand in these polities, either as a coalition of Calvinists and Catholics (in the Netherlands) or through a predominantly Catholic Christian Democratic Party (in Germany). Even with their disagreements, Protestants and Catholics were unified around the goal of preserving control over social and educational services. Secular forces were outnumbered, and as the intensity of anticlericalism faded, the left lost its anticlerical bite and struck up a more accommodationist

74

Morgan

relationship with religious parties. We can see a similar outcome in Austria that was reached via a somewhat different path. Anticlericalism would ebb relatively quickly, and the state maintained a collaborative relationship with the Catholic Church in education and other matters. The result was that religious voluntary organizations would develop much less in the educational and welfare spheres, in part because religious forces had secured their place in Austrian politics earlier than in the Netherlands or Germany. As in much of continental Europe, the development of mass education sparked conflict between religious and secular forces. From the mid-19th century until 1920, the school question was an endemic source of antagonism in Dutch political life that pitted both Catholics and orthodox Protestants against liberals. In Germany, disputes over education erupted when the National Liberal party led a drive for complete state sovereignty in education in the 1870s. In Austria, there were similar moves by liberals in the mid-19th century to augment the central state’s responsibility for education and reduce the power of the Catholic Church over this domain. Religious conflicts and intensifying class divisions spurred the growth of subcultural organizations that became the bedrock from which political parties would emerge. Throughout much of the 19th century, religious congregations flourished in the Catholic regions of the Netherlands, creating educational and social welfare services for the poor (van Vugt 1991). Protestant and secular equivalents formed as well, laying the basis for the pillarization of Dutch society into four subcommunities – Catholic, Protestant, liberal, and Socialist (Lijphart 1968; van Kersbergen, Chapter 5, this volume). In Germany, similar Protestant and Catholic charities proliferated after 1830, driven in part by competition with each other (Dickinson 1996: Chapters 1–2). Many of these organizations were later incorporated into two peak associations representing each confession, and a social democratic peak association would form as well. In Austria, three subcultures emerged in the 19th century that would produce political parties and a network of related voluntary organizations: Catholic-Conservative, Social Democratic, and anticlerical National Liberals (Luther and Muller 1992: 1–3). ¨ Religious cleavages also led to the creation of religious parties that would dominate politics for much of the 20th century. In the Netherlands, separate Catholic and Protestant parties formed and were often allied with each other, but remained formally separate for most of the 20th century. Clashes over education in the 1870s were one factor driving the formation of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) in 1879, a party of Orthodox Protestants. The first Catholic party was formed in 1926,


75

but Catholics had already made common cause with the ARP in the late 19th century, a move that enabled them to gain political power and give public funds to nonstate religious schools (van Kersbergen, Chapter 5, this volume). In Germany, the Catholic Zentrum party formed in 1870 to protect the interests of the Catholic minority. After 1945, the division between Protestants and Catholics was overcome with the formation of the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU). In Austria, Catholics became one of the main political actors during the First Republic, and they would return to that role after World War II. The strength of religion in these societies and polities also affected the left. Initially, left parties were strongly anticlerical, but the Austrian, Dutch, and German parties lost their anticlerical edge. In the Netherlands, religious conflict diminished with the resolution of the schools struggle in favor of equal state support to privately run schools – a pact between liberals, Socialists, and the religious parties that was included in the 1917 Constitution.9 This settlement essentially ended the conflict over education, in contrast to France and Belgium, where the issue festered for several more decades. Moreover, in contrast to nearly all other Socialist parties in Europe, the Dutch Socialists had already accepted the principle of confessional schools because they did not want to alienate religiously minded members of the working class, particularly those living in areas influenced by Orthodox Protestantism (Hansen 1976). There were renewed tensions over education in the 1950s, but the relative mildness of the Dutch social democrats on these questions contrasts with the anticlericalism of French Socialists in the same period (Orlow 2000: 212–213). The German SPD maintained its anticlericalism through the 1920s, and SPD governments during the Weimar Republic attempted to wrest control over education and welfare services from the voluntary sector. Ultimately, they failed: the 1922 Youth Welfare Act was a triumph for the Christian organizations because it enshrined the principle of subsidiarity (Dickinson 1996: Chapters 6–7; Hong 1998). Through much of the 1920s, Heinrich Brauns, a member of the Catholic Zentrum Party, served as the Minister of Labor, and he worked to construct a system of publicly funded welfare services that would be provided by religiously based voluntary associations. In the first decade after World War II, the SPD resumed its traditional anticlericalism, but then abandoned this stance at the 1959 Bad Godesberg party meeting. This would enable the SPD to make important inroads among the Catholic working class, which had 9

The Socialists got universal male suffrage in return for their support of state-funded religious education.

76

Morgan

previously voted almost entirely for Christian Democrats (Spotts 1973: 338–346). In Austria, the Social Democrats also softened their stance toward religion by the 1950s as they sought to attract peasants and middle-class voters (Secher 1959: 296–297). The political preeminence of religious forces would also shape educational and family policies. The subsidiarity notion was institutionalized in the welfare state, with social services and some educational functions delegated to religious and other voluntary organizations. In Germany, this gave a great deal of power to the two largest, religious peak associations – the Protestant Diakonisches Hilfwerk and the Catholic association Caritas. For decades following World War II, no social policy could be passed if the two churches were in unanimous opposition to it (Spotts 1973: 286). In the Netherlands, voluntary organizations became preeminent in the delivery of publicly funded social services (Brenton 1982), in marked contrast with France, where centralized provision of services was the norm. Austria differs in that religious organizations did not face the imperative of developing alternative social and educational services. Instead, the state provided more of these services, and one consequence was a lesser development of early education programs. In the Netherlands and Germany, in contrast, voluntary organizations were more active in providing early education programs, but the part-day or part-week schedule of these programs ensured that they would be unhelpful to working parents (Fix 2000). As in the rest of continental Europe, these three countries did not reform many patriarchal elements of family law for several decades after World War II. For example, until 1977, the German civil code explicitly depicted women as homemakers, and women had a legal duty to fulfill their home duties before they could justify working outside (Hantrais 1994: 147). In the Netherlands, there were similar measures that denied women legal personhood and that were removed in the decades after World War II. The political dominance of confessional parties also resulted in restrictive laws on abortion, homosexuality, and other elements of sexual morality until the 1970s (Bussemaker 1998a: 29). In sum, religious divisions laid the bases for the confessional parties that would dominate politics in these countries. These divisions also helped produce a strong, often religiously based voluntary sector in the Netherlands and Germany that would be key to the delivery of social and educational services in these welfare states. In Austria, the state maintained greater responsibility for these programs, but policy was shaped by the conservative familialism espoused by Christian Democrats that


77

went relatively unchallenged by Social Democrats. The result in all three countries would be conservatism with regard to gender roles and the family, as well as a lack of left contestation.

3.3 consequences during the expansion of the welfare state 3.3.1 Welfare State Expansion: 1945–1975 The decades following World War II were the pinnacle of the male breadwinner model in Western Europe, which was reflected in and sustained by the social policies of the period. These policies included the mandatory joint taxation of income that discouraged mothers’ employment; high male wages assured through negotiated wage agreements or social conventions; eligibility for social security programs that reflected the assumption of female reliance on male incomes; and, in some countries, generous family allowance programs. Public child care was limited, reflecting the belief that children required full-time maternal care in the early years. In much of Western Europe, these policies hardly changed throughout the period of rapid welfare state expansion (roughly 1945–1975). Yet, starting in the mid-to-late 1960s, a few countries – the Nordic states, along with Belgium and France – began developing more supportive policies for working mothers, such as public child care and improved maternity or parental leaves. Sweden went furthest in dismantling the male breadwinner model by abolishing mandatory joint taxation in 1971 and fully individualizing entitlements to social benefits, both of which created incentives for married women to be in paid employment. The other Nordic countries pursued similar policies, although change was slower in Norway and Finland. France and Belgium also preserved some more traditional dimensions to family policy. These shifts reflected both policy legacies and the way in which religion shaped the party systems in these countries. In terms of policy legacies, France and Belgium had inherited an early education system that could be employed to meet the needs of working parents. By the 1970s, preschool provision was nearly universal in both countries, and the long school day covered much of the time parents were at work. Both also had institutions for the provision of family benefits. If pushed to do so, funds for these programs could be redeployed to build day care centers or offer subsidies to parents seeking child care help. In the Nordic countries, the state had similarly assumed responsibility for the education and welfare of families,

78

Morgan

rather than leaving it to voluntary organizations. Although preschool and child care services were limited at this time, there was little doubt that when new family needs arose, it was the responsibility of the state to deal with them. In countries such as West Germany or the Netherlands, in contrast, the idea of state involvement in family affairs was viewed as unwelcome intervention in the private sphere. Voluntary organizations were a protective layer between states and families – a layer that was largely lacking in the Nordic countries and France. The other key factor was the way religion influenced the societies and party systems in these countries. Among western countries, religious belief and participation were lowest in France and the Nordic countries (World Values Survey 1981–1984), which made the issue of mothers’ employment less controversial than it would be in much of continental Europe. The lack (or weakness) of religious parties also affected the spectrum of political competition and strategies of political parties. In the Nordic countries, social democrats did not have to compete with religious parties for the working-class vote, which strengthened their position in politics. It also facilitated a shift in party strategy with the decline of agrarian parties – long an ally of social democrats – and growth of a large middle class that held more gender egalitarian views. Social democrats could reach out to this expanding population of white-collar, often public sector workers, without fear of losing their more traditional, working-class base to a religious party (Morgan 2006). They did so by reversing their own, long-standing support for the male breadwinner model and embracing the aim of transforming these societies into ones in which all mothers were in paid work and fathers did a greater share of care work. Where traditional gender ideologies were stronger and represented in the party system, such a shift was made more difficult. Norway, for example, had the strongest Christian party in the region that served in a number of governments in this period. This party politicized the issue of mothers’ employment and helped unify the conservative parties against expansions in public child care (Karvonen 1994; Morgan 2006). In Finland, efforts by the Social Democrats to expand public child care were stymied by a powerful Agrarian Party that championed the interests of rural families, many of whom preferred to receive generous care benefits rather than a place in public day care (Bergqvist et al. 1999; Hiilamo and Kangas 2005). In France, center-right parties governed throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and so there was little interest in trying to fundamentally transform gender roles, as was taking place in parts of Scandinavia. In contrast to


79

the Christian Democrats governing in other European countries, however, French Gaullists were often pragmatic with regard to women’s issues. If women wanted to work for pay and this could be shown to benefit the economy, then center-right policy makers were inclined to help them (Morgan 2003). In addition, France’s family benefits funds had it as their mission to provide assistance to the families paying taxes into these funds. This meant that, as family needs changed, the policies of these funds would shift as well. Starting in the early 1970s, rising rates of mothers’ employment propelled the decision to redeploy a portion of these funds to expand public child care, and in the coming decades, France would develop a range of services and subsidies that helped parents with their child care needs. At the same time, however, some of the more traditional aspects of family policy – such as generous family allowances and joint taxation – remained. This reflects the fact that although conservative forces would not gain preeminence in shaping French family policy, they would not be eliminated either. Conservative family associations (often Catholic) would continue to play a role shaping public policy, although they would have to compete with Protestant, secular, and leftist family associations for influence, as well as with unions that were strongly committed to women’s employment (Martin and Hassenteufel 1997: 45–46). As a result, French family policy balances competing orientations rather than being dominated by either a progressive or traditional orientation. Belgian family policy reflects a similar balance of forces, with conservative family groups well placed in the decision-making process but lacking decisive control over policy (Martin and Hassenteufel 1997: 33–35; MarquesPereira and Paye 1998). What differentiates both France and Belgium from most of their neighbors, however, is the fact that left parties became advocates of working mothers by the 1970s. After a push by the Belgian Socialist Party to reform family policy, a 1968 government accord between the Socialist and Christian social party determined that public policy should offer both day care for working mothers and financial support to those at home. Similar agreements reached in the early 1970s paved the way for the expansion of the public day care system by also promising to pay some extra family allowances. In the following years, the forces backing day care had the upper hand in these debates and managed to stave off calls for the creation of a special allowance for housewives (Dubois et al. 1994: 39). Access to public child care expanded, albeit at a slower pace than in France. Nonetheless, the fact that Belgian Socialists and trade unions

80

Morgan

challenged traditional values and got some resources directed toward public child care contrasts with the situation in both Germany and the Netherlands. In Italy, the left also challenged church control over preschools and social welfare services, and became an advocate for child care, parental leave, a shortened work week, and other policies to help balance family and paid work (Bimbi and Della Sala 1998: 177). A resurgence of anticlericalism in the 1960s shaped battles over the public preschool system, as Republican, Liberal, and Socialist forces successfully pushed for a nationally funded preschool system that could compete with the existing programs run almost entirely by the Catholic Church (Pistillo 1989: 161; Bimbi and Della Sala 1998: 181–182). Preschool services would expand in succeeding decades, being valued mostly for their educational dimensions. In 1971, the mobilization of the left also spurred passage of a mandatory 5-month maternity leave, as well as a law that defined child care as a social right and transferred a portion of payroll taxes to the regions to develop day care for children younger than 3 years (Saraceno 1984: 11; Bimbi and Della Sala 1998: 185). Funds were limited, however, and great regional variation in child care provision developed, reflecting the strength of left power in different parts of Italy. By 1986, for example, 19 per cent of children in communist-dominated Emilia-Romagna were in public day care, compared to 2 per cent in Calabria, Molise, or Sicilia (European Commission Network on Childcare 1990).10 In Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands, the weakness or absence of policies to support mothers’ employment reflected the political power of Christian Democratic parties and, in the German and Dutch cases, the influence of the religiously based voluntary sector (Tietze et al. 1989: 64). In the FRG, the CDU-CSU dominated the political scene between 1945 and 1969, and created social programs that reflected Catholic doctrines about justice, solidarity, and the search for a middle course between Socialism and free market capitalism (Daly 1999). This vision of social obligations was predicated on the view of the patriarchal family as the basic unit of society that should be protected and sustained. Generous social benefits were designed to help men support their families, and the tax code heavily privileged single-earner households (Hantrais 1994: 147; Moeller 1996: 127–128). Social Catholic values not only justified a traditional gender order but also blocked central government intervention 10

In Bologna, where the Communist Party has been powerful, 40 per cent of children younger than 3 years were in public day care by the 1990s, compared to 6 per cent nationally (Corsaro and Emiliani 1992: 95).


81

in the protected sphere of the family. According to the principle of subsidiarity, social welfare functions were to be met at the lowest possible level, preferably families and voluntary associations (van Kersbergen 1995; Daly 1999). We can find a similar set of policy arrangements in Austria and the Netherlands, although the Austrian voluntary sector was less developed in the welfare and educational sectors (van Kersbergen and Becker 1988). Were Christian Democrats in these three countries concerned about losing female voters to social democratic parties that might try to appeal to women through policies for working parents? In the three decades following World War II, social democratic parties did not push strongly for policies that would help mothers work outside the home. Higher rates of religiosity, low rates of mothers’ employment, and powerful social norms about the importance of full-time maternal care all weakened public demand for such policies among the public. In the Netherlands and Germany, for instance, mothers’ employment was widely viewed as a sign of government failure; if mothers should have to work, clearly the state was not doing enough to support male breadwinners (Bussemaker 1998b; Kolbe 1999). As a result, the Austrian, Dutch, and German left did little to challenge the status quo. In 1973, a coalition government dominated by the left came to power in the Netherlands and published the first paper on women’s equality policy in 1977. However, this paper did not offer any discussion of women’s labor force participation and described day care as appropriate only for single mothers (Clerkx and Van Ijzendoorn 1992: 66; Bussemaker 1998b). In Germany, the SPD was similarly cautious on this issue, and even though SPD-FDP coalition governments ruled through the 1970s, there was little change in policy. In Austria, Social Democrats ruled alone throughout the first half of the 1970s, but they did not endorse public day care or mothers’ employment (Fix 1998: 27). Although some of the more patriarchal elements of family law were reformed under Social Democratic government in the 1970s, and there was an expansion of part-day preschool access, there was little acceptance of the idea that mothers could work outside the home while their children were young. In short, because public opinion on the subject of working mothers remained fairly traditional and conservative, the left did not embrace this issue as a way to compete with Christian Democrats. This, in turn, meant that Christian Democratic parties did not have to fear losing female voters and thus faced few incentives to alter the male breadwinner orientation of their family policies.

82

Morgan

3.3.2 The Enduring Power of Early Policy Choices Since the 1970s, European countries have, of course, changed a great deal. One notable social change has been secularization. This is particularly striking in the Netherlands – a country in which religiosity was once quite high – which has experienced a steep drop in religious practice and resulting erosion of the traditional pillars of identity and political organization. Similar drops in church attendance and religious belief have occurred in other continental European countries. At the same time, women’s labor force participation has increased everywhere, although there remain important differences in both overall rates and the nature of mothers’ employment.11 Given these trends, we might expect considerable changes in policies for working mothers. Indeed, there have been some important policy shifts since the 1990s. In the Netherlands, for example, government policy makers finally accepted that mothers would and probably should be in paid employment, at least part time, and began increasing subsidies for child care. The Norwegian government also committed substantially greater resources to public child care in the 1990s, producing a significant increase in service availability. Germany made some particularly significant changes in 2006 and 2007 under a CDU-SPD coalition government (Klammer and Letablier 2007). In 2006, the government replaced an illpaid, 3-year care leave with a 12-month parental leave that pays 67 per cent of wages up to a ceiling (€1800/month) and gives parents 2 more months of leave if the other parent (usually the father) takes the leave. In 2007, the government committed to tripling the number of day care places for children younger than 3 years by 2013. Nonetheless, there are striking continuities in public policy, as evidenced by significant differences in public child care provision and parental leave policies. The Nordic countries do the most to support mothers’ employment, but the supply of public child care in Finland and Norway continues to lag behind that of Sweden and Denmark. France has maintained its mixed model of both supports to working parents and subsidies for parents at home. Austria continues to provide limited support to working mothers, and the Dutch model represents a modernized variant of the male breadwinner model – the one-and-a-half-earner model in which the majority of mothers with young children work part time. 11

In some countries, such as the Netherlands, mothers often work part time. This was initially true of Sweden, but increasingly mothers are working full time. Part-time work has developed more slowly in France, but has increased in recent years.


83

In the latter two countries, modernizing the male breadwinner model has been the preferred solution rather than a radical overhaul of the model (Gottfried and O’Reilly 2002). Although there have been some new policy developments, they resemble the ‘bounded change’ described by Kathleen Thelen (2003) – change that is evident yet still bounded by past policy arrangements and political commitments. In part, these continuities reflect the consequences of economic decline and fiscal strain on the welfare state. Slower growing economies and maturing pension and health care commitments have made it more difficult for countries to envision bold new initiatives in social policy. Instead, governments devote many of their resources to satisfying the demands of existing beneficiaries. In countries where responsibility for child care and parental leave was incorporated into the heart of the welfare state in an earlier period, those services and programs became part of mass expectations of state responsibilities. This, in turn, fueled the expansion of these programs and prevented states from neglecting the promises they made to middle-class parents (Morgan 2006). In countries lacking such a wellestablished notion of state responsibility for this area, governments have been better able to avoid taking on such burdens. This continuity is also testament to the enduring legacies of historic patterns of religious divisions and politics. Even with the decline in religious belief, there remain substantial differences between countries in the values held by the public about gender roles and, specifically, the appropriateness of mothers’ employment. With the passing of time and decline of religiosity, these differences are decreasingly related to individual religious practice, but are reflective of the experiences of people themselves with work and family issues (Morgan 2006). Where mothers commonly are in paid work while their children are young, and where this has been an established practice for many decades, the acceptability of mothers’ employment is high. Where the opposite is true, or if mothers of young children only recently began working in large numbers, skepticism endures about the merits of working mothers. This continues to shape the climate of debate about child care and parental leave policies. For example, although the recent shifts in German work-family policies show that change is possible, these proposals were hotly contested and controversial among many. Thus, even today we can see how the historical forces that have shaped party ideology and public policy continue to influence beliefs, practices, and the politics of mothers’ employment. Could new forms of religious diversity in European countries affect family-related public policies? Certainly, there are some commonalities

84

Morgan

in how states dealt with religious conflicts in the past and how they have more recently responded to the growth of Muslim minority populations. For instance, France has sought to preserve its fairly strict separation between church and state and requires immigrant groups to shed their private identities, at least in the public sphere. The Netherlands, in contrast, has encouraged immigrant groups to preserve their cultural and religious identities and provided public resources to help them do so. Whether growing social diversity will influence family policy is unclear at this time. Unlike the United States, where societal heterogeneity appeared to have undermined the emergence of a universalistic welfare state, conflicts over immigration in European countries have been taking place well after a large welfare state was already in place. People are already strongly attached to the benefits and services they receive, and are unlikely to demand fewer of them just because some of those supported by the welfare state are of immigrant origin. If anything, we might imagine a drive by public authorities to further incorporate immigrant groups into socializing programs – starting with early childhood education – in an effort to spur their integration and diminish social tensions. Contrary to the U.S. experience, this may produce an expansion of the welfare state, not its retrenchment.

3.4 conclusion We can trace the origins of contemporary policies for working mothers to religious conflicts and cleavages of the late 19th century. These divisions shaped both party systems and early public policies for children and families, creating a tradition of active state involvement in children’s education and family affairs in some countries – and institutions that sustained policy-making activism in these areas – versus passive familialism and a lack of such supportive institutions in others. In the Nordic countries, secularism also contributed to the individualized treatment of women in social benefits and law. Such changes would come later, and incompletely, to continental Europe, where religion endured as a more important political and social force. Nonetheless, in countries such as France and Belgium, where anticlerical forces challenged the hegemony of the Catholic Church, the state expanded its responsibility for children’s education and family well-being, and later proved pragmatic, rather than moralizing, on the issue of working mothers. In much of the rest of continental Europe, in contrast, public policy would discourage mothers from working while their children were young, an approach that has deep historic roots and has proven slow to change.


85

References Antomarchi, Véronique (1996), La famille et le Parlement de 1870 a` 1914, Recherches et Prévisions 44: 37–42. Archambault, Edith (1996), Le Secteur sans but lucratif: Associations et Fondations en France, Paris: Economica. Berger, Suzanne (1987), Religious Transformation and the Future of Politics, in Charles Maier (ed), Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Evolving Balance between the State and Society, Public and Private, in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 107–151. Bergqvist, Christina, Jaana Kuusipalo, and AuDur Styrkarsdottir (1999), The ´ Debate on Childcare Policies, in Ann-Dorte Christensen, Christina Bergqvist, Anette Borchorst, Nina C. Raaum, and AuDur Styrkarsd (eds), Equal ´ ottir ´ Nordic Democracies: Gender and Politics in the Nordic Countries, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 137–157. Bimbi, Franca, and Vincent Della Sala (1998), L’Italie: Concertation sans représentation, in Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau (eds), Qui doit garder le jeune enfant?, Paris: Librairie Generale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 173–202. Boli, John (1989), New Citizens for a New Society: The Institutional Origins of Mass Schooling in Sweden, Oxford: Pergamon. Bonnet, Carole, and Morgane Labbé (1999), L’activité professionnelle des femmes après la naissance de leurs deux premiers enfants: l’impact de l’allocation parentale d’éducation, Etudes et Résultats 37. Bradley, David (2000), Family Laws and Welfare States, in Kari Melby, Anu Pylkkanen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg (eds), Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State, Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 37–66. Brenton, Maria (1982), Changing Relationships in Dutch Social Services, Journal of Social Policy 11 (1): 59–80. Bussemaker, Jet (1998a), Gender and the Separation of Spheres in Twentieth Century Dutch Society: Pillarisation, Welfare State Formation and Individualization, in Jet Bussemaker and Rian Voet (eds), Gender, Participation and Citizenship in the Netherlands, Hants, England: Ashgate, 25–37. Bussemaker, Jet (1998b), Rationales of Care in Contemporary Welfare States: The Case of Childcare in the Netherlands, Social Politics 5 (1): 70–96. Clerkx, Lily E., and Marinus H. Van IJzendoorn (1992), Child Care in a Dutch Context, in Michael E. Lamb, Kathleen J. Sternberg, Anders G. Broberg, and C. Philip Hwang (eds), Child Care in Context: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 55–80. Corsaro, William A., and Francesca Emiliani (1992), Child Care, Early Education, and Children’s Peer Culture in Italy, in Michael E. Lamb, Kathleen J. Sternberg, Anders G. Broberg, and C. Philip Hwang (eds), Child Care in Context: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 81–118. Dajez, Frédéric (1994), Les origines de l’école maternelle, Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Daly, Mary (1999), The Functioning Family: Catholicism and Social Policy in Germany and Ireland, Comparative Social Research 18: 105–133.

86

Morgan

Delhaxhe, Arlette (1989), Early Childhood Care and Education in Belgium, in Patricia P. Olmsted and David P. Weikart (eds), How Nations Serve Young Children: Profiles of Child Care and Education in 14 Countries, Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press, 13–37. Dickinson, Edward Ross (1996), The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dubois, Alain, Perrine Humblet, and Fred Deven (1994), L’ accueil des enfants de moins de trois ans, Courrier hebdomadaire du CRISP, no. 1463–1464 (November). Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1999), The Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Commission Network on Childcare (1990), Childcare in the European Community, 1985–90, Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Evers, Adelbert, Jane Lewis, and Birgit Riedel (2005), Developing Child-Care Provision in England and Germany: Problems of Governance, Journal of European Social Policy 15 (3): 195–209. Fix, Birgit (1998), The Institutionalization of Family Welfare: Division of Labour in the Field of Child Care in Austria and Germany, Mannheimer Zentrum fur ¨ Europaische Sozialforschung, Arbeitsberech I, Nr. 24. ¨ Fix, Birgit (2000), Church–State Relations and the Development of Child Care in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, in Astrid Pfenning and Thomas Bahle (eds), Families and Family Policies in Europe: Comparative Perspectives, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 305–321. Gérard-Libois, Jules, and Xavier Mabille (1981), Belgian Electoral Politics, in Arend Lijphart (ed), Conflict and Coexistence in Belgium: The Dynamics of a Culturally Divided Society, Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 127–138. Gornick, Janet C., and Marcia K. Meyers (2003), Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Gottfried, Heidi, and Jacqueline O’Reilly (2002), Reregulating Breadwinner Models in Socially Conservative Welfare Systems: Comparing Germany and Japan, Social Politics 9 (1): 29–59. Graubaud, Stephen R. (1986), Norden: The Passion for Equality, Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Gustafsson, Goran ¨ (1987), Religious Change in the Five Scandinavian Countries, 1930–1980, Comparative Social Research 10: 145–181. Halman, Loek, and Ole Riis (1999), Contemporary European Discourses on Religion and Morality, in Halman and Riis (eds), Religion in a Secularizing Society: The Europeans’ Religion at the End of the 20th Century, Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1–21. Halperin, S. William (1947), Italian Anticlericalism, 1871–1914, Journal of Modern History 19 (1): 18–34. Hansen, Erik (1976), Marxism, Socialism and the Dutch Primary Schools, History of Education Quarterly 13 (4): 367–391. Hantrais, Linda (1994), Comparing Family Policy in Britain, France and Germany, Journal of Social Policy 23 (2): 135–160.


87

Hiilamo, Heikki, and Olli Kangas (2005), Trap for Women or Freedom to Choose? Child Home Care Allowance in Finnish and Swedish Political Rhetoric, Danish National Centre for Social Research, unpublished paper, Available at: www.sfi.dk/sw2048.asp. Hong, Young-Sun (1998), Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Huber, Evelyne, and John D. Stephens (2000), Partisan Governance, Women’s Employment, and the Social Democratic Service State, American Sociological Review 65 (3): 323–342. Irving, R. E. M. (1973), Christian Democracy in France, London: George Allen & Unwin. Kalyvas, Stathis (1996), The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Karvonen, Lauri (1994), Christian Parties in Scandinavia: Victory over the Windmills?, in David Hanley (ed), Christian Democracy in Europe: A Comparative Perspective, London: Pinter, 121–141. Klammer, Ute, and Marie-Thérèse Letablier (2007), Family Policies in Germany and France: The Role of Enterprises and Social Partners, Social Policy & Administration 41 (6): 672–692. Kolbe, Wiebke (1999), Gender and Parenthood in West German Family Politics from the 1960s to the 1980s, in Rolf Torstendahl (ed), State Policy and Gender System in the Two German States and Sweden 1945–1989, Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press, 133–167. Leira, Arnlaug (2006), Parenthood Change and Policy Reform in Scandinavia, 1970s–2000, in Anne Lise Ellingsœter and Arnlaug Leira (eds), Politicising Parenthood in Scandinavia: Gender Relations in Welfare States, Bristol: The Policy Press, 27–52. Lenoir, Rémi (2003), Généalogie de la morale familiale, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Lijphart, Arend (1968), The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan (1967), Cleavage Structure, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free Press, 1–64. Lorwin, Val R. (1966), Belgium: Religion, Class and Language in National Politics, in Robert A. Dahl (ed), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 147–187. Luther, Kurt Richard, and Wolfgang C. Muller (1992), Consociationalism and ¨ the Austrian Political System, in Politics in Austria: Still a Case of Consociationalism?, in Kurt Richard Luther and Wolfgang C. Muller (eds), London: ¨ Frank Cass and Co., 1–15. Madeley, John T. S. (1977), Scandinavian Christian Democracy: Throwback or Portent?, European Journal of Political Research 5 (3): 267–286. Mallinson, Vernon (1963), Power and Politics in Belgian Education 1815 to 1961, London: Heinemann. Mallinson, Vernon (1967), Education in Belgium, Comparative Education Review 11 (3): 275–287.

88

Morgan

Marques-Pereira, Bérengère, and Olivier Paye (1998), La Belgique: Vices et vertus du pragmatisme, in Jane Jenson and Mariette Sineau (eds), Qui doit garder le jeune enfant? Modes d’accueil et travail des mères dans l’Europe en crise, Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 109–139. Marraro, Howard R. (1936), New Education in Italy, New York: S.F. Vanni. Martin, Claude, and Patrick Hassenteufel (1997), La représentation des intérêts familiaux en Europe: Allemagne, Belgique, Grande-Bretagne, France, Portugal, Unpublished report for the European Commission, Directorate-General V. Martin, David (1969), Notes towards a General Theory of Secularization, Archives européennes de sociologie 10 (2): 192–201. Moeller, Robert G. (1996), Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany, Berkeley: University of California. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2002), Forging the Frontiers between State, Church, and Family: Religious Cleavages and the Origins of Early Childhood Education in France, Sweden, and Germany, Politics and Society 30 (1): 113–148. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2003), The Politics of Mothers’ Employment: France in Comparative Perspective, World Politics 55 (2): 259–289. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2006), Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Naumann, Ingela K. (2005), Child Care and Feminism in West Germany and Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s, Journal of European Social Policy 15 (1): 47–63. Nicolaysen, Bente Blanche (2001), Voluntary Service Provision in a Strong Wel¨ Europaische ¨ fare State, Arbeitspapiere – Mannheimer Zentrum fur Sozialforschung, no. 35. NOSOSCO (2007), Social Protection in the Nordic Countries 2005, Copenhagen: Nordic Social-Statistical Committee. O’Connor, Julia, Ann Shola Orloff, and Sheila Shaver (1999), States, Markets, Families. Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Donoghue, Cathal, and Holly Sutherland (1998), Accounting for the Family: The Treatment of Marriage and Children in European Income Tax Systems, Unicef, Innocenti Occasional Papers Economic and Social Policy Series, no. 65. OECD (2005), Society at a Glance: OECD Social Indicators, Paris: OECD. Orloff, Ann Shola (1993), Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States, American Sociological Review 58 (3): 303–328. Orlow, Dietrich (2000), Common Destiny: A Comparative History of the Dutch, French, and German Social Democratic Parties, 1945–1969, New York: Berghahn Books. Pedersen, Susan (1993), Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pistillo, Filomena (1989), Preprimary Education and Care in Italy, in Patricia P. Olmsted and David P. Weikart (eds), How Nations Serve Young Children: Profiles of Child Care and Education in 14 Countries, Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press, 151–202.


89

Quataert, Jean (2001), Socialisms, Feminisms, and Agency: A Long View, Journal of Modern History 73 (3): 603–616. Quine, Maria Sophia (2002), Italy’s Social Revolution: Charity and Welfare from Liberalism to Fascism, New York: Palgrave. Rokkan, Stein (1966), Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism, in Robert G. Dahl (ed), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 70–115. Sainsbury, Diane (1996), Gender, Equality, and Welfare States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saraceno, Chiara (1984), Shifts in Public and Private Boundaries: Women as Mothers and Service Workers in Italian Daycare, Feminist Studies 10 (1): 7– 29. Schmid, Josef (1995), Verbandewohlfahrt im modernen Wohlfahrtsstaat: Struk¨ turbildende Effekte des Staat-Kirche-Konflicts, Historical Social Research 20 (2): 88–118. Secher, Herbert P. (1959), The Socialist Party of Austria: Principles, Organization and Policies, Midwest Journal of Political Science 3 (3): 277–299. Sipila, ¨ Jorma, and Johanna Korpinen (1998), Cash versus Child Care Services in Finland, Social Policy and Administration 32 (3): 263–277. Smith, Timothy B. (1998), Republicans, Catholics, and Social Reform: Lyon, 1870–1920, French History 12 (3): 246–275. Spotts, Frederic (1973), The Churches and Politics in Germany, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Stephens, John D. (1979), Religion and Politics in Three Northwest European Democracies, Comparative Social Research 2: 129–157. Sundbarg, ¨ Gustav (1904), Education in Sweden, Stockholm: Kungl Boktryckeriet. Sundbeck, Susan (1994), Nation and Gender Reflected in Scandinavian Religiousness, in Thorleif Pettersson and Ole Riis (eds), Scandinavian Values: Religion and Morality in the Nordic Countries, Uppsala: S. Academiae Ubsaliensis, 129–150. Sundbeck, Susan (1995), Tradition and Change in the Nordic Countries, in Wade Clark Roof, Jackson W. Carroll, and David A. Roozen (eds), The Post-War Generation and Establishment Religion: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Boulder: Westview Press, 87–112. Talmy, Robert (1962), Histoire du mouvement familial en France 1896–1939, volume 1, Paris: Union Nationale des Caisses d’Allocations Familiales. Thelen, Kathleen (2003), How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative Historical Analysis, in James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 208–240. Therborn, Goran (1993), The Politics of Childhood: The Rights of Children in ¨ Modern Times, in Frances G. Castles (ed), Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies, Aldershot: Dartmouth, 241–293. Tietze, Wolfgang, Hans-Gunther Rossbach, and Karin Ufermann (1989), Child Care and Early Education in the Federal Republic of Germany, in Patricia P. Olmsted and David P. Weikart (eds), How Nations Serve Young Children, Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press, 39–85.

90

Morgan

van Kersbergen, Kees (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State, London: Routledge. van Kersbergen, Kees, and Uwe Becker (1988), The Netherlands: A Passive Social Democratic Welfare State in a Christian Democratic Ruled Society, Journal of Social Policy 17 (4): 477–499. van Vugt, Joos (1991), For Charity and Church: The Brother-Teachers of Maastricht, History of Education 20 (3): 219–243. Weiss, John H. (1983), Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief in the Third Republic, 1871–1914, French Historical Studies 13 (1): 47–78. Wetterberg, Christina Carlsson, Kari Melby, and Bente Rosenbeck (2002), The Nordic Model of Marriage and the Welfare State, Paper presented at ‘Alva Myrdal’s Question to Our Time,’ conference at Uppsala University, Sweden, March 6–8. Wolff, Richard J. (1980), Catholicism, Fascism and Italian Education from the Riforma Gentile to the Carta Della Scula 1922–1939, History of Education Quarterly 20 (1): 3–26. World Values Survey (1981–1984), Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Study No. 6160.

4 Italy: A Christian Democratic or Clientelist Welfare State? Julia Lynch

Is the welfare state in Italy, a quintessentially Christian Democratic polity, a ‘Christian Democratic welfare state (CDWS)?’ The Italian welfare state has most, if not all, of the hallmarks of what is often referred to in the comparative welfare state literature as a CDWS: contributory social insurance programs linked to occupation that reproduce status differentials, a predominance of transfers over services, low female force participation, and low employment rates among others. The key explanation in the comparative literature for the emergence of these features in a number of countries has been Christian Democratic party strength, usually measured as ‘government participation of Christian Democratic parties’ (Huber et al. 1993; Huber and Stephens 2001). In Italy, both the institutional features and the political strength of Democrazia Cristiana ([DC], i.e., the Christian Democratic party) are undeniably present, lending plausibility to the argument that Christian Democracy built the Italian welfare state. Yet, this view of the Italian welfare state as organically related to the political strength of a Christian Democratic party does not, I argue, concern itself adequately with the mechanisms by which Christian Democracy as a political phenomenon becomes translated into welfare state structures. Indeed, it tells us little about how Christian Democratic parties may have created homologous welfare states, as distinct from the welfare states constructed in polities dominated by social democratic or liberal parties. A second strain of thought in the comparative literature has done more to uncover the causal mechanisms at work (Becker and van Kersbergen 1988; Esping-Andersen 1990, 1998; van Kersbergen 1995). This literature has identified two main pathways, which may operate 91

92

Italy: A Christian Democratic or Clientelist Welfare State?

simultaneously, through which Christian Democracy as a social and political phenomenon influences policy outcomes: 1) social Catholic ideology as carried by political parties and other social actors (Esping-Andersen 1990; van Kersbergen 1995), and 2) the ‘politics of mediation’ (Becker and Van Kersbergen 1988; van Kersbergen 1995), a particular type of political strategy characteristic of centrist parties based on cross-class, religiously oriented social coalitions. This literature is of immense value because it insists on specifying the mechanisms underlying the observed correlation between Christian Democratic party strength and CDWS policies. I argue in this chapter, however, that neither of the mechanisms it has identified to date fully explains the development in Italy of policy features commonly regarded as characteristic of a CDWS. A reconstruction of the history of Italy’s welfare state offers least evidence for the impact of religious doctrines on the shape of social policies. The role of the Church as a pressure group promoting particular policies was tightly circumscribed, with the possible exception of education (see Morgan, Chapter 3, this volume). The role of mass-level demand for specific policy features that accord with social Catholic teachings is also limited. Policy drift (Hacker 2005), rather than demand emanating from a religiously inspired society, drives many of the key policy features that others have interpreted as evidence of a Christian Democratic imprint. The evidence for the impact of partisan competitive strategies on the shape of Italian social policies is more robust, which would seem to confirm earlier findings (Becker and van Kersbergen 1988; van Kersbergen 1995). However, I find that more than the ‘politics of mediation’ practiced by other Christian Democratic parties in Continental Europe, it was above all the DC’s extreme reliance on clientelism that led to the development of highly fragmented, status-differentiated, and gendered policies in the Italian welfare state. This chapter’s main purpose, then, is to illustrate the mechanisms through which Christian Democracy has affected the Italian welfare state. The importance of the presence of a religious cleavage in politics, as articulated by Manow and van Kersbergen (Chapter 1, this volume), is beyond question. But how does this cleavage matter? How does it become transformed into social policies? Policies implemented by anticlerical Liberal governments lay the groundwork of the Italian welfare state. These were sometimes directed against the interests of the Church, but sometimes conformed to them. Where they did correspond to the Church’s interests, however, they were not implemented for this reason alone. Liberal governments rather

Lynch

93

implemented these policies despite the fact that the Church also supported them. After World War II, the dominant force shaping the Italian welfare state structures that we observe today was indeed the DC, but not because of any Catholic social doctrine that leaders of this party may or may not have espoused. Indeed, as Zuckerman (1979) observed, ‘(T)here is no evidence that DC leaders have ever sought to apply as policy the principles of Christian Democracy.’ Instead, the Christian Democratic party’s highly particularistic mode of political competition, which went well beyond what either Catholic social doctrine or the ‘politics of mediation’ would require, is responsible for the policy immobility that, combined with policy drift, creates a highly stratifying and familialist welfare state. This chapter begins by describing the features of the Italian welfare state and of Italy’s political and social environment that have led scholars to interpret Italy as a welfare state defined by and for Christian Democracy. The second part of the chapter lays out an alternative interpretation of the Italian welfare state that has little to do with an ideological imprint of Christian Democracy. To preview, I argue that Italy’s status-reproducing occupationalist social insurance programs, which over time matured into a welfare state that rewarded older male breadwinners handsomely but crowded out spending on benefits for families and young adults, originated during the Liberal period and did not reflect pressure from either the Church or a nascent Christian Democratic party. The Liberals’ hands-off approach to social assistance, which eventually matured into a familialist welfare state that provided few direct benefits to women, children, and young adults, was conditioned in part by the Church’s monopoly of charity in the 19th century. But it was also inspired by Liberal ideologies that privileged fiscal restraint and an underdeveloped administrative apparatus. The closure of state policies to young and female labor market ‘outsiders’ in the mid-20th century and beyond was not an outcome enforced or even necessarily desired by post–World War II Christian Democrats, even though it was influenced by the Church’s dominance in the charitable provision during the Liberal period. During the postwar period, the DC assumed crucial responsibility for maintaining and intensifying Liberal-era policy patterns. Over time, and in concert with demographic and labor market shifts, these Liberal-era policy patterns gave the Italian welfare state its distinctive occupationalist and familialist cast. But it was the DC’s clientelism, and not its Catholicism, that explains this outcome.

94


4.1 christian democratic isomorphism of the italian welfare state Italy’s geopolitical location at the heart of the Church’s empire and the DC’s electoral dominance from 1948 through 1992 make it highly plausible that Christian Democracy would be an important influence on the development of the welfare state in that country. For this reason, Italy is often described in the comparative welfare state literature as a CDWS, following on the seminal contributions of Esping-Andersen (1990, 1999) and van Kersbergen (1995) (see Castles and Mitchell 1993; Huber et al. 1993). At the level of policy, a CDWS is characterized by occupational social insurance programs that reproduce status differentials; few publicly provided services, particularly for families; a male breadwinner bias in both tax and transfer systems; and a tendency to devolve authority over delivery and implementation of social policy to nonstate actors. Italy’s welfare state meets many of these criteria. It is occupationalist: social insurance programs such as pensions, unemployment benefits, and family allowances do not provide uniform benefits for all citizens, or even all workers. Instead, numerous different programs addressing the same basic risk (e.g., old age, unemployment) draw from distinct, although rarely hypothecated, funds. The result is a ‘jungle’ of highly differentiated provisions (Gorrieri 1972) that preserve the privileged positions of some sectors and grades of workers, and exclude others entirely. The system works to preserve status differentials and validate class and occupation hierarchies. The Italian welfare state is also transfer heavy, spending only 23 per cent of its total social budget, including health care, on services (as compared to 42 per cent in Sweden and 36 per cent in the UK).1 As a result, families are responsible for providing or purchasing much care for children, the disabled, and the elderly. Even in the realm of cash transfers, familial obligations are only weakly subsidized. Legal entitlements to support for dependents are generous in concept (under the old family allowance scheme in effect through the mid-1990s, household heads could receive family allowances for not only children but also spouses and parents), but not in quantity: throughout the 1980s and 1990s, spending on cash benefits and services for families with children per child younger 1

1999 data from Abramovici (2002). Comparative figures for nonhealth social spending are even more revealing. Only 1.2 per cent of spending on family and children’s benefits in Italy is for services, compared to 6 per cent in Sweden.

Lynch

95

than 14 years was lower in Italy than anywhere else in Europe outside Spain and Portugal.2 At the same time, Italian civil law recognizes an extended network of obligation to provide cash support for family members. Means tests may include the income not only of spouses and parents of minor children but also of non–coresident parents; adult children; full and half siblings; and sons-, daughters-, mothers-, and fathers-in-law (Millar and Warman 1996: 35; see also Naldini 2003). ‘Weak state control’ (van Kersbergen 1995) over the financing and implementation of social policies has also been a hallmark of the Italian welfare state. Most social policies in Italy, even means-tested social assistance benefits, are financed via payroll deductions, rather than through general revenues or specially earmarked taxes. Cross-subsidization of social insurance programs for different sectors is carried out via a porous financial administration of the funds and weak hypothecation, not through general revenue financing of funds in deficit. In shifting the burden of financing to the social partners, the Italian state also effectively relieved itself of the duty to collect payments. A 1983 report of an independent watchdog group noted a very small number of employees of the labor inspectorate whose duties include enforcement (CENSIS 1983: 237). Perhaps, not surprisingly, employees have complained frequently over the years that evasion of social payments by employers is widespread. Indeed, a 1980 study revealed evasion of social security payments for 42 per cent of employees in the more than 10,000 firms studied (Regonini 1984: 106). The administration of social benefits in Italy is likewise subject to weak state control. Most old-age and disability pensions, family allowances, and some types of unemployment benefits are administered by the national social security administration (INPS), which is governed on a tripartite basis with the social partners enjoying a strong majority. Patronati, advocacy groups that help individual citizens with the processing of social insurance claims, were until recently financed by the Italian government, but run by and for private organizations such as political parties, unions, and religious groups. Much institutional care for children, the disabled, and the elderly is operated by nonstate actors. From the 1960s through the early 1990s, the remaining social assistance functions of the welfare state, including a de facto employment service consisting of public jobs, were carried out by a public administration that was thoroughly colonized by political parties that should themselves be considered subsidiary organizations. 2

Data from OECD (2003). Average of yearly amounts from 1985 to 1998.

96


The occupational fragmentation of Italian social insurance system, its passive familialist orientation resulting from very limited state provision of social services, and spending patterns that reward senior males while granting few independent entitlements to women, young adults, and children all seem to conform to social Catholic doctrines of organic hierarchy and subsidiarity. The Italian pension system comprised more than 120 separate public pension funds for different sectors and categories of workers at its peak (Castellino 1976) and is therefore an unusually fragmented occupationalist system. It has been interpreted as a reflection of the social Catholic emphasis on status preservation. The pension-heavy mix of welfare state spending in general is also notable. Italy spends a higher proportion of its social policy resources on the elderly (even adjusting for the demographic makeup of the population) than almost any other OECD country (Lynch 2001), which leaves little room for spending on other priorities such as children or the unemployed. Relatively generous public pensions coexist with meager child allowances and unemployment benefits and almost nonexistent family services and active labor market programs. This policy mix, which appears to fit nicely with the social Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, allocates large cash transfers to older (usually male) family heads for further redistribution. In return, it requires familial (often female) provision of both financial and nonfinancial assistance to needy members. I have argued elsewhere (Lynch 2006) that Catholic social doctrine could be interpreted to support other policy options as well, including generous family allowances (see, in particular, the literature on the French caisses allocation familiales). So, a straightforward reading of the ‘natural’ policy outcomes of social Catholic doctrine is not possible (see Anderson, Chapter 8, this volume, and Kahl, Chapter 10, this volume). Furthermore, policy features central to the CDWS (occupational fragmentation, familialism, and a male breadwinner orientation chief among them) are present in most continental European states, even where they trace their roots to ideological and political movements distinct from Christian Democracy (see Esping-Andersen, 1996, on varieties of Conservatism). To understand the sources of the Italian welfare state’s particular mix of policies, it is necessary to look beyond their face-level compatibility with social Catholic ideologies and attend closely to the mechanisms through which Christian Democracy as a political movement has influenced the formation of these central policy features. The remainder of this chapter argues that central features of the Italian welfare state are the result of the interaction over time between old policies

Lynch

97

put in place under an anti-Catholic Liberal regime and the clientelist style of political competition preferred by the DC and its allies during the postwar period. The DC (as well as its secular allies) took accommodation and pragmatism to levels well beyond those required by Catholic social doctrine, converting them into the currency of a manifestly clientelist political operation. In the process, they reinforced social policy institutions that originated during a period, perhaps Italy’s only such period, of decidedly anti-Church policy making. Policy drift, in this case the failure to update policies in line with new developments in labor markets, demographic trends, and family structures, resulted, by the 1970s, in a welfare state characterized by stratification, passive familialism, and a male breadwinner orientation. 4.1.1 Secular Roots of Stratification and Occupational Fragmentation The Italian social security system’s basic occupational organizational structure dates to the late 19th and early 20th century. The unification of Italy in 1861 resulted in the seizure of large territories from the Church, and the Italian nation was in many ways founded against the Church. Catholics themselves were excluded by papal order from participation in government and politics. Of course, many Catholics did participate in politics, including those who stood for office under the banner of the popular party. Still, the case for strong Christian Democratic influence in constructing the early policies of the Italian welfare state in Italy appears weak on the face of it. But institutions do change, so we also need to explain the continuity of occupationalism once it is in place. It is possible that the Italian welfare state’s original occupationalist structure was only preserved because of strong support from Catholic political actors and/or the Church. As we will see, however, successive opportunities for reform in the direction of universalism were blocked not solely by the political power of social Catholic ideologies but also, and more actively, by other forces. Occupational differentiation in the Italian pension system dates back to the earliest public pension legislation.3 The first public pension provisions in Italy, which took Bismarck’s programs in Germany as a direct model,

3

This analysis of the development of Liberal-era social insurance is reconstructed largely from Ferrera (1993, Chapter 6), Cherubini (1977, Chapters 2–5), and Sepe (1999, Chapters 2–4). Other useful sources of analysis of this period include Bartocci (1999) and INPS (1962).

98


were for public employees only. In 1898, the first state-supported pension scheme for employees in the private sector was legislated, but inscription was voluntary, and the system was designed primarily as a subsidy to encourage provision by private voluntary organizations. The emphasis in this early pension legislation on private voluntary solutions surely reflected to a certain degree social Catholic doctrine as expressed in Rerum Novarum (1891), which preferred joint worker-owner schemes to obligatory state-run social insurance. The Church and politicians of the nascent Catholic political movement could not have been displeased with the outcome, for the limited social insurance law ensured continued Church dominance of social assistance, especially in rural areas, and permitted the Catholic democratic movement to mobilize agricultural workers in the South using the selective benefits of mutualist insurance programs (Ferrera 1993: 214–215). Nevertheless, Church and Christian Democratic influences do not seem to have been the most important contributors to the 1898 law’s emphasis on occupational social provisions. Politicians of the day were strongly influenced by the desire to ‘legitimate the Liberal state in the eyes of the working classes’ (Gustapane 1989: 57), and saw socialismo della cattedra along Bismarckian lines as the means to this end. Ferrera (1993: 210– 211) reports that the legislative debates leading up to the 1898 provision were dominated by the language of Kathedersozialismus, which had been adopted by many Liberal policy makers by the 1880s. And although the Church had an interest in promoting mutualism at the expense of comprehensive state-run insurance programs, so too did nonreligious actors. The political landscape in the late 19th century was still characterized by an uneasy alliance of the forces that had joined to promote the recent unification of the Italian nation: northern political elites and small and medium landowners in the South. These landowners depended on cheap labor from some 9 million agricultural laborers, or threefourths of Italy’s dependent workforce (Sepe 1999: 97). Northern political elites were concerned to maintain the support of Southern landowners by preventing a universal state social insurance model that would have mandated insurance contributions for the employers of agricultural laborers. Italy’s early pension legislation, then, reflected the e´ tatist impulse of the Liberal period, and served the political ends of both the Liberal politicians who controlled the state policy apparatus and Catholic actors who, however, did not themselves have any direct way of influencing policy

Lynch

99

outcomes.4 Under the circumstances, the occupationalist imprint of the 1898 legislation (and extensions thereto from 1900 to 1920) comes as no surprise. What was surprising, at least at the time, was the nearly complete failure of this model to respond to the ‘social question’ with comprehensive insurance against social risks. By 1910, less than 350,000 workers – only 2.5 per cent of the dependent workforce – were enrolled in voluntary insurance schemes subsidized by the state (Sepe 1999: 97). Opportunities to revisit the design of social insurance programs arose out of the failure of the 1898 legislation. The persistence of the occupationalist model after 1898 thus demands explanation. But if Christian Democracy did not cause the occupationalism of the first wave of legislation – unremarkable given the (self-) exclusion of Catholics from political life under the papal non expedit – neither did it work to preserve the occupationalist model in subsequent waves of reform. Between 1906 and 1912, separate obligatory pension insurance schemes were legislated for particular categories of employees, mainly in the transport, maritime, and public or parastatal sectors. Under mounting pressure from the Socialist movement and in anticipation of a major suffrage expansion in 1912, Giolitti proposed in 1910 new comprehensive public social insurance that would cover all dependent workers, including those in agriculture. Catholic leaders were not enthusiastic about the proposal, but did express a willingness to support Giolitti (Ferrera 1993: 217). The plan came to nothing as the war in Libya quickly removed social issues from the agenda, but this attempt to reorganize the Italian social insurance system along less occupationally fragmented lines did not fail because of opposition from Christian Democracy. In the aftermath of World War I, the social question reemerged with particular intensity, and by 1919, obligatory pensions for blue-collar employees came into law. Liberal Prime Minister Nitti had, with the support of both Socialists and some Catholics in the legislature, put forward a reform proposal that would have unified the various funds into 4

Ferrera (1993) takes a more structural view, arguing that the occupational fragmentation of the Italian social insurance system results from long-standing features of the Italian political economy: a highly segmented economy, and a culturally fragmented and ideologically polarized polity. Both make risk pooling and the development of solidarity difficult (see also Baldwin 1990). Baldwin’s model of welfare state development and Ferrera’s extension of it challenge quite directly the notion that occupational fragmentation is rooted in the ideological traditions of social Catholicism.

100


a single public scheme and extended obligatory coverage to agricultural workers. However, the 1919 law stopped well short of these goals. Pensions applied only to blue-collar workers with incomes less than 800 Lire per month, and the organization of the social insurance programs remained fragmented along occupational lines. The 1919 law introduced relatively modest changes, in part because employers opposed the more maximalist reforms envisioned by Nitti. Agricultural employers in particular argued that they could not afford obligatory pension insurance and that therefore the only possible direction of reforms was an extension of voluntary insurance (Sepe 1999: 100). The failure of Nitti’s reform agenda has been attributed mostly to opposition from employers (Cherubini 1977: 237). But other political forces also failed to support a radical reorganization of the system along universalistic lines. Divisions in the Socialist movement meant that working-class organs no longer spoke with one voice in favor of social reformism, and, despite increasing discussion of a universalistic option in the years leading up to 1919 (Ferrera 1993: 225), many Liberals continued to favor simply extending the old model of state-subsidized occupational insurance (Sepe 1999: 158). A Christian Democratic voice was then not a decisive contributor to the already overdetermined outcome of this debate. It is not even clear what a Christian Democratic voice at this time would have said. Although the Sturzo-De Gasperi wing of the popular party had supported Nitti’s plan to introduce universal social insurance in 1919 (Ferrera 1993: 229), the Catholic labor movement definitively opposed state-run insurance. In any event, with or without the influence of Christian Democracy, the social insurance system remained occupational in nature as the Liberal regime crumbled. Giolitti’s call in 1921 to ‘complete’ and ‘simplify’ the system5 so as to reduce the degree of occupational fragmentation went unheeded as Italy began its slide into Fascism. The onset of the extreme occupational fragmentation that characterizes the Italian social insurance system today dates to the Fascist period. In 1923, the pension system underwent what was to be a major reorganization, joining the separate funds for different industries and different branches of the public service into a single entity, and allowing separate sectoral funds only to provide benefits supplemental to the basic insurance. In practice, however, these reforms did not occur, and the occupational fragmentation of the system actually increased. Cherubini 5

See Giolitti’s Discorsi parlamentari, Volume IV, p. 1894, cited in Sepe (1989: 159).

Lynch

101

(1977: 270) attributes the growth of special privileges and deficiencies for different sectors to the Fascist politics of playing groups off one another, offering concessions where necessary to garner support for the regime (e.g., to journalists), and sacrificing those who could not fight back.6 Needless to say, insurance for agricultural laborers was once again put on the back burner. Let us take stock. So far, we have seen that the original occupationalist design of the Italian social insurance system was inspired primarily by e´ tatist principles, rather than social Catholic ones, and was implemented under a regime in which Catholics and the Church were explicitly excluded from policy making. Successive attempts to broaden, harmonize, and universalize pension coverage failed, but never because of opposition from Christian Democratic forces. As we enter the post–World War II period, the potential for Christian Democratic influence became greater, with the decisive rapprochement between the Vatican and the Italian state and with the DC’s hegemonic political position. Indeed, the occupational fragmentation of the Italian pension system continued to increase well through the 1980s. As we see, however, occupational fragmentation persisted not because of social Catholic respect for hierarchy and status differentials, but because of the particular style of political competition that the DC engaged in for much of the postwar period. 4.1.2 Laissez-Faire Roots of Passive Social Assistance Measures Before turning to the development of the Italian welfare state after World War II, however, we must consider for a moment the prewar roots of social assistance, as well as those of the social insurance programs we have already examined. The terrain of social assistance, taken together with the explosive growth of occupationalist social insurance programs, has important implications for the eventual familialist orientation of the welfare state in the contemporary period. The Italian welfare state’s emphasis on pensions at the expense of other forms of social spending marks it as a passive, familialist, male breadwinner–centered welfare regime. Locating the origins of this policy mix, either in social Catholic doctrines of subsidiarity or in some other set of causes, is then crucial for understanding 6

Social policy in Communist East Germany underwent a similar transformation, where loyal groups such as Stasi members, police, party rank and file, and journalists were rewarded with special benefits, in strict opposition, of course, to the Communists’ official policy of eliminating status differentials preserved in the West German Bismarckian model (Manow 1994).

102


the mechanisms through which Christian Democracy has influenced the Italian welfare state. The Italian welfare state clearly shows signs of Church influence in the prevalence of nonstate, often Church-run, social service provision, and in the underdevelopment of social assistance more generally. The Church in Italy had a near monopoly on charity and institutional care in the late 19th century, and staunchly defended its material and spiritual interest in the social assistance sector. Yet, Liberal-era politicians overcame the Church’s objections and, in several key areas, voted for legislation that was important to their goals of ‘modernizing’ society and achieving a separation of civil and ecclesiastical authority. The 1887 Cioppino law, for example, which established free compulsory public education, prompted accusations from the Church that the Italian state was engaging in a Kulturkampf, yet only twenty deputies voted against it (Quine 2002: 37). The 1890 legislation radically increasing the state’s role in social assistance and charity also passed easily, with 196 votes for and only 98 against, despite Pope Leo XIII’s accusation that politicians supporting the bill harbored an ‘implacable hatred of Jesus Christ’ (cited in Quine 2002: 53). The underdevelopment of state social assistance functions during the Liberal period then cannot be understood purely as a result of the Church’s success in preventing the state from playing on its field. Church opposition cannot account for Liberal politicians’ failure to seize the field of social assistance, a task that they did accomplish in education despite even more strenuous objection from the Church (see also Morgan, Chapter 3, this volume). Quine (2002) and Fargion (1997) both argue that the weakness of social assistance and social services in Italy well into the postwar period originates in the Liberal state’s reluctance to take responsibility for the costs – both financial and in terms of developing administrative capacity – of providing adequate social provision directly. The Italian state did attempt to assert control over private charitable institutions, attempting to transform Christian charity into a theoretically more rational, discretionary, and efficient ‘legal charity’ (carita´ legale). However, this attempt was half hearted. Legislation in the pre–World War I period made municipal- and provincial-level administrators responsible for regulating and transforming religious charities into public entities, but these administrators were endowed with neither the financial resources nor the administrative capacities necessary to effectively intrude on traditional practices. Piedmontese statutes, which were eventually replicated in

Lynch

103

Republican Italy, did not merely seek to avoid antagonizing the Church: ‘(F)inancial considerations also provided a very compelling reason to resist calls to extend the means of state intervention in the activities of charities. Cavour had long recognized that creating a system of legal charity would cost a lot of money’ (Quine 2002: 34). Decentralization and delegation of administrative control over social assistance responded in part to demands from the parliamentary Left, but it was also ‘a means for the nation’s leaders to offload the financial and bureaucratic responsibilities for monitoring opera pie onto officials in the localities’ (44; see also Fargion 1997: 75). Even once the Italian state’s fiscal capacity improved in the 1890s and the 1910s, policy makers remained unwilling to assume for the central state the burden of providing social assistance to the masses. Quine (2002: 295) attributes this reluctance primarily to a combination of ideological factors (Liberals lacked a sense of state, and ‘never truly grasped the importance of “the social” to the polity’) and weak state administrative capacities, the latter of which allowed Church dominance of the charitable sector to continue even when legislation formally wrote it out of the picture. The clientelist political dynamics of legislative trasformismo also played a role in the continuing underdevelopment of national-level policies. Locally constituted public boards consolidated the finances of smaller charities and governed the operation of even the larger institutions. These boards were an important electoral resource for a system that prized the manufacture of electoral majorities at the prefectural level (58), especially given that the reported revenues of private charitable institutions in 1880 were nearly equal to the total tax take of the Italian state (50). In the Liberal period, then, the Church’s role in perpetuating its own dominance of the social assistance sector was indirect, operating mainly as a default option pursued only because of Liberal politicians’ own preference for limited central government involvement. In summary, in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, both social assistance and social insurance functions of the nascent Italian welfare state took their shape from the interests of Liberal (and, to a lesser extent, Socialist) political actors, not from the Church. Paradoxically, given Liberal-era anticlericalism, the interests of Liberals, Socialists, and the Church were often congruent. But as we have seen, occupationalist social insurance programs and weak state penetration of the social assistance sector occurred not because the Church demanded them, but because key players in the anticlerical regime desired them.

104


4.2 clientelism and the maintenance of occupationalism after world war ii An opportunity for radical revision of preexisting social insurance and social assistance programs occurred in Italy after World War II. Wartime conditions had aggravated social problems, and insurance programs had been bankrupted because of runaway inflation and wartime destruction of property. Italy’s reform-minded Communist Party (PCI), the second largest party after the DC, strongly advocated replacing the old system of occupational social insurance with a universal citizenship-based welfare state. The PCI was not alone. Under the influence of the International Labour Organization7 and policy lessons diffusing from Britain, Italy, like most European countries with occupational welfare states (Ferrera 1993), set up nonpartisan official commissions to investigate the feasibility of introducing citizenship-based welfare programs along the lines of Britain’s Beveridge Plan. Two nonpartisan commissions, in 1947 and 1963, recommended that the pension system be overhauled, occupational distinctions minimized, and coverage eventually extended to the self-employed (Commissione d’Aragona 1948; CNEL 1963). Beginning in the 1950s, the pension system was gradually extended, under DC tutelage, to new categories of beneficiaries (small farmers, fishermen, artisans, shopkeepers, housewives, etc.), each with its own separate scheme. In the realm of social assistance, politics in the postwar period continued to limit the development of public social services well into the Republican period (Fargion 1997). The postwar Constitution for the first time granted citizens a right to social assistance, redefining charity as a duty of the state. But administrative competence was vested in the regions and municipalities, and the DC’s fears that more autonomous regional governments would lead to electoral gains for the PCI meant that provisions giving regions real powers remained dead-letter entities until the 1970s. At the same time, Fascist-era parastatal entities involved in charitable care, entities that commanded significant resources that could be used as currency in the DC’s clientelist political machine, were given some important functions (88). DC policies and practices limited the competencies of state institutions, at the local and regional level as well as the 7

Such was the enthusiasm for the Beveridgean model at this time that ILO recommendations included citizenship-based prescriptions, despite the fact that the ILO was dominated by countries with occupationalist social insurance systems.

Lynch

105

national level, and the state’s ‘inertia’ in turn allowed the Church to maintain its traditional role in the social service sector (89). In both the Liberal and early post–World War II periods, the Church’s organizational monopoly in the social assistance and social services sectors reinforced the occupationalist welfare state model pursued by secular actors during the Liberal era. This segregation of the Italian welfare state into ‘assistance’ and ‘insurance’ functions today remains a politically contentious issue, in part because the state’s role in the former was never clearly established. Social services and poverty alleviation together today account for only 2 per cent of welfare state spending in Italy (Abramovici 2003). In the realm of social insurance, the basic configuration of early postwar welfare state politics pitted a universalizing Left against an emergent DC with little interest in changing the status quo. The Left in Italy (the PCI, the Socialist PSI, and a majority of the union movement) favored universalizing the pension system for ideological reasons related to the development of universal citizenship in the new Italian republic. The DC, however, if it favored maintaining the occupational status quo, did not do so for parallel reasons of social Catholic ideology. Until 1975, Left-leaning factions motivated by social Catholic ideologies (e.g., Forze Nuove, Base) were excluded altogether from the ruling organs of the party and from policy making (Zuckerman 1979: 159–163). The factions that dominated the party were motivated not by ideology, but rather by the twin goals of building a party organization independent of the Church hierarchy and maintaining their grip on power within that party.8 Clientelist distribution of public goods and services (state jobs, tax relief, preferential pension treatment) to blocs of reliable supporters assured these goals. In the early postwar period, the self-employed and rural Southerners were cherished above all (LaPalombara 1964). Preference voting, which allowed electors to cast a ballot for a particular candidate from a party’s list and hence allowed the party to determine the power and privilege of discrete factions (correnti) within the national party apparatus, was particularly widespread in the South.9 The intraparty competition fostered by preference voting made legislators perhaps more responsive than they would otherwise have been to local economic 8

9

Early in the postwar period, the goal of institutional independence was probably paramount. By the late 1960s, when this had been assured, hanging on to power and privilege was likely the more powerful motivator. On the importance of preference voting and intraparty competition, see, e.g., Cazzola (1972), Pasquino (1972), Parisi and Pasquino (1977), and Zuckerman (1979).

106


interests, which encouraged a proliferation of leggine guaranteeing preferential treatment in the social insurance system to microscopically defined economic ‘categories.’10 Once the DC had for several decades been in a position to hand out public jobs as patronage, public sector and parastatal employees became even more crucial sources of support. The priority for pension system policy was thus to generate maximum ‘consensus’ by securing maximum benefits for rather narrowly defined occupational and sectoral groups. Proposals to reform the Italian pension system by creating citizenship-based entitlements to pensions would have threatened the DC’s ‘consensus’ in several ways. 4.2.1 Particularism, Taxation, and the Failure of Universalism The tax system in Italy suffers from a deficit of legitimacy and high levels of evasion. This tax system was itself rooted in clientelist politics and reinforced the occupational nature of the pension system. The failure to effectively tax key clienteles of the DC not only served the DC’s interests but also slowly eroded the Left’s support for universalism between 1945 and 1970.11 The main obstacle in Italy to implementing the universalistic pension proposals of the early postwar period was the tax system. The reports of the 1947 and 1963 reform commissions both cite the impossibility of adequately assessing and collecting pension contributions, especially among the self-employed, as reasons to continue to provide pension benefits on an occupational basis (Commissione d’Aragona 1948; CNEL 1963a, 1963b). Labor leaders, although they professed support for the idea of universal coverage, feared that any universalization of the system would be paid for out of increased payroll taxes on employees, and so repeatedly called for fiscal reform as a prerequisite to pension reform.12 The DC’s unfunded extension of the pension system to new clienteles in the 1950s and 1960s worked to erode labor movement support for universalization. By the early 1960s, Italy’s pension system was categorized by two types of funds: those running a surplus, primarily the FPLD (Fondo pensioni lavoratori dipendenti, the main industrial employees’ 10

11 12

For an indication of the extent of microlegislation in the pension system, see Maestri (1994). For a more in-depth treatment of this subject, see Lynch (2006, Chapter 6). See, e.g., CISL Consiglio Generale (1950: 13), CISL Consiglio Generale (1956: 150), CISL Consiglio Generale (1958: 178), CGIL Segreteria Generale (1962: 226), CGIL (1970), and CGIL-CISL-UIL Segreteria Interconfederale (1970: 201).

Lynch

107

fund) and the special funds for small groups such as journalists; and those running large deficits, primarily the funds for agricultural workers, artisans, and shopkeepers. The latter funds had been set up in the late 1950s and early 1960s by DC governments in order to benefit clienteles that were particularly important to the DC (Regonini 1996: 90). These funds ran large deficits because, in service to the clientelistic goals of the reforms, contribution rates were low and benefits made available to people with very limited contributory histories. Although the state subsidized these pensions out of general revenues to some degree, in large part it was the employees’ funds that were asked to make up for shortfalls in a form of ‘enforced solidarity’ (Ferrera 1993: 262). By the late 1960s, both Confindustria (the main employers’ confederation) and the unions were complaining about the increased payroll taxes that had become necessary to support this burden, and union support for universalizing the pension system waned. The one piece of universalism in the Italian pension system was the Social Pension, which originated in tripartite accords in 1964 and provided a pension of last resort to low-income elderly Italians. But the way that the Social Pension was implemented between 1965 and 1970 ultimately undermined the Left’s support for a universal pension system. The 1964 agreement established that Social Pension benefits should be financed out of state revenues deposited in a new Social Fund. It was also agreed that the level of the benefit would be sufficient to provide for a ‘decent’ standard of living, as stipulated in Article 38 of the 1947 Constitution. The first steps toward a truly universal pension benefit had been taken. By 1968, however, both Confindustria and the labor unions had lodged complaints that state contributions to the Social Fund were inadequate to cover its costs, and the fund was instead drawing resources from the FPLD. It had become clear by this point that Social Pensions would have to be paid out of employees’ pockets if they were to be paid at all, and union support for further universalization of the pension system (as well as for upgrading the level of the Social Pension benefit to an adequate social minimum) faded (Ferrera 1993: 262). Failure to implement existing tax laws further eroded the Left’s support for universalism. The reluctance of successive administrations to execute the tax laws continued even after the definitive defeat of proposals to establish a universal pension system. Evasion of pension contributions for employees continued to be an important issue from the late 1970s onward. In 1978, the CGIL and the PCI began to complain quite insistently about the failure of employers to make contributions on behalf of

108


their employees. This practice contributed to the deficits that had begun to plague even the stronger funds administered by INPS. A 1978 union proposal to make evasion of payments a criminal offense was defeated by the DC government, in part because the proposal would have transferred the separate system of occupational injury compensation to INPS, which was controlled by the unions, and thus make unavailable a key source of patronage for the government (Regini and Regonini 1981: 233). Both tax laws (the failure to adequately tax key clienteles of the DC) and their implementation (the failure to enforce those laws that were in place) sprang from the particularistic mode of political competition pursued by politicians of Italy’s leading political parties during the postwar period. The inability to collect revenues from key economic sectors in turn made it impossible to universalize the pension system without placing an excessive burden on employees. This altered the Italian Left’s preferences with regard to universalization and made reform of the pension system along more universalistic lines nearly impossible for a period of almost 30 years. Occupationalism persisted because the DC’s behavior, not its ideologies, affected the policy preferences of both Christian Democratic and Left political actors. 4.2.2 Pension System as a By-Product of Clientelism If particularistic political practices prevented the implementation of a tax system capable of sustaining a political coalition for universal pensions, clientelism also had more direct effects on the pension system. Clientelism encouraged DC politicians to maintain and even extend the occupational fragmentation of the pension system because fragmented occupational provisions provided clientelist politicians with important resources. To most observers, Italy’s proliferation of pension provisions, each with its own benefit formula, contribution rate, degree of state subsidy, rules governing retirement age, years of service required to enter into the plan, etc., constitute proof positive that the pension system has been used as a way to attract support from particular groups in the population (see, e.g., Regini and Regonini 1981; Paci 1984; Maestri 1994; Ferrera 1984). So, too, does the practice of staffing pension agencies with party supporters, and of deciding pension claims based on an applicant’s party affiliation (Regonini 1996: 90–91). This perception is not limited to the scholarly community, of course. Even the undersecretary of labor, in the midst of the 1982 pension debate, dispatched a telegram accusing two

Lynch

109

representatives of the majority coalition of ‘rampant particularism for pernicious electoral reasons’ (Regonini 1984: 108). Christian Democratic politicians advocated extending pension benefits to the self-employed on very generous terms during the 1950s and 1960s as part of a strategy to purchase loyalty from these groups. During the postwar period, state employees, however, were the most important targets of clientelist pension legislation, for obvious reasons. As the staff of public and quasi-public organizations came to be dominated by supporters of the governing parties, public sector pension benefits took on special cachet with politicians associated with these parties. Special provisions for public sector employees reach back into the Fascist period, as we have seen (see also Cherubini 1977; Paci 1984). But public sector employees were the recipients of the largest volume of pension legislation during the period 1948 to 1983, and attention to this sector came predominantly from DC and PSI lawmakers (Maestri 1994: Chapter 4). Multiple, differentiated benefit categories are not just ex post evidence that politicians used the welfare state to target benefits to small groups of voters. The existence of such fragmentation also made it easier to justify new forms of discretionary targeting of benefits like a better replacement rate here or a shorter reference income period there. Occupational pensions that provide different levels and types of benefits for different groups of workers are, clearly, a gold mine for politicians who use particularistic strategies to compete for votes and win elections. Provisions tailor-made for small segments of the electorate are visible and valuable to the beneficiaries, and hence to their benefactors. But as the fragmentation of the Italian welfare state increased, the very complexity and opacity of what Italian commentators have come to call ‘microcorporatism’ come to protect the politicians who engage in it. A thicket of highly specialized provisions makes it difficult for the public (and sometimes even for policy makers) to know when changes have occurred and even harder for them to understand what the consequences of such changes might be for the public interest. For these reasons, politicians who compete using patronage have been loath to see occupational fragmentation overturned or even reformed. The clientelist behavior of the DC (and later PSI) also drew parties of the opposition into a mode of pension policy making that has stimulated the accretion of occupationally derived social rights (as well as exacerbated the Italian pension system’s problem with expenditures). As noted, in principle, the Italian Left supported a universalistic pension scheme.

110


But in a context of particularistic behavior by the ruling DC, unions had a strong incentive to maintain the preexisting occupational funds, over which they had some modicum of control, rather than giving everything over to a central, DC-run universal scheme (Ferrera 1993). The interplay of clientelism and fragmentation affected the Left’s preferences and behavior, with the opposition parties and unions coming to support particularistic fragmentation under the threat of an even more damaging particularistic universalism. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Left opposed the DC’s practice of extending pension rights to new groups without making these new groups responsible for financing them. However, the Left was too weak to block this practice (Regini and Regonini 1981: 122). Even after 1969, when they had more control over pension legislation, unions opposed moves to universalize the pension system in part because they feared that a state-run system would bring their constituencies into the clientelist orbit of the DC, as had happened earlier with agricultural employees (127). Instead, they followed a strategy of attempting to upgrade benefits for their constituencies to the level enjoyed by public sector employees (Baccaro 1999). Ferrera (1993: 267) notes that the major pension reform in 1969, which granted many benefits to industrial workers that matched those already enjoyed by public sector employees, marked ‘the enlargement of the spoils system to include the PCI and unions, opening the way to that “assistential grand coalition” responsible for the profound imbalances that characterized the Italian welfare state in the years to come.’ The Left and the unions tried to match every gain made by public sector workers (and other privileged clients of the ruling parties), and to the extent that they succeeded, in turn the privileged clients demanded more privileges. The occupational fragmentation of the system generated pressures for ‘leapfrogging,’ leading to an upward spiral of benefit levels and a downward spiral of contributory requirements in the 1970s and 1980s. The result was extraordinarily rapid growth of pension expenditures and a subsequent crowding out of other social spending (Franco 1993). These developments are attributable in the first instance to the particularistic mode of competition engaged in by the DC and the PSI, whose politicians derived personal benefit from a fragmented universal system of pension provision, even when it was clear that this system was bankrupting the public coffers and making it difficult to finance other needed social goods. But the strategy of the opposition parties and of labor unions has also been conditioned by this mode of competition among the dominant parties, and thus the Left ultimately shares responsibility for

Lynch

111

the continued expansion of the pension sector along occupational lines. Social Catholicism as an ideology is perhaps the force least plausibly responsible for the fragmented occupational system that has generated such high pension expenditures beginning in the 1970s. Italy’s fragmented occupational pension system then provides crucial resources for clientelist politicians, whose opposition to reforming such a system in turn provides occupationalism with a means of selfpropagation. The combination of fragmented occupationalism and political particularism also altered the incentives and behavior even of political actors who would normally prefer a citizenship-based, rather than an occupational, pension system. Eventually, they too came to support the fragmented pension system status quo. Thus, in the post–World War II period, just as during the Liberal and Fascist periods, Social Catholic ideologies were neither the cause of the Italian pension system’s occupational fragmentation nor the agent of its preservation. Pension system occupationalism and the DC’s particularistic politics form a resilient and self-reinforcing dyad. These political-institutional characteristics of the Italian welfare state are, as a result, able to shape the flow of benefits to different constituencies over long periods of time. As we will see in the next section, the ‘stickiness’ afforded by this combination of clientelist politics and fragmented occupational pension programs in turn promotes a social policy mix that directs the lion’s share of resources to aging male family heads. This policy orientation has often been interpreted as a result of Christian Democratic subsidiarity doctrine, but it is better understood as a by-product of the original choice for occupationalism taken during the Liberal period, reinforced by the DC’s clientelism during the postwar period.

4.3 postwar policy drift and the creation of a familialist welfare state As we have seen, the DC’s clientelism made Italy’s fragmented occupational pension system highly resistant to reform, even once it became clear that pension expenditures were far exceeding available resources and crowding out other forms of social spending. In recent years, this phenomenon has provoked anxieties about intergenerational equity and population decline, in addition to the usual concerns over fiscal sustainability (see, e.g., Commissione Onofri 1997; Rossi 1997). The reasons for concern lie in the fact that, in a society that has experienced a dramatic decline in fertility since World War II, the burden of caring for

112


both children and aging parents falls mostly on prime-age women, but older males receive the most generous welfare state benefits. At the same time, very weak unemployment benefits and active labor market policies promote the long-term dependence of unemployed ‘youth’ (up to age 30 years) on their parents. These pathologies of the Italian welfare state are well known and usefully summarized by Esping-Andersen (1996). The pension-heavy mix of welfare spending has important effects on the structure of Italian families. Weak active labor market policies and the lack of unemployment benefits for first-time job seekers force many young adults to delay independent family formation and remain in the households of their fathers and mothers. A paucity of publicly provided care services also discourages female labor force participation because adult women are often called on to provide care for preschool- and school-age children, as well as elderly parents and parents-in-law. These lacunae in Italian social policy are acceptable to voters in large part because a generous pension system keeps resources flowing into the hands of older men, who then redistribute the resources that subsidize the (labor market) inactivity of their wives and grown children (Jurado and Naldini 1996). Subsidiarity doctrine could not have invented a better way to preserve traditional patterns of authority.13 Ironically, though, subsidiarity doctrine was not the motivating force behind the Italian welfare state’s pension-heavy policy mix. Elderlyoriented welfare states like those in Italy are better interpreted as the product of early institutional choices about program design and the competitive strategies of politicians (Lynch 2006). This takes us once again back to policies chosen by anticlerical policy makers in the Liberal period and sustained by the clientelism of the DC. Liberal policy choices and the DC’s clientelist style are linked to the pension-heavy mix of the Italian welfare state in two steps. First, over the course of the 20th century, fast-growing occupational social insurance programs and minimal state activity in social assistance have come to encourage a pension-heavy spending mix. Second, as we have seen, clientelist politics reinforce occupational social programs, keeping them in place long enough to produce their distinctive effects on the age orientation of social spending. Taken together, these two steps imply that the familialism and male breadwinner orientation of the Italian welfare state 13

Ultimately, however, to the extent that these policies may have contributed to delayed marriage and declining fertility, they may also paradoxically undermine traditional family structures.

Lynch

113

are in large part a result of unchecked policy drift. That is, occupational social programs put into place during the Liberal period result, in the late 20th century, in a pension-heavy policy mix that was not the intention of the welfare state’s founders. The clientelist practices of the DC are a crucial ingredient of this policy drift because they lock occupationalist policy institutions into place despite important changes in social structures and labor markets.14 Occupationalism has led to a pension-heavy welfare state in Italy slowly, gradually, and largely as an unintended consequence of program decisions made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The occupational welfare state programs inaugurated in the Liberal period protected what were at that time the members of a youthful core workforce and their families, leaving responsibility for social assistance for the poor elderly and families with no male breadwinner in the hands of the Church. But these same social policy institutions imply different patterns of social spending on different social groups in the late 20th century than they did 100 years ago. As public employment-related pensions have expanded to cover more people in various sectors of the economy, and as large numbers of fully vested pensioners have come to draw generous benefits from a mature public occupational pension system, increasing welfare state spending has come to be directed at the elderly rather than prime-age workers. This expensive occupational pension system is financed through mounting payroll taxes that discourage new hires, ensuring that public spending on occupational benefits even for active workers in the protected core of the labor market increasingly benefits older (usually male) workers. The Italian system of unemployment supports, for example, allocates ´ primarily to older workthe most generous benefits (CIG and mobilita) ers, whereas among the 60 per cent of the unemployed in Italy who are younger than 30 years (Eurostat 1998), only 4 per cent receive unemployment insurance or assistance benefits (Schmid and Reissert 1996). The apparent familialism and male breadwinner focus of the Italian welfare state results from very high levels of spending on pensioners, directing public resources primarily into the hands of older male family heads and crowding out other forms of social spending, such as services for families or active labor market policies to benefit first-time job seekers. Relatively static welfare state policies have interacted with dynamic social structures and markets for labor and insurance to create a pattern of social 14

Hacker (2005) describes similar processes of policy drift in the American welfare state.

114


policy spending that has matured, or ‘drifted,’ over time. But what kept these welfare state institutions static? Clientelism has served as a powerful brake on the development of citizenship-based alternatives to the basic occupational structure set in place in the Liberal period. High pension spending is a result of clientelist politicians’ use of the fragmented occupationalist system. The preservation of that system is in turn due to the benefits, such as divisibility and opacity, that it provides to clientelist politicians. In this sense, the familialism of the Italian welfare state is Christian Democratic in origin. But this familialism is not a result of social Catholicism implemented by a Christian Democratic party. Indeed, the secularization of Italian society over time suggests that the impact on social policy of societal Catholicism should be visible in Italian social policy earlier, rather than later. It is relevant to note that other apparently familialist aspects of the Italian welfare state are also of rather recent vintage. Both means tests that take into account the financial resources of extended families and obligations to provide care services for nonnuclear families have been implemented only recently, as policy makers searched for savings in social programs already squeezed to the limits by growing pension expenditures (Saraceno 1994; Addis 1998).

4.4 conclusion This chapter finds little evidence that Christian Democracy has determined the shape of the Italian welfare state through the mechanisms of parties that carry and enforce a particular set of socioreligious doctrines. The fragmented occupational nature of the public pension system is not an outgrowth of organicist social Catholic doctrines. Rather, it results from the DC’s clientelist extension of an occupational pension system established on e´ tatist principles. Neither can the familialism of a welfare state that is dominated by pension spending, squeezes cash benefits for families, and provides little in the way of social services be attributed to Catholic subsidiarity doctrine. Instead, we need to look to long-term processes of welfare state change and nonchange to explain why the Italian welfare state directs most of its resources to older male family heads. Italy’s welfare state institutions give the illusion of a social Catholic imprint, an impression that is heightened by the fact that the Church and the Christian Democratic party have both significantly influenced the development of these institutions. But although the ideological foundations

Lynch

115

of social Catholicism have inspired generations of Catholic activists, and although the ‘little tradition’ of social Catholicism may have produced public demand for status-reinforcing and familialist welfare policies,15 Italy is not a welfare state that is either predominantly inspired by eliteor mass-level social Catholicism or constituted by a set of policy compromises designed to ensure cross-class harmony. The occupational segmentation of the Italian welfare state was a result of policy battles fought out among the competing secular interests of Liberal Italy. The passive familialism of a welfare state that leaves social service provision to nonstate actors derives from the Liberal state’s choice not to challenge the Church’s control over this domain. And the male breadwinner orientation that is so much in evidence today results, quite unintentionally, from the DC’s strategic interest in maintaining institutions that end up crowding out spending on entitlements for women and children. Each attribute of the Italian welfare state was probably encouraged and facilitated by the fact that it did not contradict ideologies and values nurtured in society by a powerful Catholic church and lay Catholic activists. But both the origins of the Italian welfare state and the persistence of particular institutional forms that appear to conform with social Catholic doctrines are better explained by the behavior than by the ideologies of Christian Democratic (and non–Christian Democratic) political actors. References Abramovici, Gerard (2003), Social Protection: Expenditure on Cash Benefits and on Benefits in Kind, Statistics in Focus Theme 3 – 16/2002 (Eurostat). Addis, Elisabetta (1998), Gender in the Italian Welfare State Reforms, Florence, Italy: European Forum, European University Institute. Seminar Paper WS/1. Baccaro, Lucio (1999), The Organizational Consequences of Democracy: Labor Unions and Economic Reforms in Contemporary Italy, PhD dissertation, Sloan School of Management and Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Baldwin, Peter (1990), The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases in the European Welfare State, 1875–1975, New York: Cambridge University Press. Bartocci, Enzo (1999), Le politiche sociali nell’Italia liberale: 1861–1919, Rome: Donzelli. Castellino, Onorato (1976), Il Labirinto Delle Pensioni, Bologna: Il Mulino.

15

Note, however, that the roughly 40 per cent of Italian voters who have supported Left parties and their goals of welfare state universalism belie a monolithic interpretation of public opinion in this regard.

116


Castles, Francis (1994a), On Religion and Public Policy: Does Catholicism Make a Difference?, European Journal of Political Research 25 (1): 19–40. Castles, Francis (1994b), On Religion and Public Policy: The Case for Covariance. Reply to Goran Therborn, European Journal of Political Research 26 (1): ¨ 111–115. Castles, Francis, and Deborah Mitchell (1993), Worlds of Welfare and Families of Nations, in F. Castles (ed), Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies, Dartmouth: Aldershot, 3–34. Cazzola, Franco (1972), Partiti, correnti e voto di preferenza, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 2 (3): 569–588. CENSIS (1983), Spesa pubblica e politica sociale: Libro bianco sulla crisi dello stato assistenziale, Milan: Angeli. CGIL (1970), La CGIL dal VI al VII congresso : Atti e documenti, Rome: Editrice Sindacale Italiana. CGIL Segreteria Generale (1962), Sui miglioramentio ai pensionati e la riforma generale sull’assicurazione pensioni, in CGIL (ed), La CGIL dal 5 al 6 Congresso: Atti e documenti, Rome: Editrice Sindacale Italiana. CGIL-CISL-UIL Segreteria Interconfederale (1970), CGIL-CISL-UIL a Rumor sulla politica economica e sociale, in La CGIL dal VII all’ VIII Congresso, Rome: Editrice Sindacale Italiana. Cherubini, A. (1977), Storia della previdenza sociale in Italia (1869–1960), Rome: Riuniti. CISL (1958), Raccomandazione della CISL ai partiti nella imminenza delle elezioni politiche, in CISL (ed), Documenti ufficiali dal 1950 al 1958, Rome: CISL. CISL Consiglio Generale (1950), Mozione sulle linee d’indirizzo e sugli obiettivi dell’azione sindacale, in CISL (ed), Documenti ufficiali dal 1950 al 1958, Rome: CISL. CISL Ufficio Studi (1956), Mozione relative all’attuazione del Piano Vanoni per lo sviluppo del reddito e dell’occupazione, in CISL (ed), Documenti ufficiali dal 1950 al 1958, Rome: CISL. CNEL (1963a), Osservazioni e proposte sulla riforma della previdenza sociale, Rome: CNEL. CNEL (1963b), Relazione preliminare sulla riforma della previdenza sociale, Rome: CNEL. Commissione D’Aragona (Commissione per la riforma della previdenza sociale) (1948), Relazione sui lavori della Commissione, 4 luglio 1947–29 febbraio 1948, Rome: Ministero del Lavoro e della Previdenza Sociale. Commissione Onofri (Commissione per l’analisi delle compatabilita´ macroeconomiche della spesa sociali) (1997), Relazione Finale, available at: www.csmb. unimo.it/docrb/54_commissione_onofri1997.pdf. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1996), Welfare States without Work: The Impasse of Labour Shedding and Familialism in Continental European Social Policy, in GPsta Esping-Andersen (ed), Welfare States in Transition, London: Sage, 66– 87.

Lynch

117

Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1999), Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eurostat (1998), Labour Force Survey Results 1996, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Fargion, Valeria (1997), Geografia della cittadinanza socialein Italia: Regioni e politiche assistenziali dagli anni settanta agli anni novanta, Bologna: Il Mulino. Ferrera, Maurizio (1984), Il welfare state in Italia: Sviluppo e crisi in prospettiva comparata, Bologna: Il Mulino. ´ Politica e riforme sociali nelle Ferrera, Maurizio (1993), Modelli di solidarieta: democrazie, Bologna: Il Mulino. Franco, Daniele (1993), L’espansione della spesa pubblica in Italia, Bologna: Il Mulino. Gorrieri, Ermanno (1972), La giungla retributiva, Bologna: Mulino. Gustapane, Enrico (1989), Le origine del sistema previdenziale: la Cassa nazionale di previdenza per l’invalidita´ e per la vecchiaia degli operaia, Previdenza Sociale 1 (Suppl): 35–98. Hacker, Jacob (2005), Policy Drift: The Hidden Politics of US Welfare State Retrenchment, in Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen (eds), Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, New York: Oxford University Press, 40–82. Huber, Evelyne, Charles Ragin, and John D. Stephens (1993), Social Democracy, Christian Democracy, Constitutional Structure and the Welfare State, American Journal of Sociology 99 (3): 711–749. Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS) (1962), Per una storia della previdenza sociale in Italia: studi e documenti, Rome: INPS. Jurado Guerrero, Teresa, and Manuela Naldini (1996), Is the South So Different? Italian and Spanish Families in Comparative Perspective, South European Society and Politics 1 (3): 42–66. LaPalombara, Joseph (1964), Interest Groups in Italian Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lynch, Julia (2001), The Age-Orientation of Social Policy Regimes in OECD Countries, Journal of Social Policy 30 (3): 411–436. Lynch, Julia (2006), Age in the Welfare State: The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers and Children, New York: Cambridge University Press. Maestri, Giovanni Ezio (1994), Rappresentanza degli interessi, partiti e consenso: Giungla pensionistica, clientelismo e competizione politica in Italia, Milan: FrancoAngeli. Manow, Philip (1994), Die Sozialversicherung in der DDR und der BRD, 1945– ¨ 1990: Uber die Fortschrittlichkeit ruckschrittlicher Institutionen, Politische ¨ Vierteljahresschrift 35 (1): 40–61. Millar, Jane, and Jane Warman (1996), Family Obligations in Europe, London: Family Policy Studies Centre. Naldini, Manuela (2003), The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare States, London: Frank Cass. Navarro, Vicente, John Schmitt, and Javier Astudillo (2004), Is Globalisation Undermining the Welfare State?, Cambridge Journal of Economics 28 (1): 133–152.

118


OECD (2003), OECD Social Expenditures Database (SOCX). OECD 2003, available at: www.sourceoecd.org. Paci, Massimo (1984). Il sistema di Welfare italiano tra tradizione clientelare e prospettive di riforma, in U. Ascoli (ed), Welfare state all’italiana, Rome: LaTerza, 297–325. Parisi, Arturo, and Gianfranco Pasquino (1977), Relazioni partiti-elettorali e tipi di voto, in A. Parisi and G. Pasquino (eds), Continuita´ e mutamento elettorale in Italia, Bologna: Il Mulino, 215–250. Pasquino, Gianfranco (1972), Le radici del frazionismo e il voto di preferenza, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica 2 (2): 353–368. Quine, Maria Sophia (2002), Italy’s Social Revolution: Charity and Welfare from Liberalism to Fascism, New York: Palgrave. Regini, Marino, and Gloria Regonini (1981), La politica delle pensioni in Italia: Il ruolo del movimento sindacale, Giornale di diritto del lavoro e di relazioni industriali 10 (3): 217–242. Regonini, Gloria (1984), Il sistema pensionistico: Risorse e vincoli, in U. Ascoli (ed), Welfare state all’italiana, Rome: La Terza, 87–117. Regonini, Gloria (1996), Partiti e pensioni: Legami mancanti, in M. Cotta and P. Isernia (eds), Il gigante dai piedi di argilla: La crisi del regime partitocratico in Italia, Bologna: Il Mulino, 73–138. Ritter, Gerhard (1983), Social Welfare in Germany and Britain, New York: Berg. Rossi, Nicola (1997), Meno ai padri, piu´ ai figli, Bologna: Il Mulino. Saraceno, Chiara (1994), The Ambivalent Familism of the Italian Welfare State, Social Politics 1 (1): 60–82. Schmid, Gunther and Bernd Reissert (1996), Unemployment Compensation and Labour Market Transitions, in G. Schmid, J. O’Reilly, and K. Schomann (eds), International Handbook of Labour Market Policy and Evaluation, Cheltenham, UK and Brookfield, MA: Edward Elgar. Sepe, Stefano (1999), Le amministrazzioni della sicurezza sociale nell’Italia unita (1861–1998), Milan: Giuffre. Therborn, Goran (1994), Another Way of Taking Religion Seriously: Comment ¨ on Francis G. Castles, European Journal of Political Research 26 (1): 103–110. van Kersbergen, Kees (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State, London: Routledge. van Kersbergen, Kees, and Uwe Becker (1988), The Netherlands: A Passive Social Democratic Welfare State in a Christian Democratic Ruled Society, Journal of Social Policy 17 (4): 477–99. Zuckerman, Alan (1979), The Politics of Faction: Christian Democratic Rule in Italy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

5 Religion and the Welfare State in the Netherlands Kees van Kersbergen

5.1 introduction Two major puzzles have occupied research on the Dutch welfare state. First, why was social policy so late to emerge, and why did it remain underdeveloped for such a long time? Second, why did the Dutch welfare state in the period after World War II so suddenly and rapidly expand to become one of the most comprehensive, generous, and passive of its sort? The second puzzle is to some extent the reverse image of the first because ‘catching up’ is only possible for a country that first lagged behind European developments. The generosity and passive character of the Dutch welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s, however, are a distinct conundrum. As is stressed in the introductory chapter of this volume, there are three major sources of variation in welfare state development: the timing of the development of the self-regulating market in the 19th century, the long-standing religious differences since the Reformation, and the cleavage structuring in politics as an effect of the choice of electoral system in the beginning of the 20th century (in the Dutch case, in 1917). Measured against such indicators as wealth and urbanization, the Netherlands between 1850 and 1890 qualifies as a developed and modernized economy that, according to the modernization tradition in welfare state research, should have developed modern social policies early on. Because it did not, the country can be classified as a welfare state laggard or I want to thank Philip Manow for his critical comments and helpful suggestions. This chapter draws on earlier work on the Dutch welfare state (see van Kersbergen and Becker (2003 [1988]); van Kersbergen 1995: Chapter 6; van Kersbergen 1997), and expands on it, particularly with respect to the puzzle of late development and the role of Protestantism.

119

120

van Kersbergen

latecomer. The country’s economic wealth and development stemmed from commerce, shipping, agriculture, banking, and finance. Industrialization did not really take off until the 1890s, and a slow maturation of industry did not take place until after 1895 (Klein 1980; Van Zanden and Griffiths 1989; Lademacher 1993). In fact, the Dutch economy would never really develop an industrial economic system comparable to Belgium or Germany, although it did, of course, develop the Polanyian self-regulating market. If we look at labor law, it seems that the Dutch development was only somewhat late compared to events elsewhere in Europe. The first piece of this type of modern social legislation in the Netherlands was the Child Law of 1874 (legislated by the Liberal Van Houten), which put a curb on female and child labor (Van Oirschot 1950; Wolffram 2003). Then followed the Labour Law of 1889 (that was to combat dangerous and excessive labor of young and female workers and put a legal ban on all child labor) and the Workplace Safety Law of 1895. As Obinger (Chapter 7, this volume) shows, Switzerland is a parallel case. Here, labor legislation is very early, and social protection comes relatively late. This is taken as evidence for the thesis that Liberal (Reformed-Protestant) currents played a distinctive role in early modern social policy (Manow 2004). The model of Protestant asceticism could fully justify labor safety, but everything beyond that fell in the realm of individual responsibility and discipline. Historical research (Hoogenboom 2004) shows that legal designs that mimic Bismarckian social insurance were circulating already in the 1880s and proposed in the 1890s. However, modern social legislation was not introduced until well into the 20th century. The reform of the old Poor Law dates from 1912, only to be replaced by the Public Assistance Act of 1963/1965. The Invalidity Act was introduced in 1913; the first Unemployment Decree dates from 1917, but was not replaced by a full-fledged Unemployment Insurance until 1952. The Netherlands was therefore late in the introduction of social insurance for industrial workers, and the relevant question is: what and who blocked the timely introduction of these laws? This chapter attempts to provide the solution to the puzzles of lateness and generosity-cum-passivity. It is structured as follows. Section 2 documents religious segmentation in the Netherlands and highlights that powerful orthodox Protestants were uninterested if not very reluctant in developing modern social policy. In addition, a Liberal antiinterventionist legacy, vulnerable Catholicism, and weak Socialism further explain late

Religion and the Welfare State in the Netherlands

121

development. In Section 3, I provide a solution to the second puzzle. The postwar transformation of the political landscape marginalized Calvinist politics and brought to power a black–red (called Roman–red in the Dutch context) coalition that had economic recovery and growth and social policy development as its core program. In the 1960s, Liberal–Confessional (mainly Catholic) coalitions came to power that rapidly expanded the system under favorable conditions of economic growth and reinforced the already in-built, path-dependent expansionary mechanisms. Section 4 concludes.

5.2 cleavage structure, pillarization, and late social policy development Religious segmentation has characterized the history of the Netherlands since the Reformation and the revolt against the Spanish (1568–1648). The Peace of Munster (1648) settled the religious war and established the independence of the Dutch Republic. The political impact of the fundamental religious cleavage on Dutch society, both expressed as a Liberal–Confessional antithesis and as a Calvinist–Catholic conflict, can hardly be overstated. Religious strife and dissension are major continuities in the history of this nation. In fact, religious conflict is the single most important feature of what constitutes the nation. The religious cleavage controlled Dutch politics during the second half of the 19th century, it was the single most important cause for the rise of the ‘pillarized’ structure of the political system (1917–1967), and it determined the dominance of Christian and Catholic parties during most of the 20th century. Dutch Catholics were a large, oppressed minority in the 19th century, and much of their social and political activities involved their much sought after emancipation (Bax 1995). The reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy in the 1850s, allowed by the Liberal government, had aroused the anger of the Protestants and reinforced the Calvinist–Liberal conflict, but at the same time signified the inauguration of a long and laborious struggle for Catholic emancipation (Kossmann 1978: 278). Nevertheless, the Calvinists were first to organize politically. The orthodox Protestants had a hard time deciding who was the bigger enemy: the Catholics or the Liberals. Clearly, according to myth, the Dutch nation was founded in the Reformation and the struggle against Catholic Spain. Public life and public education in the Dutch Republic (until 1795) were clearly dominated by the Dutch Reformed Church (Woltjer 1992: 27). Since the

122

van Kersbergen

Constitution of 1798 of the Batavian Republic that separated church and state, there was formal freedom and equality of religion, but in the eye of the political, economic, and cultural elite Dutch public life and the nation were indisputably still Protestant (Van Rooden 1999), albeit of the liberal, free-thinking type that the Dutch Reformed Church had gradually embraced and that the orthodox Calvinists fiercely opposed. The orthodox Calvinists seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church in 1886. Anti-Catholicism was part and parcel of the Calvinist worldview. Politically, however, the Liberals and their antireligious policies (especially in education) were directly threatening Calvinist freedom. The political issue of the public financing of private schools in the end redrafted the impact of the religious cleavage by moderating the Calvinist–Catholic conflict and by reinforcing the antithesis between the Liberals on the one hand and the religious forces on the other hand. The school issue itself had induced the political organization of orthodox Calvinism already in the 1870s. Moreover, the school issue also fundamentally reorganized the political landscape with respect to other crucial issues such as the extension of the suffrage and the social question, and supplied the foundation for the social and political pattern of highly integrated yet segregated subcultural organization named pillarization (see Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume). The politically dominant Liberals intended to create a universal, statecontrolled, and religiously neutral educational system and passed a law for that purpose in 1878. This law obviously threatened to topple the Confessional schools and led to the foundation of the first Dutch mass party, the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (ARP) in 1879 by the Calvinist minister Abraham Kuyper. The party was antirevolutionary to the extent that it rejected the tenets of the French Revolution and the enlightenment. The term, therefore, refers to ‘a distinction between “counterrevolutionaries” who would wish to reverse history and “antirevolutionaries” who, while rejecting the entire spirit of 1789, would yet recognize change’ (Daalder 1966: 199, footnote 27). The ARP was not reactionary, but rather ‘isolationist,’ struggling for the survival of the Calvinist minority and the limitation of state intervention in what Kuyper believed to be the vital and essentially free spheres of social life (the family, the church, the school). It was a genuine party with a cross-class appeal, although it was disproportionally supported by the orthodox lower middle classes and lacked substantial working-class support. Among its leaders were middleclass men as well as aristocrats and patriciates. The party not only organized the Calvinist electorate but also those who were denied the right to vote (the mass of the people behind the voters). In this sense, the ARP


123

was indeed an evangelical people’s party (Irving 1979: 196). The ARP was successful electorally and on average controlled about 20 per cent of seats in the Tweede Kamer (Lower House) between 1888 and 1913. In the interwar years, its electoral appeal declined gradually to approximately 14 per cent of seats (Mackie and Rose 1991: 331–335). Its record in government, however, is more impressive. From 1888 to 1891, it formed the first Confessional coalition with the Catholics. This was a novelty in Dutch politics and was repeated in 1901–1905 and 1908–1913. The ARP played a pivotal role in government formation from 1918 to 1940, and it provided the prime minister five times. Catholic social and political emancipation was notoriously slow, and although the priest Herman Schaepman had already written a Catholic political program in 1897, it took until 1926 before an authentic Catholic party, the Roomsch Katholieke Staatspartij (RKSP), was founded (see Kalyvas 1996). This does not imply, however, that Catholics, who were in many ways treated as second-class citizens, refrained from participating actively in national politics. On the contrary, they played at first a small, but gradually more important role in several coalition governments with the Anti-Revolutionaries between 1888 and 1940, especially but not exclusively in social policy. The school question also encouraged Catholic political mobilization and detached them from the secular Liberals, whom they had initially supported because an alliance with the Liberals promised greater chances of liberty for the Catholic populace. But the Liberal attack on Confessional schools brought them nearer to the orthodox Protestants. The paradoxical aspect in the development of Dutch Catholic politics is that it was in fact greatly encouraged by the political progress of the Calvinists. At the time of the school question, Kuyper formulated his political theory of the ‘antithesis.’ According to this theory, it was no longer the conflict between the true faith of Calvinism and the false belief of Catholicism that fundamentally divided the Dutch politically, but rather the cleavage between faith (of whatever creed) and incredulity. This doctrine cemented the anti-Liberal coalition of the Confessional forces. Quite unexpectedly, therefore, the Catholics had found a partner in the Calvinist party through which they could exercise some political influence in their attempts to improve the situation of their brethren, particularly promoting social reform and taking responsibility for it. Although the inclusion in national politics mitigated the sense of inferiority among Catholics, their leaders were eager to avoid new waves of antipapism that they expected to follow from further Catholic

124

van Kersbergen

mobilization (Wolinetz 1983: 648). In addition, Catholic politics was no different in its internal discord from its equivalent elsewhere in Europe at the same time, as a result of which the formation of a unitary Catholic party was further delayed (Irving 1979: 199; Kalyvas 1996). Yet Catholics did establish electoral committees at the beginning of the 20th century that survived until the RKSP replaced them in 1926. Similar to other Catholic parties, the RKSP was an outright Confessional party and comprised an amalgam of the political and social organizations of the Catholic subculture, which by that time was already well established. In terms of electoral strength, the various Catholic representatives-without-a-party commanded an average of more than 26 per cent of seats in the Tweede Kamer between 1888 and 1925. The RKSP won about 30 per cent of seats between 1929 and 1940, almost perfectly reflecting the numerical strength of the Catholic minority in the Netherlands. The most decisive event in Dutch political history for both Catholic and Protestant politics before World War II undoubtedly concerned the ‘Pacification’ of 1917, that is, the simultaneous settlement of several sharply dividing issues. The new constitution of 1917 granted the financial equalization of public and private primary schools and introduced universal manhood suffrage (and a provision for female suffrage) under a proportional system in a single national constituency. As Gladdish (1991: 28) rightly puts it, ‘ . . . the new electoral system recognised, reflected and reinforced the crystallisation of political sub-cultures . . . ,’ which was to determine Dutch politics at least until the mid-1960s. In line with the theoretical thrust of this volume’s introduction, the proportional representation (PR) electoral system did indeed lead to a firm translation of the religious cleavages into politics and partly repressed the class cleavage, particularly because the Catholic pillar also organized Catholic workers. Moreover, PR led to the political marginalization of the Liberals and stimulated the consolidation of distinctly modern centralized, hierarchical, and programmatic mass parties (Van der Kolk and Thomassen 2006). These parties represented the cleavage structure of Dutch society and reinforced it institutionally. In the summary of Van der Kolk and Thomassen (2006: 122), The electoral system designed in 1917 and fine-tuned between 1917 and 1937 reflected a core element of Dutch politics and Dutch society. Until the 1960s, ‘pillarization’ was the dominant social characteristic of the Netherlands. Catholics, secular workers, and Protestants all established their own social networks, including labour unions, newspapers, broadcasting organizations, etc. Each network, or pillar, was represented by its own political party. Many members of


125

the pillars voted for the political party representing their pillar and elections were often seen as a mere census. The electoral system guaranteed all major groups to be represented in parliament. Since the relative strength of the groups did not change very much, and because turning out to vote was compulsory, the net change of seats between two elections was virtually negligible.

The social and political system of pillarization together with the proportional system was particularly beneficial to the mobilization of Catholic power in the interwar years. The RKSP, as the political representative of a comprehensive network of Catholic social and cultural organizations, became the single largest party in parliament. Moreover, pillarization contributed to the political dominance of Confessionalism in more general terms. The Confessional parties together systematically managed to control a comfortable absolute majority in the Tweede Kamer as well as in government. The RKSP represented the tradition of Catholic social concern, especially through its labor wing, and through the notion of subsidiarity attached importance to public social intervention. The Protestant parties’ concern was with self-organization and religious freedom, especially in education. In 1901, the Confessional parties won the elections at the cost of the Liberals who – in vain – had hoped that their (faltering) social policies would bring them the workers’ vote. The Protestant parties and the Catholics could form a majority coalition. Kuyper himself took the lead, but refused to support an increase in public expenditure, not even for subsidizing religious schools. The ARP had developed the concept of ‘sovereignty in one’s own circle’ (or spheres of life, see Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume) primarily as a means to secure the autonomy of lower societal circles and spheres, including the family, the church, and social organizations, from the state. All authority was argued to derive from God, and the essentially free circles of social and economic life did not have to acknowledge the authority of the state: ‘. . . the highest authority in any circle has nothing above itself but God, and the state cannot intervene and cannot command on the basis of its own power’ (Kuyper 1898: 79, my translation). In Kuyper’s eyes, Calvinism defended God’s right and sovereign authority in the social spheres of life and protested against the omnipotence of the state and against ‘the horrible perception as if there were no Law above and outside the prevailing laws . . . (86). In social policy matters, the boundaries of intervention were reached with the protection of the labor of the adult male worker. Kuyper lost the remnants of his ‘social face’ in the wake of the railway strikes of 1903,

126

van Kersbergen

to which he as responsible minister of the interior reacted with the socalled strangling laws: he made strikes illegal for government and railway personnel (Wolffram 2003: 140–143). It is no surprise that even the Protestant philosopher Woldring and the Protestant sociologist Kuiper (Woldring and Kuiper 1980: 40–51), in their study of the Protestant critique of society, qualified the contribution of the ARP to the solution of the social question as ‘disappointing.’ Abraham Kuyper, once in government (1901–1906), despite the ambitions of the ARP, did not try to accomplish anything in the area of social legislation, and he even rejected (but could not block) the (limited) social policy initiatives of his kindred spirit Syb Talma (member of government from 1908 to 1913). It has long remained unclear why Kuyper was so inactive in the field of social policy, especially as the official government program of the coalition that he led contained several proposals for new social laws (e.g., a sickness law, a disability and old age pension, an accident law). Marcel Hoogenboom’s (2004: 135) historical research, however, has revealed that Kuyper had a secret pact with the leader of the CHU, a conservative and anti-Papist union of Dutch-Reformed aristocrats, not to propose these social laws, unless additional financial means would become available from extra import taxes. Taxes, however, were not raised, as a result of which the social laws were blocked. Hoogenboom comments, ‘In this way the development of social security in the Netherlands in the first half of the 20th came to an almost complete standstill’ (136). Generally speaking, this is an example typical of the internal politics of compromise in religious parties. Once a party mobilizes both lowerand middle-class interests, as religious parties (in this case, the ARP) did, they need to find both an internal compromise and an external coalition in all questions of redistribution (see Manow and Palier, Chapter 6, this volume, who discuss the compromise between the Catholic workers and the Catholic patronat in the French case). Note, however, that internal compromises and cross-party coalition building do not necessarily always lead to antiinterventionist solutions, as the following analysis of the Catholic party and its coalition strategies demonstrates. The ARP’s general approach toward social intervention was strongly influenced by internal party compromises and external coalition building, but received its distinctive antiinterventionist character because it had to be adjusted continuously to the theory of sovereignty in one’s own circle. This governed the party’s ideology and political practice well until the 1970s. It is not surprising, therefore, that this party frequently voted against social legislation and as a government party did not take


127

responsibility for social policy (Van Putten 1985: 175). Moreover, it was the ARP that largely had been responsible for a detrimental crisis policy in the 1930s. The Anti-Revolutionary attempt to cope with the economic slump was permeated by dogmatic economic liberalism (Klein 1980: 5) that squared well with the political ideology, while the more active state intervention characteristic of the postwar era clearly conflicted with the traditional antistatism of the ARP. The Dutch Protestants in the closing decades of the 19th century were entirely engaged in their struggle against the education policy of the Liberal governments, while the Catholics also developed ideas on social policy. This development seems in line with developments elsewhere, especially in Germany. Because the entire state elite in Germany was Protestant, they were preoccupied with the Kulturkampf as one strategy to construct the nation that was directed against the Catholics. Protestantism as a religion was private and individualized in character, but, just as in the Netherlands, at the same time it was the ‘unofficial’ state religion. Catholics had more eyes for the misery of the working class, which they tried to mobilize, and were already developing ideas on social policy at that time. Did in the Dutch case Protestant politics contribute to the delay of welfare state development (cf. Manow 2004)? Yes, to some extent, as the government record of Kuyper’s ARP demonstrated. But to a larger extent one must conclude, on the basis of the most recent and best historical studies available, that orthodox Protestantism was by and large inconsequential in the realm of social policy (see, e.g., Roebroek and Hertogh 1998; Wolffram 2003). Hoogenboom (2004) shows that the ARP had no positive or negative impact on social legislation in the early 20th century after the Kuyper government, even though the party at several occasions made some half-hearted effort to put a halt to the Liberal, Social Democratic, and Catholic reform zeal. Between 1888 and 1891, when the first coalition between Calvinists and Catholics governed, it was the Catholic Minister Ruijs van Beerenbroek who was responsible for introducing the Labour Law in 1889. Even though the Calvinists occasionally voted against social legislation and governments depended on their support, their weight was apparently insufficient to hinder the adoption of some social bills. When the Calvinists took direct responsibility for social legislation between 1908 and 1913, they primarily executed what had already been prepared in the 1890s by the Liberals (Wolffram 2003). It seemed that Dutch orthodox Protestants around 1900 were primarily disinterested in social reform to the extent that they would not even withdraw

128

van Kersbergen

their support for government when they lost a parliamentary battle over new social legislation to which they objected. This lack of social concern and interest in social issues put the Calvinists apart from the political current of Christian Democracy that became one of the pillars of the expansion of the Dutch welfare state. In fact, it was political Catholicism that was the prime motor behind the establishment of the cross-Confessional Christian Democracy in the Netherlands in the mid-1970s. It was not until the Catholic party started to lose its workingclass support (both electorally and organizationally with the deconfessionalization of the Catholic labor movement in the 1960s; see Roes 1985) that it took the initiative to establish a cross-class and cross-Confessional Christian Democratic party. The merger of the denominational parties into the CDA was facilitated by an ideological rapprochement of political Catholicism and Protestantism (Zwart 1996). By the late 1960s, the ARP had radicalized its ideology and had been transformed into a radicalevangelical political party with a much more positive view on the role of state intervention in social matters. However, by that time, the entire building of the Dutch welfare state had already been erected under the black–red coalitions between the Catholic party and Social Democracy in the 1950s, while two final major pieces of social legislation – the General Social Assistance Act of 1963 and the new Disability Law of 1967 – had been introduced under the Catholic–Liberal coalitions of the 1960s and by Catholic ministers. Recently, there has emerged a ‘revisionist’ school in Dutch historiography (see De Haan 2003) that deemphasizes the role of religious forces, pillarization, and consociational democracy and instead focuses on how a Dutch nation could evolve around moral (e.g., Hoekstra 2005) and social (e.g., Wolffram 2003) issues, despite religious fragmentation and separate institutions for religious communities. Hoogenboom (2004) argues that pillarization and Confessional politics can only partly explain ‘lateness’ of Dutch welfare state development. An equally important factor was the continuing power of the ancien régime in modernizing Dutch society, particularly the landed aristocracy and, peculiar for the Dutch trading and commercial society, the rich urban patriciate. Both late development and the mix of premodern and modern forms of social security are said to be explained by this phenomenon. Although Hoogenboom presents compelling evidence to support his position, he at the same time reinforces the more traditional or mainstream position on the importance of religion by showing that the estates cleavage ran squarely within the religious


129

communities of orthodox Protestants and Catholics. The ruling estate of aristocrats and patriciates converged around a politics of opposing and blocking modern social reforms and favoring premodern solutions in the late 19th century. But the crucial difference in my view was this: within the Catholic pillar, these forces met stiff opposition from the Catholic workers, whereas no such strong counterforces were present within the orthodox Protestant circles. In other words, to understand the peculiarities of the history of the Dutch welfare state and its ‘lateness,’ it is still imperative to focus on the role of Calvinism and its political representative, the ARP. More generally, this underscores the earlier observation on the importance of the game of intraparty class politics and external coalition building that religious parties have to play and the diverse outcomes these can produce.

5.3 cross-cleavage and cross-pillar coalitions and the postwar expansion of the welfare state The Dutch welfare state developed into a highly passive, transfer-oriented, service-lean, yet highly generous, system that was tailored to income replacement for the typical male breadwinner–female carer household. Moreover, one of the conspicuous aspects of the Dutch welfare state is that active labor market policies never assumed any prominent place within the institutional framework of social policy. At best, full employment was considered to be an effect of the attainment of other macroeconomic ends, such as wage moderation. The commitment was to financial compensation for unemployment and other labor market risks, that is, to income replacement (Therborn 1986; Braun 1988). Why did the Dutch welfare state develop rapidly into this passive yet generous transfer state? In a nutshell, the expansion of the Dutch welfare state hinged on a coalition between Catholic and Social Democratic reformist forces and the exclusion of antiinterventionist orthodox Protestantism and free market Liberalism (Roebroek 1993; van Kersbergen 1995; van Kersbergen and Becker 2003 [1988]). The origins of the passive and generous architecture of the welfare state lie in the first decades after the war, when the critical, constitutional decisions on the institutional configuration of the welfare state were made. It was the agreement between the Catholic party and Social Democracy on the need for macroeconomic management of the economy and social policy as a means to ease the pain of postwar reconstruction that functioned as the

130

van Kersbergen

cement of the so-called black–red coalitions that governed the Netherlands until 1958. This political coalition was embedded in a nationwide cross-pillar and cross-class accord on how to reconstruct the nation after 15 years of crisis and war. In retrospect then, World War II provided much less of a break in the political history of the Netherlands than one might have expected. The reappearance of the prewar pillarized social and political cleavage structures, and with it the resurfacing of Confessional political dominance, indicated a clear tendency toward restoration. The experience of World War II and the Nazi occupation had not led to a substantial change in the two-cleavage logic of Dutch politics. Yet, there was an attempt to innovate in order to block the restoration of prewar pillar-dominated elite politics. The most promising line was a new political movement, which had as its main objective the ‘breakthrough’ (doorbraak) of the old multiparty political system and social cleavage-based pillarization. The main driving force behind the new Dutch People’s Movement (Nederlandse Volksbeweging [NVB]) consisted of the elite of the Socialist party (SDAP) that wanted to get rid of its Marxist heritage and sought to transform itself through the NVB into a broader people’s party that could appeal to the (Catholic, Protestant, and secular) middle class, too. Anticlericalism also had to recede to the background for this purpose. In addition, the struggle for renewal was backed by left-wing Liberals and Catholic groups united around their resistance against cleavage-based politics and an equivocal longing for unity of the Dutch people. They had their eye on the working-class vote. This blend of miscellaneous political currents found its common ground in a set of ideological concepts, labeled ‘personalist Socialism,’ which was an odd mixture of Social Democratic, Liberal, and Catholic–Corporatist conceptions, inspired by the general doctrines of socialism, humanism, and Christian Democracy that was to legitimize this attempt at cross-class and cross-cleavage political mobilization. The shared conservative element consisted of ‘. . . a return to Christian norms, emphasis on the family as the natural basis of society, the idea of community instead of pluralism’ (Von der Dunk 1982: 197), while the progressive legacy was embodied in an ideal of a society not characterized by religious and class conflicts and the nationalization of the crucial means of production. The personalist element can be seen as ‘a Christian–social variant of the old liberal individualism, in which human dignity occupied a central place’ (197).


131

Personalism was interpreted as the unfolding of the human personality at the service of . . . a solid, just and inspired community. The concept implied a critique of the ‘collectivistic ideologies’ of national Socialism as well as of Marxist–Leninism. It could be a formula to denounce class attachment and class struggle. In connection with the notion of ‘Socialism’ it was understood as the quest for a just society, for a radical social policy on the basis of communitarianism . . . ; no class struggle and no classless society either, but regulation of the capitalist market economy and the foundation of labour relations in the legal order. (Bank 1978: 20, my translation)

The formulation of this ideology was mainly furnished by Social Democratic reformism and Catholic corporatist notions. Among the reformminded political groups, there was broad agreement on an ethical principle concerning the need for a change in popular mentality in a Christian–Humanist direction and on the demolition of the old political system. Disagreement, however, existed as to the role of the state and the institutionalization of social and economic relations (Bohl ¨ et al. 1981: 36), the latter being the main conflict between Socialist collectivism and Catholic corporatism. The ‘breakthrough’ movement, however, did not succeed in altering the two-cleavage logic of party political competition in the Netherlands, and existing mass political parties continued to profit and reinforce pillarized society. Still, the movement was a success (see Bosmans 1982) in three areas. First, it led to the foundation of a modernized Social Democratic party with a Personalist–Socialist, almost social Christian character. Second, it helped the modernization of the Catholic party, according it an even more reformist disposition. Finally, it facilitated the construction of a government coalition between Catholics and Social Democrats, which established the foundation of a crucial qualitative change in macroeconomic and social policy making and politically backed the broad capital– labor covenant in industrial relations. Unlike in Germany, the Dutch Confessional parties were incapable of unifying as a single block, and considerable disagreement existed between the Protestant parties and the Catholic party concerning the relationship among state, market, and family, that is, the three major social institutions of a nation’s welfare regime. It was the ARP that in the 1940s and 1950s refused to accept increasing state intervention. In fact, the early electoral pamphlets of the Anti-Revolutionaries rejected both the alleged ‘state Socialism’ of the Social Democrats and the idea of subsidiarity of Catholicism as too interventionist.

132

van Kersbergen

The orthodox Protestants opted for strong liberal social and economic policies. The ideological concept of Kuyper’s ‘sovereignty in one’s own circle’ remained central and was understood as the idea that could protect the freedom and autonomy of the self-governing communities of Protestantism. It contained a much more restricted view on state intervention than the Catholic theory of subsidiarity. Whereas Catholics could formulate intervention in a positive sense as the duty of the state to assist social units at lower levels of society when in need, the orthodox Protestants could only do so (from the state’s point of view) negatively as the state’s duty of noninterference with the ‘life circles.’ It was this political controversy between the Protestant and Catholic parties that forestalled the unification of Christian Democratic forces and contributed to the emergence of a Catholic–Social Democratic alliance. It was therefore this conflict on the state–church dimension between Catholics and Calvinists that facilitated a coalition on the left between Social Democracy and the Catholic party, reinforced by the ARP’s liberal-economic position on the left–right dimension. This political coalition was part of an even wider-ranging crosscleavage and cross-pillar social accord on how the nation should recover from the destruction and suffering that 15 years of depression and war had caused. This nationwide accord consisted, on the one hand, of an exportoriented economic model that stressed low wages and moderate wage development (and later industrialization) as the sine qua non for economic recovery and development in an open economy, and, on the other hand, a social model that aimed at social peace and offered compensation in the form of transfers for the expected negative social effects of low wages and adjusting to world market requirements. Dutch developments manifested many of the features later analytically interpreted as ‘democratic corporatism’ in the political economy models of the 1980s (e.g., Katzenstein 1985). Specifically, the vulnerability that small, open economies faced favored the expansion of the public economy so as to reduce uncertainty via social guarantees, full employment, and more active political management of the economy. The causal chain set in motion was that this small open economy developed democratic corporatist structures as a way to enhance domestic cross-class and cross-cleavage consensus, facilitate economic adjustments, and maintain international competitiveness. Consensus building via democratic corporatism was promoted by the presence of Social Democratic and Catholic labor movements that demanded a say in policy development and were especially keen to secure full employment.


133

Employers from all pillars feared full employment because it would drive up wages. Wage moderation in exchange for social policy under the condition of full employment became thus the positive-sum solution between employers and employees that sealed the postwar social contract (see, e.g., Swenson 1991). Social policy functioned as a central means to mediate social and political conflicts. The politics of social welfare in the Netherlands has been an indispensable constituent of consociationalism and therefore of the development of a stable democracy in a segmented society. Without the development of an extensive and generous system of social compensation, the consensus democracy of the Netherlands would never have prospered as it did. The coalition between Catholic-controlled Christian Democracy and Social Democracy has played a substantial and beneficial political role by contributing to the stability of Dutch democracy (see Koole and Daalder 2002; Van Waarden 2002). The likelihood of this political coalition had been greatly increased by a number of historical events and intrapolitical developments. First, the resistance of the Catholic hierarchy against Catholic–Socialist cooperation, dating from the early 1920s, had been tempered as a result of the evolution of Dutch Socialism into a Christian–Humanist version of personalist Social Democracy. This tempered the political saliency of the religious cleavage. Second, during the economic crisis in the 1930s, Catholic and Socialist socioeconomic policy proposals had rapidly converged as they both had sought to cater to their working-class clientele. This moderated the political significance of the class cleavage. Finally, by the late 1940s, the political projects of Catholicism and Social Democracy had considerably converged on three major areas: global macroeconomic demand management, social policy, and family policy. With this convergence, potentially divisive policy issues receded to the background. Ultimately, the pact was sealed by anti-Communism, which was broadly shared by political Catholicism and Social Democracy and was politically relevant as the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) polled more than 10 per cent of the vote in the first national elections (1946) after the war. The experience of economic crisis, war, and fascist oppression had contributed to a temporary radicalization of societal forces, which, in turn, facilitated reforms. If radicalization did not have an immediate effect on the reformist inclination, it fueled at least anti-Communism in the Dutch context, particularly of the Catholic labor movement, consequently consolidating the construction of a black–red coalition. Anti-Communism

134

van Kersbergen

not only accelerated the integration of the non-Communist labor movement into the institutional framework of democratic corporatism, but it also stimulated social policy as a means to cut the grass from under the feet of societal discontent fostered by the Communist labor movement and party. Anti-Communism also functioned as a convenient catalyst in the reconstruction of Catholic unity and the reconstitution of the Catholic cross-class pillar after the war. The cross-cleavage and cross-class social and political pact that integrated the Catholic and Social Democratic labor movement into the social and political structures of policy making and backed the political coalition between the Catholic and Social Democratic party got further momentum in the context of a comprehensive attempt to stimulate industrial development in a still predominantly rural and trading society (De Wolff and Driehuis 1980; Bohl ¨ et al. 1981; Fortuyn 1980, 1983; Ter Heide 1986) and to reconstruct Dutch labor relations further in democratic corporatist fashion (Windmuller 1969; Hemerijck 1992). This intensification of the labor–capital accord consisted of a Catholic–Social Democratic compromise of corporatist reorganization and the introduction of global, indicative, or technocratic planning as the lubricant of the consensus machine that was beginning to take shape. The macroeconomic policies of the black–red coalitions were dominated by one leading goal: export-led recovery (De Wolff and Driehuis 1980: 37). The conditions for the export orientation of the Dutch economy were found in further economic integration into the European markets, tax relief for entrepreneurs, a restrictive wage and price policy, the improvement of the infrastructure, an extensive regulatory socioeconomic framework (Van Eijk 1980; Ter Heide 1986), and compensatory social policies to be initiated and legislated by the central government, but administered by semipublic organizations of labor and capital or other interest groups (see, extensively, Cox 1993). Monetary policy became the principal responsibility of the Dutch Bank, which was nationalized in 1948. Five official goals of economic policy were to guide state intervention until the mid-1960s: full employment, economic growth, a reasonable income distribution, equilibrium on the balance of payments, and price stability. The export-oriented macroeconomic policy of industrialization originated in a ‘Dutch conception of underdevelopment’ (Therborn 1989: 209), activated by the demographic pressure of a fast-growing population and the international pressure to decolonize the largest overseas colony, Indonesia. The (expected) economic loss of the Dutch Indies was feared


135

to deprive Dutch capital of an important investment possibility. Released funds had to be reallocated and export-led industrialization would provide an outlet by the opening up of new markets. At the same time, labor quiescence and wage restraint were seen as preconditions for profitable investment and a successful industrialization strategy. A tight incomes policy until the early 1960s kept wages and inflation low and indeed improved the international competitiveness of the Dutch economy. Since labor was cheap, employment increased steadily, particularly in the industrial and service sector. Both the Christian and the Socialist unions accepted the restriction on wage development, mainly because of its favorable effect on employment, but also in exchange for the extension of social security. Only in this sense, that is, in connection with wage restraint for competitive reasons, can full employment be argued ever to have been an explicit policy goal. It was a secondary target because the underlying theory was that export-led growth founded on wage restraint in combination with global measures would automatically lead to an optimal allocation of labor power. There was virtually no discussion on (active) labor market policy, and no instruments were developed in this direction. Social Democratic attempts to politicize this issue, in fact, encountered Confessional opposition. Generous replacement rates could be demanded (and, in fact, were demanded by the Catholic party) to be included in social legislation because they were to replace quite moderate family wages. In addition, full employment kept the cost of social security low. Yet, given the generous structure of benefits and the absence of active labor market policies, social spending obtained a path-dependent built-in tendency to rise rapidly under less favorable economic conditions. In addition to increasing coverage and generosity, this explains why, no matter what color of the ruling coalition, social spending tended to expand in the 1960s and 1970s. Both the Catholic party and the Social Democrats promoted the family as the cornerstone of society and especially the former had a history of resisting the entry of women in the labor market. Since the 1880s, it was the policy practice of municipalities to prohibit married women from working in periods of rising unemployment, so as to be able to redistribute work to unemployed men. Since the introduction of a national law in 1904, married women were legally prohibited from working in periods of economic downturn. For instance, when unemployment increased in 1924, the Catholic minister Ruys de Beerenbrouck ordered by Royal Decree (Koninklijk Besluit) that female public employees younger

136

van Kersbergen

than 45 years be fired when they got married. A Royal Decree of 1932 simply outlawed the hiring of married women as public employees, and a policy guideline of 1934 instructed all government institutions not to hire women, whether married or not, and to discourage female employment more generally through their policies toward private business. The Catholic leader Romme proposed a law in 1937 to the effect that ‘Eene gehuwde vrouw mag geen arbeid verrichten’ (‘A married woman is not allowed to work,’ quoted in Blok 1978: 120, my translation). Resistance against this law from the non-Confessional women’s organizations and female Socialist members of Parliament, as well as the shadow of the impending war, effectively prevented the introduction of this law. In 1930, 2.2 per cent of married women worked, as compared to 13.4 per cent in France. Whereas around 1960 in most advanced nations (except Norway) approximately 30 per cent of women worked, only 16.1 per cent in the Netherlands did so (104). The ban on married public employees was not lifted until 1957. None of the electoral manifestos of the Confessional parties in the first 10 years after World War II promoted, or even mentioned, equal treatment of (married) women in the labor market. Family policy proposed by the KVP consisted of the restoration of traditional family relations (with concrete proposals on fighting divorce and contraceptives) and preparing men for industrialization. The Catholic Party’s think tank (Centrum voor Staatskundige Vorming) published various politically influential reports on married women and the labor market (1951–1953), highlighting the duty of a married women in the family, based on the ‘spontaneous division of labour between the sexes,’ the ‘moral order of peoples,’ the ‘biological function of women,’ and a woman’s psychological inclination to care. The observation in 1951, incidentally, was that because only 35,000 married women worked (1 per cent of the labor force), this was not a particularly pressing problem. The effect of the converging views on the family as the cornerstone of society was clearly visible in the complex of incomes policies (taxation, social security, wages, prices) that was shaped as far as possible according to such notions (see Morgan, Chapter 3, this volume) and produced the male breadwinner–female carer model of Dutch social security. Social policy originally assumed that male breadwinners were entitled to social security benefits and that such entitlements had to be sufficient to replace a family income. Women were, so to speak, insured through the wage labor of their husbands and, in exchange for this income guarantee, women were assumed to perform their family caring tasks as well as a certain


137

amount of voluntary work. The result was a system of social insurance characterized by entitlements differentiated according to position in the household and by the absence of specific social rights for married women in particular (Bussemaker and van Kersbergen 1994). The fact that both the Catholic and the Social Democratic parties took a traditional stance on the role of the family as the fundamental constituent of society with defined gender roles did not necessarily imply that family-friendly policies became a paramount characteristic of the Dutch welfare state. On the contrary, it meant that all social policies were permeated by a bias toward reproducing the traditional division of labor between men and women. Social policy was only meant to strengthen the family to the extent that it preserved its traditional character. In this way, it reinforced the existing patriarchal structure of Dutch society in the form of a gendered breadwinner–carer model of social policy that was elaborated to the extreme. In this sense, the arrival of modern social policy initially did not modify a resilient sociocultural trait of Dutch society that consisted of a sharp separation of male paid employment and female housework that had existed since the 17th century (Pott-Buter 1993; Schama 1988). Catholic (and initially also Social Democratic) family policy was not primarily about assisting the family, but about preserving its gendered character. This is why social policies ultimately had, in fact, the paradoxical effect of making family life extremely difficult. Such policies reinforced disincentives for women to enter the labor market and make a career. They also increased the difficulties for families of combining and reconciling work and care, which later encouraged a further decline in fertility rates. This was something the Catholics obviously never intended to accomplish, but which they nonetheless helped to produce. Traditionally the Catholic organizations had been strong in the pillarized organization of social work. Public intervention in this area, however, came under the Ministry of Social Affairs, a Social Democratic bulwark. The Catholic party, however, successfully dissociated social services from this ministry and relocated them to a new department of social services established in 1952. This department became the embodiment of Catholic subsidiarity in the Netherlands in the sense that it decentralized the execution of subsidized policy to religious institutions and the private initiative as far as possible (Bohl ¨ et al. 1981: 252–262). This partly explains the conspicuous ‘underdevelopment’ of public social services in the Netherlands. De Bruijn (1989: 170–171, my translation) comments that the key to family policy toward the vulnerable family was the ‘preservation of

138

van Kersbergen

the closed family with the intrinsic omnipresence of the mother. Modernization threatened to break open the family. The whole network of family policy instruments and organizations was meant to prevent this; the vulnerable family needed protection and support.’ Under conditions of increasing pressure from economic Liberalism – both from the Liberal party and the right wing of the Confessional parties – to withdraw from intervention in wage determination, passive social policy remained virtually the only fundamental consensus between the Social Democrats and the Catholics (Ter Heide 1986). The favorable economic conditions of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the near full employment, however, placed the strict wage policy of the black–red coalitions under pressure. Given the tight labor market, employers had already started to pay higher wages than were permitted. One of the reasons why the coalition between Catholicism and Social Democracy broke up was that the latter stubbornly refused to give up wage policy as the last bastion of interventionism, while the former had started giving in on the demands of the employers and their representatives within the party to ease the control. Within the Catholic party in the 1960s, therefore, a new social coalition was constructed that leaned much more to the (liberal) right and inaugurated the political coalition between the Catholics and the Liberals. The guided-wage system broke down entirely in 1964, under one of these Confessional–Liberal coalitions that ruled the Netherlands between 1958 and 1972. Other than the guided wage policy, the Liberal–Confessional coalitions did not fundamentally alter economic and social policy. Rather, under Catholic leadership, the coalition not only kept the basic contours of the export scenario and compensatory social policy intact, but considerably expanded its scope and performance. Once in place, the model gained momentum and developed its own logic of path-dependent expansion. A wage policy was never abandoned entirely either. At the political insistence of the Catholic Minister of Social Affairs (G. M. J. Veldkamp), first unions and employers agreed on a minimum wage and then the government introduced a statutory minimum wage. This paved the way for another central characteristic of the passive welfare state: the extraordinarily pervasive system of linking the development of wages in the private sector to the wages in the public sector and to the development of social security benefits. This form of ‘automatic government’ reinforced the persistent growth of public spending that was the result of increasing government commitments in the realm of social policy, especially when the minimum wage was later raised considerably more than the rise in productivity (Bos 2006).


139

The loosening of the wage restriction in the late 1950s and its eventual abolishment contributed to an economic boom in the second half of the 1960s, which, in turn, resulted in a large-scale reconstruction of the economy. Sudden, shockwise wage increases caused a rationalization of the labor-intensive industries. Employers started to invest in labor-saving techniques and massive layoffs followed, initiating the ‘welfare without work’ syndrome (Esping-Andersen 1996; van Kersbergen and Hemerijck 2004) that is so typical of the continental welfare states. Here, the passive social system started to turn against itself. The generous disability insurance, introduced in 1967 as a hallmark of Catholic social policy, provided the employers and unions with a convenient opportunity to ease the pain of rationalization for their workers. Rather than becoming unemployed, many older and economically less functional workers claimed a right to a disability benefit, which secured them 80 per cent of their former earnings until the age of retirement. Releasing personnel via the disability scheme created a considerable pool of hidden unemployment, which was accepted by workers and unions in exchange for the generosity of the scheme. This dramatically illustrates the passivity of the transfer-oriented welfare system. It established what perhaps disrespectfully can be called the benefit machine of the Dutch welfare state. The Netherlands could afford to be generous to its workers partly due to favorable economic conditions, but also because the nation reached a semi-OPEC status in the 1960s as a result of the discovery and profitable exploitation of natural gas resources in the northern province of Groningen (Lubbers and Lemckert 1980). Next to the factors already noted, two other conditions appear to have been critical for the expansion of the Dutch model. These conditions concern the unparalleled economic growth and prosperity of the Dutch economy in the 1960s and the initially gradual, but in the end quite sudden structural changes of society in the form of depillarization and deconfessionalization, eventually culminating in the progressive political and cultural conjuncture of the permissive society (Braun and van Kersbergen 1986). One argument is that the growth of the welfare state can be seen as an effect of depillarization. Welfare state resources may have started to compensate for the loss of milieu support that the pillars had enjoyed previously. However, this interpretation is difficult to sustain simply because the period from 1945 to 1967 was the heyday of pillarization, and until roughly the mid-1960s, there was nothing to compensate. It is, in fact, more plausible to turn around the causal arrow (as Bax 1990, 1995, does). Economic growth helped provide the resources for welfare state development. Modern social policies involved a

140

van Kersbergen

professionalization of services and meant more state involvement in income maintenance schemes. The broad social accord, moreover, had already introduced a bigger regulatory role of the state in pillarized industrial relations. According to Bax (1995: 12), all these developments made individual households less dependent on churches, unions, extended family and all kinds of significant social collectivities and thus contributed to the erosion of social control by pillars. . . . De-pillarization and the associated individualization of Dutch society implied that the vertical lines of social cleavage withered away as did the consensus nature of Dutch social conflict management and that, consequently, horizontal lines of social and economic division came more in the open.

In other words, the welfare state freed people from their dependence on the pillarized welfare institutions and caused a decline of the influence of the (religious) ideologies on social, cultural, and political life. This is a more plausible explanation, although there is one serious problem here, too. The welfare state may have had this emancipating effect on individuals and thus helped erode the pillars’ power, but at the same time it continued to deliver its services mainly through the pillarized institutions themselves, even long after these institutions had lost their religious character. I cannot develop this point here, but my hunch is that the correlation between welfare state development and depillarization is probably spurious and, in any case, much more complex than a simple linear relationship (in whatever direction) would suggest. The hypothesis proposed here for further research is that rapid economic development indeed spurred a new phase of modernization and brought along the correlates of demographic change, urbanization, individualization, and secularization. These latter changes influenced both depillarization and the expansion of the welfare state. Depillarization then promoted the further expansion of the welfare state because the Confessional parties could no longer rely on the ‘automatic vote’ of their pillar members, and electoral competition for the working-class vote intensified. In addition, both economic growth and the social protection that the welfare state offered significantly increased human existential security, and this, in turn, reduced the need for religion and thus for religiously based organizations, as Norris and Inglehart (2004) demonstrated. So, however one looks at the causality between depillarization and welfare state expansion, the fact is that depillarization and deconfessionalization had a vast impact on Confessional politics, as exemplified by the radicalization of Anti-Revolutionary politics and the gradual social democratization of the Catholic labor movement in the 1970s. The


141

Catholic party, in particular, was forced to adopt more radical social policy demands in order not to lose its labor wing (or the working-class vote) altogether, which in the early 1970s facilitated the return of Social Democratic–Catholic cooperation that made a final effort for further expansion of the welfare state until the oil crisis and stagflation painfully made clear that it, at least in the form it had then acquired, had reached its limits.

5.4 conclusion Why was social policy so late to emerge, and why did it remain underdeveloped for such a long time? Why did the Dutch welfare state in the period after World War II so suddenly and rapidly expand to become one of the most comprehensive, generous, and passive of its sort? If anywhere, it was in the Netherlands that the mobilization of the socioeconomic cleavage via Socialist or Social Democratic parties was suppressed by the pervasive presence of the religious cleavage and religious fragmentation. The electoral system of proportional representation translated and reinforced the cleavage structure in multiple political parties representing cleavage-based social pillars. Under such conditions, orthodox Protestants – a social and political minority – could come to power in alternating coalitions. The orthodox minority, however, was uninterested if not openly reluctant in developing modern social policy. Liberal antiinterventionism lined up with the Protestants’ mistrust of the state, and the still vulnerable Catholics and weak Socialists were unable to gather enough support in favor of more generous social policy. The explanation for the speedy expansion and the passivity of the welfare state after World War II in a sense is the mirror image of late development. Because Calvinist and Liberal politics were marginalized in the immediate period after the war, the way was paved for a pro-welfare black–red coalition between Social Catholics and Social Democrats. Christian Democracy blocked the type of active (labor market) social policies that the Social Democrats favored, but supported a passive transfer regime. In the 1960s and 1970s, depillarization intensified the competition over the working-class vote, which drove up social spending. Under favorable economic conditions, path-dependent mechanisms of ‘automatic government,’ increasing coverage, and generosity and the passiveness of the transfer system contributed to the further expansion of the Dutch welfare state until, as elsewhere, the economic reality of stagflation put a hold on expansion and ushered in decades of austerity.

142

van Kersbergen

References Bank, Jan (1978), Opkomst en ondergang van de Nederlandse Volks Beweging (NVB), Deventer: Kluwer. Bax, Erik H. (1990), Modernization and Cleavage in Dutch Society: A Study of Long Term Economic and Social Change, Aldershot: Avebury. Bax, Erik H. (1995), Cleavage in Dutch Society: Changing Patterns of Social and Economic Discrimination, Paper presented at the Conference on Political, Economic and Social Racism, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece, May 14– 18. Blok, Els (1978), Loonarbeid van vrouwen in Nederland 1945–1955, Nijmegen: SUN. Bohl, Herman de Liagre, Jan Nekkers, and Laurens Slot (eds) (1981), Neder¨ land industrialiseert! Politieke en ideologische strijd rondom het naoorlogse industrialisatiebeleid 1945–1955, Nijmegen: SUN. Bos, Frits (2006), De Nederlandse collectieve uitgaven in historisch perspectief, Den Haag: Centraal Planbureau. Bosmans, Jacques (1982), Het maatschappelijk-politieke leven in Nederland 1945–1980, Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 15, Nieuwste Tijd, Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck. ¨ Braun, Dietmar (1988), Die Niederlandische Weg in die Massenarbeitslosigkeit (1973–1981), Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Braun, Dietmar, and Kees van Kersbergen (1986), Wendepolitik und politische ¨ ¨ deutsche und internationale Krafteverh altnisse in den Niederlanden, Blatter fur ¨ ¨ Politik 31 (7): 857–69. Bussemaker, Jet, and Kees van Kersbergen (1994), Gender and Welfare States: Some Theoretical Reflections, in Diane Sainsbury (ed), Gendering Welfare States, London: Sage, 8–25. Cox, Robert H. (1993), The Development of the Dutch Welfare State: From Workers’ Insurance to Universal Entitlement, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Daalder, Hans (1966), The Netherlands: Opposition in a Segmented Society, in Robert A. Dahl (ed), Political Opposition in Western Democracies, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. De Bruijn, Jeanne (1989), Haar werk: Vrouwenarbeid en arbeidssociologie in historisch en emancipatorisch perspectief, Amsterdam: SUA. De Haan, Idio (2003), Het beginsel van leven en wasdom: de constitutie van de Nederlandse politiek in de negentiende eeuw, Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. De Wolff, P., and W. Driehuis (1980), A Description of Post War Economic Developments and Economic Policy in the Netherlands, in Richard T. Griffiths (ed), The Economy and Politics of the Netherlands since 1945, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 13–60. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1996), Welfare States without Work: The Impasse of Labour Shedding and Familialism in Continental European Social Policy, in GPsta Esping-Andersen (ed), Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies, London: Sage, 66–87. Fortuyn, W.S.P. (1980), Sociaal-economische politiek in Nederland, Doctoral dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen.


143

Fortuyn, W.S.P. (1983), Kerncijfers 1945–1983 van de sociaal-economische ontwikkeling in Nederland: Expansie en stagnatie, Deventer: Kluwer. Gladdish, Ken (1991), Governing from the Centre: Politics and Policy-Making in the Netherlands, London: Hurst/The Hague: SDU. Hemerijck, Anton (1992), The Historical Contingencies of Dutch Corporatism, Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford. Hoekstra, Hanneke (2005), Het hart van de natie: Morele verontwaardiging en politieke verandering in Nederland 1870–1919, Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. Hoogenboom, Marcel (2004), Standenstrijd en zekerheid: een geschiedenis van oude orde en sociale zorg in Nederland, Amsterdam: Boom. Irving, R.E.M. (1979), The Christian Democratic Parties of Western Europe, London: Allen and Unwin. Kalyvas, Stathis (1996), The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. Katzenstein, Peter J. (1985), Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Klein, P.W. (1980), The Foundations of Dutch Prosperity, in Richard T. Griffiths (ed), The Economy and Politics of the Netherlands since 1945, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1–12. Koole, Ruud, and Hans Daalder (2002), The Consociational Democracy Model and the Netherlands: Ambivalent Allies?, in Jorg ¨ Steiner and Thomas Ertman (eds), Consociationalism and Corporatism in Western Europe. Still the Politics of Accommodation? Special Issue of Acta Politica, 37 (1/2): 23–43. Kossmann, E.H. (1978), The Low Countries, 1780–1940, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuyper, Abraham (1898), Het Calvinisme: Zes Stone-lezingen in october 1898 te Princeton (NJ) Gehouden, Kampen: Kok. Lademacher, Horst (1993), Geschiedenis van Nederland, Utrecht: Het Spectrum. Lubbers, Ruud, and Charles Lemckert (1980), The Influence of Natural Gas on the Dutch Economy, in Richard T. Griffiths (ed), The Economy and Politics of the Netherlands since 1945, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Mackie, Tom T., and Rose, Richard (1991), The International Almanac of Electoral History, Houndmills and London: Macmillan. Manow, Philip (2004), The ‘Good, the Bad and the Ugly’: Esping-Andersen’s Welfare State Typology and the Religious Roots of the Western Welfare State, MPIfG working paper 04/3, Max Planck Institut fur ¨ Gesellschaftsforschung, Cologne. Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart (2004), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pott-Buter, Hettie A. (1993), Facts and Fairy Tales about Female Labor, Family and Fertility: A Seven-Country Comparison, 1850–1990, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Roebroek, Joop (1993), The Imprisoned State: The Paradoxical Relationship between State and Society, Tilburg: Katholieke Universiteit Brabant. Roebroek, Joop, and Miriam Hertogh (1998), ‘De beschavende invloed des tijds’: Twee eeuwen sociale politiek, verzorgingsstaat en sociale zekerheid in Nederland, Den Haag: VUGA.

144

van Kersbergen

Roes, Jan (ed) (1985), Katholieke arbeidersbeweging: Studies over KAB en NKV in de economische en politieke ontwikkeling van Nederland na 1945, Baarn: Ambo. Schama, Simon (1988), The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Berkeley: University of California Press. Swenson, Peter (1991), Bringing Capital Back in, or Social Democracy Reconsidered: Employer Power, Cross-Class Alliances, and Centralization of Industrial Relations in Denmark and Sweden, World Politics, 43 (4): 513–544. Ter Heide, F.J. (1986), Ordening en verdeling: Besluitvorming over sociaaleconomisch beleid in Nederland, 1949–1958, Kampen: Kok Agora. Therborn, GPran (1986), Why Some Peoples Are More Unemployed than Others, London: Verso. Therborn, GPran (1989), ‘Pillarization’ and ‘Popular Movements,’ in Francis G. Castles (ed), The Comparative History of Public Policy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 192–241. Van Der Kolk, Henk, and Jacques Thomassen (2006), The Dutch Electoral System on Trial, Acta Politica, 41 (2): 117–132. Van Eijk, C.J. (1980), Counter-Inflation Policy in the Netherlands, in Richard T. Griffiths (ed), The Economy and Politics of the Netherlands since 1945, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. van Kersbergen, Kees (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State, London: Routledge. van Kersbergen, Kees (1997), Christian Democracy in the Netherlands and Its Influence on Economic and Social Policy, in Emile Lamberts (ed), Christian Democracy in the European Union, 1945–1995, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 313–327. van Kersbergen, Kees, and Uwe Becker (2003 [1988]), The Netherlands: A Passive Social Democratic Welfare State in a Christian Democratic Ruled Society, in J.T.S. Madely (ed), Religion and Politics, Volume 15, Dartmouth: Ashgate (originally published in Journal of Social Policy, Volume 17, 1988). van Kerbergen, Kees, and Anton Hemerijck (2004), Christian Democracy, Social Democracy and the Continental ‘Welfare without Work’ Syndrome, Social Policy Review 16: 167–186. Van Oirschot, F. (1950), Beknopte geschiedenis der sociale kwestie: Ontstaan en oplossingen, Roermond en Maaseik: J.J. Romen & Zonen. Van Putten, Jan (1985), Politieke stromingen, Utrecht and Antwerpen: Spectrum. Van Rooden, Peter (1999), History, the Nation and Religion: The Transformations of the Dutch Religious Past, in Peter van de Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 96–111. Van Waarden, Frans (2002), Dutch Consociationalism and Corporatism: A Case of Institutional Persistence, in Jorg ¨ Steiner and Thomas Ertman (eds), Consociationalism and Corporatism in Western Europe. Still the Politics of Accommodation? Special Issue of Acta Politica, 37 (1/2): 44–67. Van Zanden, Jan L., and R.T. Griffiths (1989), Economische geschiedenis van Nederland in de 20e eeuw, Utrecht: Het Spectrum.


145

Von der Dunk, Herman (1982), Conservatism in the Netherlands, in Zig LaytonHenry (ed), Conservative Politics in Western Europe, London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Windmuller, John P. (1969), Labor Relations in the Netherlands, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Woldring, Henk E.S., and Dirk Th. Kuiper (1980), Reformatorische maatschappijkritiek: Ontwikkelingen op het gebied van sociale filosofie en sociologie in de kring van het Nederlandse Protestantisme van de 19e eeuw tot heden, Kampen: Kok. Wolffram, Dirk Jan (2003), Vrij van wat neerdukt en beklemt: Staat, gemeenschap, sociale politiek, 1870–1918, Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. Wolinetz, Steve B. (1983), The Netherlands, in Vincent E. MacHale and Sharon Skowronski (eds), Political Parties of Europe, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 642–673. Woltjer, J.J. (1992), Recent verleden: De geschiedenis van Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, Amsterdam: Balans. Zwart, Rutger (1996), ‘Gods wil in Nederland’: Christelijke ideologieën en de vorming van het CDA (1880–1980), Kampen: Kok.

6 A Conservative Welfare State Regime without ´ Christian Democracy? The French Etat-Providence, 1880–1960 Philip Manow and Bruno Palier

6.1 introduction In many respects, the French welfare state resembles the Bismarckian blueprint of a conservative regime type: wage-deducted contributions and wage-related benefits, a fragmentation of social insurance schemes along occupational lines, and the predominance of funds (caisses) managed according to principles of self-administration (gestion par les intéressés, démocratie sociale), with the prominent participation of unions. The ´ French Etat-providence also shares many of the problems that plague the continental welfare state today: runaway costs; adverse labor market effects due to high nonwage labor costs leading to poor job growth, especially in low productivity services; and low employment ratios as a result of generous early retirement schemes. Like its continental counterparts, the French welfare state is also often perceived as being ‘immovable’ and ‘frozen’ because it largely resists any political attempts at reform (but see Palier 2000). In the comparative literature, the French welfare state has usually been classified as a conservative, continental, Catholic, or Bismarckian regime (Esping-Andersen 1990; Huber et al. 1993; Huber and Stephens 2001; Scharpf and Schmidt 2001; Palier and Martin 2007). However, it sits ´ somewhat uneasily with this classification. In fact, the French Etatprovidence is not particularly conservative, patriarchic, or Catholic when it comes to family policy (Morgan 2002, 2003, Chapter 3, this volume;

We are grateful for very helpful comments by Patrick Hassenteufel, Kees van Kersbergen, and Kimberly J. Morgan.

146

France: A Conservative Welfare State Regime

147

Talmy 1962), and its strong emphasis on universal social assistance has a much more ‘Beveridgian’ than ‘Bismarckian’ flavor to it (Levy 2000: 312–313). Some scholars even see the French welfare state as belonging to a distinct southern European regime type rather than to the family of the continental-corporatist regimes (Leibfried 1993), a view supported by the long-time absence of unemployment insurance (until 1958) and the dominance of pension payments in public social spending – features shared by most of the other southern welfare states (Ferrera 1996, 1997). In the context of the theoretical framework proposed in this volume (Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume), the French case provides us with a critical case study because it confronts us with at least three, possibly interrelated puzzles. The first puzzle is that the state– church conflict in France, by all measures, has been particularly pronounced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, in contrast to most other continental countries, this conflict did not trigger the formation of a party of religious defense during the Third Republic, between 1871 and 1940 (cf. Kalyvas 1996). When a Christian Democratic party finally appeared on the scene after World War II, it failed to establish itself successfully in the French party system. After initial electoral success, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) performed rather poorly in the late 1950s and finally dissolved in 1967. In contrast to most other countries on Europe’s continent, the religious cleavage in France failed to achieve long-term ‘particization’ (Stoll 2008). France seems to also be an outlier in a second respect: although all other countries on Europe’s continent (plus Scandinavia) had introduced proportional representation (PR) by 1919 at the latest, France stuck to the old two-round/two-ballot system throughout the Third Republic (Caramani 2000). PR was introduced as late as 1945, only to be abolished again soon with the advent of the Fifth Republic in 1958. With the new constitution, France returned to the old electoral system, now in combination with a more presidentialist political system. Given that this volume ascribes critical importance to electoral rules for the party-political representation of societal cleavages, this chapter discusses the impact that the peculiar French electoral rules had on the translation of the religious cleavage into politics. Finally, although France differs in these two important dimensions from most of the other continental countries, it still has a welfare state that resembles the conservative-continental regimes of its European neighbors in many respects. France therefore represents a particular challenge to an explanation that claims it had been the interaction of proportional representation with a virulent secular–confessional

148

Manow and Palier

cleavage that explains the strength of Christian Democratic parties in continental European party systems, parties that then played a critical role in the build-up of the conservative-continental welfare state regime (Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume). To preview the response to the three puzzles that we give in the following sections, we show that indeed the secular–confessional cleavage was not only present during the period of early welfare state formation around the turn of the 19th century, but that it was then clearly dominating the capital–labor cleavage in late industrializing France. State–church conflicts left their imprint on early welfare state building, which did not yet address the new risks of an industrializing society, but focused more on the social responsibility of the French state toward the needy and destitute. Not social insurance, but social assistance and public education, was what preoccupied the liberal reformers and their Catholic adversaries during the early phase of French welfare state building. This explains much of the state’s strong role and the high degree of universalism in both domains. However, whereas the secular-confessional cleavage proved to be particularly strong in late 19th- and early 20th-century France, the fierce state–church conflicts over education and social policy did not lead to the formation of a Catholic party. The quasimajoritarian features of the two-round/two-ballot system go a long way in explaining this nonformation of a Christian Democratic party in France during the Third Republic. As we argue in Section 3, the lack of such a party of religious defense had long-term consequences for the Catholic milieu. Catholic unions, farmers’ associations, youth organizations, and other groups from the Catholic ‘Lager,’ which were mainly established in the interwar years, lacked a party-political addressee until 1945. They therefore sought independence and autonomy. This proved consequential for the survival of a French Christian Democratic party once such a party finally made its appearance after World War II. Catholic organizations and the church hierarchy remained highly reluctant to rally themselves behind the MRP. The church turned away from the MRP because its coalition with the strongly anticlerical Socialists and Radicals forced the party to compromise on issues that Catholics particularly valued. Moreover, already in 1947 the Gaullist movement had turned into an antisystem party fighting for the fundamental overhaul of the Fourth Republic’s constitution, and in many respects, de Gaulle appeared to be better able to protect Catholic interests than the MRP. The postwar situation resembled the situation in the 1860s and 1870s, because with the stability of the Fourth Republic


149

in question, organized Catholicism could not bring itself to back the MRP within the republic’s constitutional framework. The Fifth Republic then returned to the old electoral rules, which – in combination with the presidential elements in the constitution – proved to be particularly hostile to the party-political representation of the religious cleavage. Both the lack of interest group support and the return to the two-round/twoballot system then contributed to the weakness of the MRP and its final disappearance from the party landscape in 1967. However, as we also show in Section 3, for the short but critical period of postwar welfare state formation the MRP did exert a very significant and long-lasting policy influence. Many of the Bismarckian features of the French welfare state like its high levels of spending, the relatively high degree of organizational fragmentation, the strong role of self-administration, the role of the Christian union in it, and the particular emphasis put on family policy clearly have to be attributed to the strong influence that the MRP had during this crucial period of welfare state building. Even when the MRP finally disappeared from the French political landscape, social Catholicism remained influential for French social politics. This chapter is organized as follows: in Section 2, we discuss the role of religious conflicts in the early phase of social legislation in the late 19th century. In Section 3, we describe the immediate postwar years, when the path was set along which the French welfare state would develop in the trente glorieuse, or golden years, of welfare state growth and expansion that followed. We discuss the role of electoral rules for the late arrival and premature vanishing of Christian Democracy in postwar France and analyze the nexus between the Christian Democratic MRP and the Catholic milieu.

6.2 consolidating the nation through the ‘la¨ıcisation de la protection sociale’1 A strong secular–confessional divide was not just present in the French political system of the Third Republic, but it was the dominant political cleavage: ‘the state-church conflict developed into the most salient cleavage and the key ideological issue of the Third Republic. It dominated politics at all levels, from parliament to the last village, and overshadowed every other political and social question’ (Berger 1987: 113; Kalyvas 1

(Renard 1995: 15).

150

Manow and Palier

1996: 115). It is therefore no surprise that the debates surrounding the early social policy interventions of the French state were dominated by religious concerns. The state–church cleavage colored the conflicts about schooling (Lanfrey 2003), child and family policy (Talmy 1962; Pedersen 1993; Morgan 2002, 2003), and social assistance (Renard 1995: 15–19; Palier 2002: 66–67). The labor question, as one invoking the familiar ‘left’ and ‘right’ camps in the dispute over social legislation, only emerged later in the French politics of welfare (Korpi 1995: 638). Workers were not the prime target of early social legislation in France, but rather mothers, children, and the needy and destitute (Pedersen 1993; cf. Skocpol 1992). Compared to the political trajectories in many other European countries, where early social legislation was intended to break with the national poor law tradition, the French development is peculiar in that the poor law legislation itself marked the beginning of the modern French welfare state (Merrien 1990: 166). The main objective of this legislation was to put public poor relief and social assistance in place where formerly private (charitable) schemes dominated. With this, the republicans continued a process of the ‘la¨ıcisation de l’action sociale’ (Renard 1995: 15), which had been set on already in the Second Empire. It is only later, first with the law on social insurances of 1928 and mainly with the post–World War II French plan of Sécurité Sociale, that the principle of insurance finally gained dominance over the principle of assistance (see Palier 2002: 66–71). Important social assistance legislation, such as the law on maltreated or morally abandoned children (1889); the law on free medical assistance (1893); the law on assistance for children (1904); and the law on the old aged, the infirm, and incurables (1905), was introduced when the separation between state and church was hotly debated. This debate culminated in the famous Loi 1905, which fully disestablished the French Catholic Church. The principle of direct intervention and state responsibility for the ‘valid’ infirm, destitute, or old aged, ‘which find themselves temporarily or definitely incapable to provide themselves with the necessities of life,’ rested on a notion of state responsibility and public obligation to care for the needy. This notion referred to the republican principles of the French Revolution, which seemed particularly fitting around the 100th anniversary of the Revolution in 1889. Among these, the principle of la¨ıcism was particularly emphasized (cf. Weiss 1983). The school question had been on the political agenda since 1879, when the republican governments under Freycinet, Duclerc, and Gambetta, with a series of wide-reaching reforms, established the dominance of state schools in


151

primary and secondary education and tried to exclude the church entirely from the education sector. Since 1893, a loose alliance between moderate Republicans, Radicals, Independents, and Socialists supported the various governments, and in 1902, this group of parties was transformed into a more formal Bloc de Gauche. Anticlericalism was the ‘only policy a group as diverse as the Bloc could agree on’ (Luebbert 1991: 30–31), and once the full disestablishment of the French Church was achieved in 1905, the Bloc dissolved (cf. Mayeur 1984: 137–208). The paramount goal of the liberal state elite was to consolidate the nation after France had lost the war against Germany and after the internal turmoil with the violent experience of the Parisian Commune. One way to achieve a French nation was to fight particularistic, in particular, religious, identities. This is strikingly parallel to Bismarck’s attempts to forge a unified nation after Germany finally had achieved territorial consolidation in the French–German war of 1870/1871. Here, the fight against Socialists and Catholics, the so-called enemies of the Empire (Reichsfeinde), was a central element in the nation-building enterprise. In fact, the attack of French liberals on Church strongholds in education and charity in the name of the new nation-state had parallels in many other European countries at around the same period (see Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume; Gould 1999). Establishing direct state responsibility for the infirm, orphans, and the old aged openly and deliberately challenged the dominance of the Catholic Church in caring for the most destitute. It is important to note that notions of subsidiarity, as well as notions of self-responsibility, individual thrift, or discipline, were largely absent in the debates. Instead, doctrines of ‘interventionisme’ and ‘solidarisme’ were dominant, reformist schools of thought comparable to those of the German Kathedersozialisten or the British New Liberals. These schools of thought were closely allied to the Radical Party (cf. Stone 1985; cf. Luebbert 1991: 33). Reformers were convinced that only compulsory legislation could alleviate the problems of workers and the poor. They clearly preferred state-sponsored over voluntary and charitable solutions. To establish the authority of the state in this domain, the various existing assistance schemes came under the central administrative responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior under the general title of assistance publique, under which the responsibility for public health was also soon subsumed (Renard 1994). Where direct state responsibility could not be established, strict control and oversight over the charitable bureaux de bienfaisance and the church-run hospitals were installed (Renard

152

Manow and Palier

1995: 16; Ashford 1986: 135–137). Step by step, the preeminence of public action over any private forms of welfare provision was established (Renard 1987; Archambault 1997: 18–19). The social assistance legislation also supported the creeping expropriation of local charities through the municipalities, so that the new public activities in the realm of social assistance and poor relief became a process in which previously privately provided help and assistance were converted into public help and assistance (Renard 1995: 16, 25, endnote 18). The double purpose was to establish a central state system of welfare provision and to crowd out the church in this domain. This was also done by recruiting only devoted republicans and certainly not Catholics as fonctionnaires to run the new public assistance administration (Renard 1995: 16). The fierce conflicts over the responsibility for primary and secondary education first preceded and then went together with the attempts of the French state to replace Catholic charity with social assistance schemes that were financed and administered by the state. The liberal governments that came to power after 1879 immediately engaged in intense legislative activity in the educational sector under the triple principle of free, compulsory, and public, meaning la¨ıcist education (Lamfrey 2003; Archambault 1997: 35–37). Jules Ferry, as minister of public instruction (1879–1883), initiated a series of reforms aimed at transforming the school into a republican institution designed to transgress the internal strife and the ideological and denominational divisions of the French Third Republic. Starting with the prohibition of Jesuit schools (Décret du 29 mars 1880), the Loi du 16 juin 1881 established free access to primary education and the Loi du 28 mars 1882 rendered primary education obligatory for children of both sexes between 6 and 13 years. The French state forced departments to establish schools for teachers so as to break the monopoly of the church with respect to the training of school personnel. After the abolishment of the rétribution scolaire in the early 1880s, school teachers became civil servants directly paid by the public treasury in 1887. With a clear anticlerical impetus, the educational laws aimed to separate state and church in primary, secondary, and higher education. Already in 1880, the government had replaced all clerics in the central advisory bodies such as the Conseil supérieur de l’Instruction publique or the Conseils académiques with university professors. The 1901 law on associations required state approval of associations, and approval was rarely granted (Archambault 1997: 37, 76). The ultimate aim was to exclude the church from the educational sector, an aim finally achieved in 1904 when the Loi du 7 juillet prohibited congregations from


153

having any educational activity ‘of any sort and nature.’ Subsequently, more than 2500 Catholic schools had to be closed down, and more than 11,000 demands by congregations for state authorization of hospitals or schools were refused. This was 1 year before the famous Loi 1905 led to the full separation of e´ tat and e´ glise in education, social policy, and any other area (Lamfrey 2003). As a response to this anticlerical attack, Catholics unleashed a veritable guérrilla scolaire that lasted until World War I. The church and its followers fought with much intransigence not only for the preservation and public subsidization of private, Catholic schools but also against a stronger role of the state in social policy. In the church’s view, a state playing providence not only undermined individual thrift and prudence but also threatened to destroy the smallest and holiest unit of social solidarity, the family (Dumons and Pollet 1994: 103–118). Although the Catholics vehemently condemned the devastations of ‘excessive economic liberalism,’ they at the same time fought against any state intervention and refused to give their consent to social protection legislation because this, in their eyes, would have meant to participate in the further secularization of French society (112). In many respects, this conflict constellation between a liberal reform elite eager to consolidate the nation on the one hand, and an ‘intransigent Catholicism’ fiercely fighting against any attempts to exclude the church from education and charity on the other (Dreyfus 1988: 57–61), resembled the conflicts in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands at around the same time. Below we discuss why, unlike in these latter countries, the strong state–church conflict in France has not led to the formation of a party of religious defense (Kalyvas 1996). Although the French governments since the mid-1880s were preoccupied with questions of social assistance and public education, the worker question and the introduction of social insurance programs only later came on the political agenda. This, of course, reflects the fact that industrialization was simply far less advanced in France than in most of its neighbors (Maddison 1992). In 1911, still more than 56 per cent of the population lived in the countryside (Hatzfeld 1989: 284), and in 1931, agricultural employment with 35.6 per cent was larger than industrial employment with 33.7 per cent (Mitchell 1988; ILO, 1936). The Loi sur les retraités des ouvriers et paysans (ROP, 1910) set the path for later social legislation and prefigured in many respects the institutional setup of future social protection schemes, even though the law itself remained an unsuccessful attempt to respond to the new risks of

154

Manow and Palier

an industrializing society. Unions, the mutuelle movement, and employers, as well as Catholics, rejected the reform. Unions demanded state financing, mutuelle leaders castigated the compulsory nature of the social insurance, employers complained about the extra labor costs that the law imposed on them (Merrien 1990: 191–192), and Catholics insisted on the principle of nonintervention and the prime responsibility of church, family, and the individual in addressing poverty and economic insecurity (Dumons and Pollet 1994: 103–118). The social insurance scheme that the ROP introduced remained halfway between state subsidization of voluntary schemes and a fully compulsory social insurance system. The organizing principles of the ROP (Korpi 1995: 639–640) were the following: r Wage-deducted contributions r Different classes of contributions according to income r Entitlement rights conditioned on a record of contributing to the scheme r Administration in the hands of funds or mutuelles (organized along occupational, syndical, or local principles, complemented with company schemes) r Compulsory membership for certain wage groups and optional membership for dependently employed whose income was above the obligatory ceiling (3000 Franc per year)2 r Self-administration based on the joint and equal financing of the social insurance by employers and employees with tripartite representation of insured, employers, and state in the ‘comités de gestion’ (see Korpi 1995, for more details). These features conformed to those that had been first introduced in an encompassing way with the German social insurance legislation in the 1880s. Contemporaneous to the many social assistance laws, which defined the various groups of needy citizens for which the French state was going to assume direct social responsibility, the state in 1898 also acknowledged the freedom of foundation and membership of the voluntary organizations of self-help, the mutuelles (Rosanvallon 1990: 176; Archambault 1997: 34). They themselves had in the meantime become less ‘dominated by local notables and clerics’ and more ‘republican, la¨ıcist, less hierarchic 2

Self-employed farmers and tenants, handicraft workers, and small shop owners could become members of the insurance on a voluntary basis.


155

and more democratic’ (Saint-Jours et al. 1990: 66, our translation; cf. Dutton 2002: 41). Because the French state for a long time had left social insurance to the voluntary initiative, once it became active in the field it had to face the existence of various caisses and mutuelles that already occupied the terrain. Later legislative initiatives therefore attempted to regulate and expand rather than substitute for the existing infrastructure of caisses, company funds, and other organizations of voluntary self-help. The high degree of organizational fragmentation around this period of time was therefore not the reflection of a corporatist ideology of either a Catholic or any other conservative-authoritarian persuasion (cf. EspingAndersen 1990: 31–32). Growth in membership of the mutuelles was pronounced, with 1.3 million members in 1890, 2 million in 1898, and already 5.4 million members in 1913 (Rosanvallon 1990: 181; Dutton 2002: 42, Fig. 4). In 1908, the mutuelles were already paying out around 120,000 to 130,000 pensions (Hatzfeld 1989: 205, footnote 22). However, workers did not make up the major part of mutuelle membership. Only for the best paid workers with highest job security was membership a realistic option. These state-sponsored forms of voluntary protection instead attracted small employers, shopkeepers, and artisans (Hatzfeld 1989: 211, 213; Dutton 2002: 38). It took until the 1920s and 1930s for social legislation to more specifically address the needs and interests of workers. Various attempts at subsequent social legislation in the 1920s failed (like the Loi sur l’assurance sociale in 1921 and the initiative to introduce unemployment insurance in 1925); however, the Poincaré government in 1928 finally, after long parliamentary battles, succeeded in enacting a law on social insurance. It covered the risks of sickness, old age, invalidity, and maternity (as well as funeral costs). The incoming left government amended the Poincaré legislation, but the law still fell far short of the kind of universal and uniform social protection system that initially had been intended (Merrien 1990: 209–211). In 1930, the amendment established two major social insurance schemes, the régime général, which covered the workers in industry and trade, and another regime (régime agricole) covering workers in agriculture. Institutionally, these laws followed the blueprint of the 1910 Loi sur les retraites, which led to a high degree of administrative fragmentation. The separately organized caisses d’allocations familiales (1932) only added to this already high level of fragmentation and complexity. The caisses d’allocations familiales represent a French peculiarity, as the strong role of family policy in the French welfare state more generally

156

Manow and Palier

does (Lenoir 1991a, 1991b; Talmy 1962; cf. Morgan 2003). Much of this has been rightly attributed to French pronatalism, but natalism in many respects was only the republican response to Catholics’ familialism. A fertility rate below the reproduction rate and the resulting labor shortages in the interwar period lend plausibility and urgency to the Catholics’ claim that unfavorable demographics reflected the nefarious influence that modern individualism, libertinage, and the loss of traditional values had achieved on French society (Lenoir 1991a; Archambault 1997: 38). With natalism, republicans were then developing a kind of surrogate civic religion. Catholics and anticlerical Republicans could agree on generous support for families because strong economic interests backed their coalition. The French Catholic patronat had developed a manifest economic interest in the caisses d’allocations familiales. Before these funds had been made obligatory for all firms by law in 1932, family benefits as wage supplements had been championed by a Catholic patronat on a voluntary basis. What mattered most for these employers was the stabilization of their workforce. But employers also valued family wages because they were an instrument to divide workers; to weaken unions, which always had fought for the ‘equal work, equal wage’ principle; and to avoid general wage increases by granting certain subgroups a higher payment (Pedersen 1993; cf. Mares 2003). In 1932, the régime général comprised 78 funds, the agrarian regime 52 funds, and the sickness insurance had 793 funds within the general regime and another 285 funds for the agricultural workers (Korpi 1995: 642). The legislation of the early 1930s built on the existing landscape of insurance funds, and it is therefore appropriate to characterize French social insurance as a sort of compromise between the German regime of compulsory social insurance and mutuellisme a` l’anglaise (Rosanvallon 1990: 181); mutuellisme a` l’anglaise here designating the pre-Beveridgian period of the British welfare state with its strong role of friendly societies. This was the compromise from which the social reformers in the immediate postwar years had to start (see Section 3). In the interwar years, the labor question came to the forefront of French social policies. At the same time, the tensions between the Catholic milieu and the republic had become less marked (Merrien 1990; Delbreil 2001a). A moderate social Catholicism increasingly replaced the intransigent Catholicism that had dominated before the war. During the 1920s, the French Catholic camp established a rich network of Catholic unions, associations, charitable organizations, and leisure-time groups (Nord 2003). The foundation of the Confédération Française des Travailleurs chrétiens


157

(CFTC; 1919), the Fédération nationale catholique (1924), the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (1927), the Jeunesse agricole chrétienne (JAC; 1929), the Jeunesse e´ tudiante chrétienne (1929), the Ligue ouvrière chrétienne, and the Mouvement familial rural (MFR), together with many other Catholic associations, newspapers, journals, radio stations, and publishing houses, established a dense network of Catholic organizations (cf. Letamendia 1995: 39–43; Nord 2003). In this respect, the French interwar development was similar to that in other continental countries with a significant Catholic population (Ertman, Chapter 2, this volume). Finally, with the Parti démocrate populaire (PDP; 1924), a Catholic party saw the light of the day. However, in the three parliamentary elections in which it took part (1928, 1932, and 1936), the party never gained more than 3 per cent of the votes. The PDP remained marginal and compared to the Italian Partito Populare or the German Zentrum of the interwar years strikingly unsuccessful (Delbreil 1990, 2001a; cf. Warner 1998). If we consider that the Fédération nationale catholique alone had more than 2 million members in the late 1920s, it is striking that the PDP had no more than 395,000 voters in 1932. Obviously, the party massively failed in fully mobilizing the Catholic vote. This failure has much to do with the quasimajoritarian effects of the two-round/two-ballot electoral system that was in place in interwar France. The Italian Partito Populare and the German Zentrum, in contrast, had prospered under proportional representation. The two-round/two-ballot electoral system leads to a high effective number of parties (like a PR system), but these parties then ultimately form only two party political camps, a left and a right one (like a majoritarian system). It is the first round that is responsible for a relatively high effective number of parties because each party is eager to enter the electoral race with its own candidate. The second round via le vote utile then provides parties with incentives to coordinate and cooperate and to form two major camps along the dominant left–right dimension. This does not allow for the representation of any additional cleavage, in particular of a religious kind, especially because it was often anticlericalism that glued parties together in the second-round coalitions. This has been the French electoral system’s characteristic effect in the Third Republic and again in the Fifth Republic: the formation of two blocks, a left and a right one, that together dominate politics (Elgie 2005: 126–127). Parties themselves remained weak under these electoral rules because they promote a candidate-centered rather than a party-centered party system (Carey and Shugart 1995), or in the terminology of the French debate,

158

Manow and Palier

a ‘rivalité de personnes’ rather than a ‘scrutin d’idées’ (Bernstein 2001: 779), electoral rules favored local candidats individuels over mobilisations collectives (Rousselier 2001: 906). It was also the very small district size (on the arrondissement level) of the electoral system in the Third Republic that reinforced the local character of interest representation and further discriminated against the Catholic vote, concentrated as it was geographically in the north and the west of the country (cf. Rodden 2005). As we show in the following section, the absence of a Catholic party during the long-lasting Third Republic, when industrialization had brought the ‘labor question’ to the forefront of French politics, critically affected the chances of its survival once such a Christian Democratic party appeared on the scene after World War II.

6.3 christian democracy and the french postwar welfare state As in so many other countries on Europe’s continent, the French welfare state was supposed to be a means of social integration. Although it had been targeted at the potentially ‘dangerous classes’ in the late 19th century, establishing state responsibility for destitute or in other ways marginalized French citizens, it became directed at the integration of the Socialist/Communist and Catholic subcultures after World War II. The experience of the resistance, in which Communists, Socialists, and the Christian Democratic MRP3 had taken part, explains the broad coalition supporting wide-reaching social reforms after World War II. Until today, Sécurité Sociale is understood as being one of the most important achievements of the Libération. Indeed, the French exile government in London under General de Gaulle engaged as early as 1942 in elaborating extensive postwar plans for a thorough reform of the French social protection system (Baldwin 1990: 163–169; Dutton 2002: 202–208). These plans were oriented toward the principles of universality, obligation, and democracy (meaning self-administration), and these three principles had been heavily influenced by the British Beveridge report of 1942 and by the ensuing debate. The French emigrants had closely followed the British debate4 because, in so many respects, the Beveridge report addressed a task that seemed similar to the one that was waiting for them at home: forming something like a national system of social protection out of 3 4

Labeled Mouvement Républicain de Libération until November 1944. Pierre Laroque, the high civil servant who was later in charge of the legislation on Sécurité Sociale, was in London from 1942 to 1944.


159

a highly fragmented arrangement with a strong role of voluntary selfhelp organizations such as friendly societies or mutuelles. However, the French national system of protection finally came to resemble much more a Bismarckian welfare state than a Beveridgean welfare state (Ambler 1991: 12–13; Palier 2002: 72–73). Sécurité Sociale remained, in essence, a contribution-financed, highly fragmented social insurance for the dependently employed. Given that the literature makes standard reference to the role of Christian Democracy in the setup of the continental welfare regime when explaining these institutional features, we must ask what the role of the Christian Democratic MRP has been in this development. With the MRP, the French party system finally got the strong Catholic party it had lacked for so long (see Letamendia 1995; Béthouart 2001). In contrast to its feeble interwar predecessor, the PDP, the MRP was an electorally successful party, at least initially, in the early years of the Fourth Republic. In the first elections for the constitutional assembly in October 1945, the MRP gained 23.9 per cent of the vote and became the second largest party behind the communist PCF (with 26.2 per cent of the vote). In the June 1946 elections, the Christian Democrats even surpassed the Communists and became the strongest party with 28.2 per cent. Communists and Christian Democrats then again changed rank in the election for the first parliamentary assembly in November of that same year, but the MRP with a vote share of 25.9 per cent still proved to be highly successful at the ballot box. With a vote share between 26 and 28 per cent, the MRP fell only a little short of the electoral support that the German CDU (31 per cent) or the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (35 per cent) could muster in the first postwar elections. It looked as if political Catholicism finally had arrived and would remain strong in the French party system. Moreover, as a pivotal party located between the Conservatives, the Radicals, and later the Gaullist movement on the right and the Communists (PCF) and the Socialists (SFIO) on the left, the MRP took part in almost every government of the Fourth Republic; the only brief exceptions being the Blum government (November 1946–January 1947), the Mendes-France government (June 1954–February 1955), and the Mollet and Bourges-Maunory governments (February 1956–September 1957; cf. Dreyfus 1988: 230; Hanley 2002: 130–132). The MRP was the party of the Fourth Republic; the party identified itself with the republic and was identified with it. The early election success of the MRP certainly reflected the reputation it had achieved as a participant in the Résistance. Yet, its high esteem in postwar France, its early success at the ballot box, and its almost uninterrupted government participation during the Fourth Republic could

160

Manow and Palier

not prevent the party’s steady decline and its ultimate failure to establish itself in the French political system (Letamendia 1995; Warner 1998). The MRP dissolved in 1967, but already by the 1950s its electoral record had become much less impressive. With the demise of the MRP, ‘the confessional–secular cleavage ha(d) disappeared’ from the party system (Elgie 2005: 127), whereas denominational affiliation continued to influence strongly voting behavior in the Fifth Republic (Michelat and Simon 1977). How can this be explained? Pointing again to the French electoral system seems insufficient because closed-list PR was the electoral mode in place between 1946 and 1958, and this period saw both the MRP’s initial electoral success and its subsequent decline, from strongest to merely fifth strongest party in only 5 years between 1946 and 1951 (Warner 1998: 559–561). Clearly, after 1958, the MRP did suffer from the return of the two-round/two-ballot system because of the Catholic vote’s regional concentration and the frequent anticlerical alliances in the second round. It is not surprising that in the debates on electoral reform between 1956 and 1958, the MRP strongly favored sticking with PR. The MRP preferred PR with only one national district, whereas the Parti Radical, but also the Independents and Socialists, which successfully had collected the local vote, were ‘sympathetic to a restoration of majority rule which had benefited them historically so greatly’ (Bernstein 2001: 781; Alexander 2004: 210). To be clear, like all stories of political failure, the decline of the MRP is to some extent a story of chance events and misfortune, of personal idiosyncrasies, lack of charisma, and grave strategic errors (cf. Letamendia 1995; Warner 1998). These factors do not easily lend themselves to systematic analysis. But once we look at the relation (or lack thereof) between the MRP and the existent Catholic milieu, one systematic difference between the French case and the other continental countries becomes apparent: the lack of strong and stable ties between the party on the one hand and the Catholic associational landscape and church hierarchy on the other (Pasture 2001: 243; Delbreil 2001a, 2001b).5 With the high party fragmentation and the high degree of government instability, French interest groups were well advised to look after themselves rather than to seek the protection of their interests in a close

5

Carolyn Warner, in her comparison between DC and MRP, finds a strong and stable effect of membership in Italian Catholic Action groups on the electoral fate of the DC, whereas such an effect is much less evident in the French case (Warner 1998: 563, Table 1).


161

attachment to any party. This was particularly true for the Catholic camp, given the long-term absence of a Christian Democratic party from the French party system. From the perspective of unions or other interest organizations, ‘going it alone’ therefore seemed to be more promising. In the case of the unions, this seemed to correspond to their tradition of syndicalisme anyway. It was therefore not entirely unexpected that the CFTC, which would have been the MRP’s natural support group, was eager to demonstrate its autonomy and independence from the party at each and every occasion. Already in 1946, the CFTC made it clear that it wanted to remain fully separate from the MRP. The Christian union, second in membership among the French unions, declared its ‘total independence’ from the MRP and finally even declared that holding a position in the MRP would be incompatible with holding a position in the union (Berger 1987: 120; Groux and Moriaux 1991: 7; Pasture 2001: 236, 243). Since its foundation in 1919, the CFTC had learned to survive without close partisan links. A close organizational nexus to the interwar PDP never materialized because this party felt at least as close to the Catholic patronat as to the workers (Delbreil 2001a: 80), and the PDP was a marginal party anyway. Although the CFTC stood for harmonious relations between capital and labor, a too close attachment to employers had to be avoided. The CFTC’s declaration of independence in 1946 certainly was not only a reaction to the precarious legitimacy of a Catholic party in the French party system but also a manifestation of the fear that a too close attachment to the MRP would restrict union mobilization exclusively to Catholic workers. A strong current within the CFTC saw in the MRP the danger of a reconfessionalization of politics, while it understood the Christian Union as a mainly ‘secular’ union that had accepted basic tenets of the republic (among them public schooling6 ; Pasture 2001: 236; Duriez 2001: 65–66). To make this secular status visible, the union dropped the reference to Christianity in its name and renamed itself into Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) in 1964 (only a minority wanted to keep the Christian reference, and hence maintained CFTC as a small, separated, union). Apparently, the MRP’s dilemma was that it was too clerical for the unions and too secular for the church hierarchy because it ‘gestured only obliquely to private schools, family values and French “spirituality”’ (Bell 2000: 103). That stable links between the 6

The plea for the acceptance of the la¨ıc public school was particularly voiced by the union of public teachers within the CFTC.

162

Manow and Palier

MRP and the CFTC could not be established (van Kemseke 1997: 178, 180) certainly contributed to the weakness of the MRP. The deconfessionalization of the CFTC has even been made responsible for the ‘ruin of the Christian Democratic project in France and the dissolution of the MRP in 1967’ (Pasture 2001: 243). The weak implantation within the Catholic milieu had already been noted for the PDP (Delbreil 2001a: 80; Letamendia 1995: 35), and it was also true for the MRP: ‘the MRP was never able to install itself firmly in the French Catholic environment’ (van Kemseke 1997: 185). With no close relations to the Catholic associational milieu, the MRP could not put a clientelistic policy mode to electoral use, as with such impressive skill and mastery did the Italian Democrazia Christiana (Warner 1998). Not only workers, but also Catholic farmers, were reluctant to tie themselves to the MRP in postwar France. Initially, the Catholic agrarian interest groups such as the JAC and the MFR ‘seemed to offer a ready-made mass organizational base for the . . . activities’ of the Christian Democrats (Wright 1953: 541). Yet, the MRP could not repeat its early electoral success in the countryside in subsequent elections. As was the case with the Christian Union, the JAC and the MFR also refused to bind themselves to the MRP, and the farmers were soon ready to switch parties, either to the Gaullist RPF or other conservative parties. Part of the electoral success of de Gaulle’s RPF in the countryside was that it successfully tapped the Catholic vote with a corporatist platform, while it also opened the party lists to representatives of the local Catholic organizations. Independent candidates could run on an RPF list or on the ticket of other parties, and their electoral success was based on the local support they could muster. Important elements in this local support structures were the Mutualité sociale agricole and the caisses of the general social security scheme for workers (Wright 1953). Crucial was then the political promise – which the Gaullist movement was quick in making – to leave this local autonomy untouched, in the case of farmers complemented with the promise to help generously in financing the Sécurité Sociale agricole with substantial state subvention. A similar logic motivated the largest union, the communist CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail) with a membership around eight times as large as that of the second largest CFTC (with 6.5 million CGT members in 1947; Galant 1955: 69), to vote for a corporatist design of the new social protection system, in which – predominantly – workers would administer the social insurance schemes under moderate state tutelage. The CGT had most fiercely attacked the various attempts at


163

welfare reform in the interwar years as a bluff démocratique (Galant 1955: 14), and one of its foremost points of critique was the principle of payroll taxation as the welfare state’s dominant financing mode, which was castigated as a chicanerie bourgeoise (ibid.). The CGT, however, had come to realize in the meantime that contribution finance legitimized self-administration, and with its dominant position among all unions, the CGT could rightly expect to dominate the governing boards of the social insurance funds. Given that one could easily foresee that the Communist PCF would not remain part of the national government forever (in fact, it left the government already in 1947 and would remain excluded from power until 1981), the CGT became much more favorable to the idea of the independence and autonomy of the new social insurance schemes and, by implication, also to the principle of contribution financing. Thus, in 1945/1946, representatives of the Communist and the Christian unions were for the first time united in their fight for the autonomy of the social insurance schemes and voiced no major protest against the principle of contribution finance (Galant 1955: 37). The church was not unequivocally supporting the MRP either. Tied to the coalition with the vehemently anticlerical Socialists and Radicals (Hanley 2002: 132), it was far from clear whether the MRP was really the best partner to protect church interests. In fact, the French Christian Democrats were much more active in social policy, where a common ground between the left-Catholic wing and the Socialists was so much easier to find, than in education policy, which the church and the Catholic electorate so much valued. In the 1946 constitution, the freedom of education had not been explicitly guaranteed, and a considerable faction within the MRP had accepted the republican principle of public schooling, something that the church hierarchy would never do. The episcopate’s strategic calculations also played a role. In the municipal elections of 1947, the MRP had only gained 10 per cent of the vote (at the municipal level, the old majoritarian system had remained in place); in the 1951 national elections, the MRP’s national vote share was cut by half (from 25.9 to 12.6 per cent); and both times the Gaullists emerged as the strongest party of the right. Providing the MRP with the church’s full support would have meant risking a bet on the wrong horse (van Kemseke 1997: 184–185; Béthouart 2001: 316–317).7 The French episcopate had issued no explicit 7

The disregard was mutual: many MRP members with a Resistance background believed that the French episcopate had remained loyal to Petain for too long (van Kemseke 1997: 178; Hilaire 1997: 430–431).

164

Manow and Palier

recommendations to Catholics on how to vote in the 1951 elections (van Kemseke 1997: 178), and a considerable degree of Catholic voters apparently found the Gaullist RPF more attractive than the MRP (ibid.: 183; Goguel 1981). Gaullists had cleverly presented themselves as the better defenders of the Catholic cause, especially in the school question (Goguel 1981: 109; Letamendia 1995: 292–298). The Loi Barangé of 1951 granted public payments to all children at school age, including those who went to Catholic schools; that is, it broke with the ‘sacred principle’ of la¨ıcité. The law bore the name of an MRP deputy, but it had been the Gaullists who had initiated the law in order to force the MRP to posit itself against its coalition partner, the Socialists (Letamendia 1995: 296; van Kemseke 1997: 183, footnote 28; Béthouart 2001: 322). Recognizing the weakness of the MRP in the critical question of education,8 de Gaulle intended to capture the Catholic vote and to drive a wedge between the anticlerical Socialists (SFIO) and the Catholic MRP – with success. Immediately following the 1951 elections, the SFIO left the government in protest against the Loi Barangé (Hanley 2002: 128). De Gaulle, himself a practicing Catholic, used each occasion to signal his attachment to the Catholic cause (Letamendia 1995: 298). He declared, ‘je suis un Chrétien social’ and described his strategy quite openly: ‘what we have to do in order to transform us into a new political force is . . . to occupy the terrain which previously had been occupied by the right, and then subsequently to consolidate and regroup all the forces of Catholic origin. The MRP has not wanted to do this and that is why it has neither presented itself nor defined itself as a Christian Democratic party’ (quoted from Béthouart 1997: 327–328; our translation). One of the first measures of the new government under de Gaulle in the Fifth Republic was then to put an end to the ‘endless conflict of influence between the state and the Catholic church’ in education (Archambault 1997: 151). The Loi Debré of 1959 guaranteed full public financing of private schools, once these agree to be under financial and pedagogical oversight by the state (Archambault 1997: 152). Finally, the ‘school war calmed down,’ after it had preoccupied French politics for more than 50 years (ibid.).9 At the same time, de Gaulle left the social policy sector

8

9

The MRP could easily be accused of ‘mollesse dans la défense de l’école catholique’ (Letamendia 1995: 294). It was only in 1984 that the school war saw a revival, when the Socialist Mauroy government seemed to challenge the autonomy of the private schools (Loi Chevenement).


165

to the social Catholicism faction of the MRP. Even after 1958, Labor Minister Paul Bacon of the MRP served for another 4 years under de Gaulle. It is here, in social and family policy, where the influence of the MRP on France’s postwar order is most visible (Letamendia 1995: 364–366; Bell 2000: 108) and became mainly manifest in the preservation of a high degree of program fragmentation and a strong emphasis on family policy. Essentially the left idea of a unified, national system of social insurance died with the June elections of 1946, when ‘Socialist strength was deeply eroded and the Catholic left, the MRP, was substantially enhanced’ (Ashford 1991: 39). Although the Communist minister of labor remained in office, all other positions in government and parliament that were relevant for welfare reform were taken by the Christian Democrats (ibid.). This remained the case throughout the Fourth Republic. In eighteen cabinets that governed France between 1950 and 1962, it was the MRP that fourteen times nominated the minister of labor (of the other four, two were Socialists and two other independents close to the MRP). Nine out of these 12 years, Christian Democrats led this portfolio. Paul Bacon was the longest serving minister of labor between 1950 and 1962, and he managed to surround himself with a group of young administrators loyal to the MRP and influential in the social policy debates of the 1960s and 1970s (Béthouart 1996, 2001: 321). All major reform decisions in social policy were taken under MRP responsibility, and it was from 1946 to the mid-1960s that the basic institutional architecture of the French welfare state was put in place (see Palier 2002: 109–111). In fact, much of the corporatist outlook of the French welfare state has to be attributed to the MRP’s influence on postwar social policy. In the protection of the autonomous status of the social insurance schemes for the self-employed, the introduction of PR elections for the governing bodies of the social security administration (which granted Christian unions such a strong organizational base), the successful fight against the

Mass demonstrations in Paris with more than 1 million participants finally forced the Socialist government to back down, and the following Fabius government dropped the bill (Archambault 1997: 152; Hilaire 1997: 436). In December 1993, when Conservatives tried to abandon the caps with which the Loi Falloux has limited public financial support for private schools, this again provoked mass demonstrations with around 600,000 participants in Paris alone. This time it was the anticlerical camp that mobilized. Finally, the Constitutional Court ruled the abolition of the Loi Falloux unconstitutional (Archambault 1997: 156–157; Hilaire 1997: 436). As these events show, the state–church conflict over education is far from being settled in France.

166

Manow and Palier

integration of the Mutualité sociale agricole in the overall social security framework, and the limited integration of the French cadre – in all these cases, it was the MRP that could claim responsibility. With these measures, the MRP secured the overall Bismarckian or conservative outlook of the French system of social protection (Béthouart 1996, 2001: 320– 321). Also with respect to financing and spending, the French welfare state very much came to resemble a conservative welfare state regime. In the 1950s and 1960s, the French welfare state was generous and transfer heavy. With social security transfers amounting to 13 per cent of gross domestic product in 1960, it belonged to the most generous welfare states in the OECD (Cameron 1991: 61–64). Most welfare spending is financed through payroll taxation, whereas general and specific taxation earmarked for social policy together only accounted for about 10 per cent of all welfare state revenue. The French welfare state is still a big spender, something hard to explain within the conventional power resources framework, given the political dominance of conservative parties in the postwar decades and the low degree of unionization of the French workforce. The French case also sits uneasily with an account that mainly emphasizes the importance of electoral rules (Iversen and Soskice 2006; see Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume), given that the French majoritarian electoral system has obviously failed to result in the type of liberal-residual welfare state that this approach would predict. Postwar family policy was strongly influenced by the MRP as well, whereas not many allusions to family policy could be found in the programs of the Communists and the Socialists (Lenoir 1991a: 153). As was the case with the labor ministry, the Ministère de la Population et de la Santé was a MRP stronghold as well. In August 1946, Robert Prigent (MRP) saved the caisses d’allocations familiales from integration into the Caisses de Sécurité Sociale (Ambler 1991: 22). He introduced allocations prenatals; augmented significantly birth premiums as well as child allowances, which were extended to the entire population; and prolonged maternity leave to 14 weeks (Béthouart 2001: 320). Other ministers of the MRP who occupied this portfolio (e.g., Poinso-Chapuis, Schneiter, Fontanet) further contributed to the particular family-friendly outlook of the French welfare state (Hilaire 1997: 431). In 1949, family policy made up 40 per cent of social security expenditures (Lenoir 1991a: 159), and in 1960, 35 per cent of total social expenditures still went to families. It was only later that steadily increasing pension spending slowed down the growth of family expenditures. Rémi Lenoir summarizes, ‘Without a


167

doubt we must attribute both the rapid development and the orientation of family policy under the Fourth Republic to the strategic position of the MRP in the political field of this time and also to the alliance in which the MRP was almost always a leading party’ (159; Hilaire 1997: 431, 435– 436). Although Communists and Catholic unions united in the question of autonomy and independence of Sécurité Sociale, its high degree of organizational fragmentation, the strong role of self-administration, and the particular emphasis on family policy must be attributed to the influence of the MRP, which fought together with the interest groups against what they perceived as the threat of universalism and uniformity (Ambler 1991: 22). Interest groups, in particular the unions, had a strong interest in the Sécurité Sociale as a stable organizational support structure, which the ephemeral French parties were not able to provide. It was to the protection of these structures that the interest of the syndicats chrétiens and the syndicats agricoles became primarily targeted. Participation of unions in the administration of the social insurance schemes (démocratie sociale) promised to provide unions and farmers’ associations with ‘an autonomous sphere for syndical activity’ (Berger 1987: 123; cf. Rothstein 1992). Unions gained influence within the social insurance administration through their participation in the elections to the governing boards that were responsible for the administration of the funds. Initially, the two ordinances of October 1945, which established the French Sécurité Sociale, had granted the union that organized the majority of the insured the right to appoint administrators to the governing boards of the insurance funds (Galant 1955: 35–36; Dutton 2002: 215). This favored the largest union, the CGT, and subsequently met with sharp criticism by the Catholic CFTC. Protest was also voiced by the MRP and the Socialists who feared Communist hegemony. As a reaction, the Christian union refused to cooperate in the administrative bodies of the social insurance schemes, thereby granting to the Communists the monopoly of representation in the crucial period of early institution building. After fierce struggles within the provisional government, an ordinance in October 1946 made elections for the governing bodies of Caisses de Sécurité Sociale obligatory, and proportional representation was the principle that was going to be applied in these elections (Galant 1955: 99–102). It was the MRP that had fought intensively for this amendment, and it was the influential MRP Minister of Labor Paul Bacon who later counted this among his most important political achievements (Béthouart 1996). In the first elections of 1947, the CFTC gained 26.4 per cent of the votes

168

Manow and Palier

(the CGT 59.3 per cent), and when Force Ouvrière (FO) also participated in the following elections in 1950 after a split from the Communist union, the Christian Union and FO together received around 36 per cent of the vote (against 43.5 per cent of the communist CGT). These vote shares remained relatively stable in the following elections of 1955 and 1962 (Comité d’Histoire de la Sécurité Sociale 1988: 132), and basically the same results were obtained in the elections to the caisses d’allocations familiales with a joint vote share around 35 per cent for the Christian Unions plus FO and a vote share around 48 per cent for the Communists (ibid.: 134). One of the main points of contention that had ultimately led to the split between CGT and FO had been the FO’s protest against the politicization of the social protection system. In the following years, FO frequently allied with the Christian union and the employers’ organization to achieve a majority over the Communist CGT on the management boards of the caisses, a pattern of joint management that was to be found in many boards until the early 1990s. The unions’ prominent role in the administration of the social insurance schemes provided them with highly valued resources. Already in the 1950s, the Sécurité Sociale employed more than 70,000 employees. This number more than doubled in the next 20 years and reached 165,000 employees in 1979 (Comité d’Histoire 1988: 267–268), and it is still around this level today. Given that unions dominated the governing boards of caisses (until 1967, when strict parity between unions and employers’ association was imposed) and therefore also elected the presidents, it comes as no surprise that unions were actually able to implement a ‘closed shop’ principle; that is, they could often make union membership a precondition for employment in the social insurance schemes (Galant 1955: 174–175). The degree of unionization among the personnel of the Sécurité Sociale is therefore high. Moreover, once employed, the personnel of Sécurité Sociale enjoyed remarkably generous working conditions, given that bargaining took place between unions as representatives of the funds and unions as representatives of the workers. No surprise that already contemporaneous observers noted ‘une certaine confusion entre employeurs et employés’ (Comité d’Histoire 1988: 269). The attractive working conditions for workers in the Sécurité Sociale set precedents for union demands in other sectors of the economy and helped union mobilization in them (ibid.: 172). In summary, the fact that France has a Conservative welfare state regime but no Christian Democratic party is less of a puzzle once we take into account the MRP’s exceptional policy influence in these formative


169

years of post–World War II welfare state building. In fact, in these years in which PR was the electoral system in place, a Christian Democratic party was present in the French party system. It was strong and pivotal, and it behaved much like its party homologues in France’s European neighbor countries. For the MRP, it was much easier to find a common ground with its anticlerical government partners (Socialists and Radicals) in questions of social policy than in questions that directly touched on the state–church conflict. The fact that the school question even after World War II had still not been settled, because the Catholic church had never accepted its defeat in 1905, permanently destabilized the coalition between anticlerical Socialists and the MRP, whereas the red–black coalition with respect to social protection was as evident in postwar France as in any other continental European country around this time. Closer inspection, therefore, not only makes the French case less of an outlier among the conservative regime types but also even turns it into a strong supporting case for an approach that stresses the importance of the interaction between PR electoral rules and a virulent state–church conflict, which leads to the strong role of parties of religious defense in the European party systems, which then become particularly influential and important for the build-up of the continental European postwar welfare state. Given the high degree of institutional inertia of welfare state programs, the formative postwar period proved critical for the further development of the French welfare state (Palier 2002: 107–165). We therefore can identify a lasting influence of Christian Democracy on the French postwar welfare state, even if a Christian Democratic party vanished from the French party system in 1967.

6.4 conclusion In this chapter, we focus on two particularly important periods of French welfare state formation, the late 19th and early 20th centuries and ´ the immediate post–World War II years. Of course, the French Etatprovidence has not been set up wholly during these times. But the origins of many of its institutional characteristics can be traced back to these two periods. As we argue in the preceding sections, the religious–secular conflict was of enormous importance in both periods. Some of the French welfare state’s features that appear rather untypical for a Conservative welfare state regime reflect the fierce state–church conflict that dominated French politics in the early decades of the Third Republic. This conflict left its imprint on early social legislation, especially in the field of social

170

Manow and Palier

assistance, as well as on education policy with important long-term social policy consequences (Morgan 2003, Chapter 3, this volume). The preeminence of the French state in social assistance, which does not leave much room and responsibility for welfare provision to voluntary organizations, distinguishes the French welfare state from the prototypical conservative welfare state regime type. The French welfare state does not have this structuring and empowering of the voluntary sector found in countries such as Germany or the Netherlands, and the Third Sector itself has until recently been less developed in France than elsewhere on the continent (Archambault 1997). The same is true for the unusual unpatriarchic features of French social policy. The predominance of the state in child care and early education combined with the ´ strong role that family policy plays within the French Etat-providence helped secure a much higher degree of female labor force participation than is to be expected for a conservative welfare state regime. It was the la¨ıc separation between church and state, not the contractual integration of the church into the provision of public goods, that characterized the French solution to the fierce conflict between Catholic Church and secular nation-state that waged in all continental European countries in the late 19th century. However, as we show in the preceding section, where the French welfare state does resemble its continental homologues, it was the influence of Christian Democracy that must be held responsible for the many institutional similarities. French Christian Democracy was not as strong as elsewhere, but in the short period in which it appeared on the scene, it was strong enough to influence core welfare state features. The high degree of occupational fragmentation, the importance of self-administration with a prominent role of the Christian union, and the dominance of payroll taxation and its correlates (contribution differentiated benefits, length of drawing period dependent on individual contribution record, insurance based on being dependently employed) – these features had been either introduced or protected by the MRP in the reform debates of the immediate postwar years. In this critical period of postwar reconstruction, when the French electoral system for the first time followed PR, Christian Democracy was a powerful and pivotal party. Social policy was one of the policy sectors of highest salience for the MRP. It was also the policy sector where political agreement was easiest to reach in the coalition governments of the Fourth Republic, in which the MRP ruled together with Socialist, Independents, or Radicals (and until 1947, the Communists). The school question, however, remained a highly contested issue between Christian


171

Democrats and the fiercely anticlerical left, and it was the MRP’s lack of a clear position in this question that finally motivated the church hierarchy’s refusal to back the MRP with its full support, which – in turn – partly explains the premature vanishing of a Christian Democratic party from the French party system in 1967. References Alexander, Gerard (2004), France: Reform-Mongering between Majority Runoff and Proportionality, in Josep M. Colomer (ed), Handbook of Electoral System Choice. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 209–221. Ambler, John S. (1991), Ideas, Interests and the French Welfare State, in John S. Ambler (ed), The French Welfare State: Surviving Social and Ideological Change, New York, London: New York University Press, 1–31. Archambault, Edith (1997), The Nonprofit Sector in France, Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press. Ashford, Douglas E. (1986), The Emergence of the Welfare State, Oxford, New York: Blackwell. Ashford, Douglas E. (1991), Advantages of Complexity: Social Insurance in France, in John S. Ambler (ed), The French Welfare State: Surviving Social and Ideological Change, New York, London: New York University Press, 32– 57. Baldwin, Peter (1990), The Politics of Social Solidarity. Class Bases of the European Welfare State 1875–1975, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bell, David Scott (2000), Parties and Democracy in France: Parties under Presidentialism, Aldershot: Ashgate. Berger, Susan (1987), Religious Transformations and the Future of Politics, in Charles S. Maier (ed), Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Evolving between the State and Society, Public and Private in Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 107–149. Bernstein, Serge (2001), Quatrième République, in Pascal Perrineau and Dominique Reynié (eds), Dictionnaire du Vote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 779–782. Béthouart, Bruno (1996), Le Ministère du Travail et de la Sécurité Sociale: Un Monopole du MRP de 1950 a` 1962, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 1 (43): 67–105. Béthouart, Bruno (2001), Le Mouvement Républicain Populaire: L’entrée des Catholiques dans la République Française, in Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Christian Democracy in 20th Century Europe, Wien, Koln, Weimar: Bohlau, 313–331. ¨ ¨ Cameron, David (1991), Continuity and Change in French Social Policy: The Welfare State under Gaullism, Liberalism and Socialism, in John S. Ambler (ed), The French Welfare State: Surviving Social and Ideological Change, New York: New York University Press, 58–93. Caramani, Daniele (2000), Elections in Western Europe since 1815: Electoral Results by Constituencies. The Societies of Europe, Basingstoke, Oxford: Macmillan.

172

Manow and Palier

Carey, John M. and Matthew Soberg Shugart (1995), Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas, Electoral Studies 14 (4): 417–439. Comité d’Histoire de la Sécurité Sociale (1988), La Sécurite Sociale – Son Histoire ´ a Travers les Textes, Tome III: 1945–1981, Paris: Association pour l’Etude de l’Histoire de la Sécurité Sociale. Delbreil, Jean-Claude (1990), Centrisme et Démocratie-Chrétienne: Le Parti Démocrate Populaire des Origines au MRP, 1919–1940, Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne. Delbreil, Jean-Claude (2001a), Le parti démocrate populaire: Un parti démocrate chrétien français de l’entre-deux-guerres, in Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Helmut Wohnout (eds), Christian Democracy in 20th Century Europe, Wien, Koln, Weimar: Bohlau, 77–97. ¨ ¨ Delbreil, Jean-Claude (2001b), The French Catholic Left and the Political Parties, in Gerd-Rainer Horn and Emmanuel Gerard (eds), Left Catholicism 1943/1955: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 45–63. Dreyfus, François-Georges (1988), Histoire de la Démocratie Chrétienne en France, Paris: Albin Michel. Dumons, Bruno, and Gilles Pollet (1994), L’Etat et les Retraites: Genèse d’une Politique, Paris: Belin. Dutton, Paul V. (2002), Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duriez, Bruno (2001), Left Wing Catholicism in France. From Catholic Action to the Political Left: The Mouvement Populaire des Familles, in Gerd-Rainer Horn and Emmanuel Gerard (eds), Left Catholicism 1943/1955: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 64–90. Elgie, Robert (2005), France: Stacking the Deck, in Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell (eds), The Politics of Electoral Systems, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 119–136. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Ferrera, Maurizio (1996), The ‘Southern Model’ of Welfare in Social Europe, Journal of European Social Policy 6 (1): 17–37. Ferrera, Maurizio (1997), General Introduction, in Comparing Social Welfare Systems in Southern Europe, Paris: MIRE, Ministère des Affaires Sociales, 15–26. Galant, Henry (1955), Histoire Politique de la Sécurité Sociale Française 1945– 1952, Paris: Armand Colin. Goguel, François (1981), Chroniques Electorales: les Scrutins Politiques en France de 1945 a` nos Jours. 1, La Quatrième République, Paris: Presses de la FNSP. Gould, Andrew C. (1999), Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church and Party in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Groux, Guy, and René Mouriaux (1991), Le Syndicalisme Chrétien en France: Son Essor, ses Limites, Paris: CEVIPOF.


173

Hanley, David (2002), Party, Society, Government: Republican Democracy in France, New York: Berghahn Books. Hatzfeld, Henri (1989), Du Paupérisme a la Sécurité Sociale, 1850–1940: Essai sur les Origines de la Sécurité Sociale en France, Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Hilaire, Yves-Marie (1997), L’Influence de la Démocratie Chrétienne dans la Sphère de la Religion, la Morale et la Culture en France, in Emiel Lamberts (ed), Christian Democracy in the European Union, 1945–1995, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 427–438. Huber, Evelyne, Charles Ragin, and John D. Stephens (1993), Social Democracy, Christian Democracy, Constitutional Structure, and the Welfare State, American Journal of Sociology 99 (3): 711–749. Huber, Evelyne, and John D. Stephens (2001), Welfare State and Employment Regimes in the Era of Retrenchment, in Paul Pierson (ed), The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 107–145. International Labour Office [ILO] (1936), Yearbook of Labour Statistics, Geneva: International Labour Office. Iversen, Torben, and David Soskice (2006), Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More Than Others, American Political Science Review 100 (2): 165–181. Kalyvas, Stathis (1996), The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ´ Korpi, Walter (1995), Un Etat-Providence Contesté et Fragmenté. Le Développement de la Citoyenneté Sociale en France. Comparaisons avec la Belgique, l’Allemagne, l’Italie et la Suède, Revue Francaise de Science Politique 45 (4): 632–667. Lanfrey, André (2003), Sécularisation, Séparation et Guerre Scolaire: Les Catholiques Français et l’ Ecole, 1881–1911, Paris: Cerf-Histoire. Leibfried, Stefan (1993), Toward a European Welfare State?, in Catherine Jones (ed), New Perspectives on the Welfare State in Europe, London: Routledge, 133–156. Lenoir, Rémi (1991a), Family Policy in France since 1938, in John S. Ambler (ed), The French Welfare State: Surviving Social and Ideological Change, New York, London: New York University Press, 144–186. Lenoir, Rémi (1991b), Famille et Politique, Paris: Editions de Minuit. Letamendia, Pierre (1995), Le MRP, Histoire d’un Grand Parti Français, Paris: Beauchesne. Levy, Jonah D. (2000), France: Directing Adjustment? Welfare and Work in the Open Economy, in Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 308–350. Luebbert, Gregory (1991), Liberalism, Fascism and Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, New York: Oxford University Press. Maddison, Agnus (1992), Monitoring the World Economy 1820–1992, Paris: OECD. Mares, Isabela (2003), The Politics of Social Risk. Business and Welfare State Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

174

Manow and Palier

Mayeur, Jean-Marie (1984), La Vie Politique sous la Troisième République, ´ 1870–1940, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Merrien, Francois-Xavier (1990), Politiques publiques et structures sociales. ´ ´ Etude comparative de l’édification et de l’évolution de l’Etat protecteur en France et an Grande-Bretagne, Paris: CRSST. Michelat, Guy and Michel Simon (1977), Classe, Religion et Comportement ´ Politique, Paris: Editions Sociales. Mitchell, Brian R. (1988), European Historical Statistics, London, MacMillan. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2002), Forging the Frontiers between State, Church and Family: Religious Cleavages and the Origins of Early Childhood Education in France, Sweden, and Germany, Politics & Society 30 (1): 113–148. Morgan, Kimberly J. (2003), The Politics of Mothers’ Employment, World Politics 55 (1): 259–289. Nord, Philip (2003), Catholic Culture in Interwar France, French Politics, Culture & Society, 21 (3): 1–20. Palier, Bruno (2000), ‘Defrosting’ the French Welfare State, West European Politics, 23 (2): 113–136. Palier, Bruno (2002), Gouverner la Sécurité Sociale: Les Réformes du Système Français de Protection Sociale depuis 1945, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Palier, Bruno, and Claude Martin (2007), From ‘a Frozen Landscape’ to Structural Reforms: The Sequential Transformation of Bismarckian Welfare Systems, Social Policy and Administration, 41 (6): 535–554. Pasture, Patrick (2001), Multi-Faceted Relations between Christian Trade Unions and Left Catholics in Europe, in Gerd-Rainer Horn and Emmanuel Gerard (eds), Left Catholicism 1943/1955: Catholics and Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 228–246. Pedersen, Susan (1993), Family Dependence and the Origin of the Welfare State, Britain and France, 1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Renard, Didier (1987), Assistance Publique et Bienfaisance Privée, 1885–1914, Politiques et Management Public 5 (2): 107–128. Renard, Didier (1994), La Direction de l’Assistance Publique au Ministère de l’Intérieur (1885–1905): Administration nouvelle, politique nouvelle?, Philanthropies, 187–197. Renard, Didier (1995), Intervention de l’Etat et Genèse de la Protection Sociale en France (1880–1940), Lien Social et Politiques – RIAC 33: 13–26. Rodden, Jonathan (2005), Red States, Blue States, and the Welfare State: Political Geography, Representation and Government Policy around the World, Manuscript, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. ´ ´ Rosanvallon, Pierre (1990), L’Etat en France de 1789 a` nous Jours, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Rothstein, Bo (1992), Labor-market Institutions and Working-class Strength, in Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreht (eds), Structuring Politics. Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 33–55. Rousselier, Nicolas (2001), Troisième République, in Pascal Perrineau and Dominique Reynié (eds), Dictionnaire du Vote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 906–909.


175

Saint-Jours, Yves, Michel Dreyfus, and Dominique Durand (1990), Traité de la Sécurite Sociale, Tome V: La Mutualité, Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence. Scharpf, Fritz W., and Vivien A. Schmidt (2001), Introduction, in Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt (eds), Welfare and Work in the Open Economy, Vol. II: Diverse Responses to Common Challenges, New York: Oxford University Press, 1–18. Skocpol, Theda (1992), Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Cambridge: Belknap Press. Stoll, Heather (2008), Social Cleavages and the Number of Parties: How the Measures You Choose Affect the Numbers You Get, Comparative Political Studies 41 (11), forthcoming. Stone, Judith F. (1985), The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–1914, Albany: State University of New York. Talmy, Robert (1962), Histoire du Mouvement familial en France 1896–1939, Paris: Union Nationale des Caisses d’Allocation familial. van Kemseke, Peter (1997), The Societal Position of Christian Democracy in France, in Emiel Lamberts (ed), Christian Democracy in the European Union, 1945–1995, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 174–188. Warner, Carolyn M. (1998), Getting out the Vote with Patronage and Thread: The French and Italian Christian Democratic Parties, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28 (4): 553–582. Weiss, John H. (1983), Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief and the Third Republic, 1871–1914, French Historical Studies 13 (1): 47–78. Wright, Gordon (1953), Catholics and Peasantry in France, Political Science Quarterly 68 (4): 526–551.

7 Religion and the Consolidation of the Swiss Welfare State, 1848–1945 Herbert Obinger

7.1 introduction Switzerland is not only the oldest democratic nation-state but also the oldest federal polity in Europe. Given deep-rooted societal cleavages of language, ethnicity, and religion and a strong divide between rural areas and urban agglomerations, the formation of a multicultural nation-state in 1848 was a truly revolutionary venture. Leading representatives of the Swiss labor movement pinned their hopes on the democratic institutions to overcome the widespread pauperization of the working class that had emerged in the wake of the early industrialization of the northeastern parts of the country. But the dreams of ameliorating the living standard of workers by means of social policy were dashed. The formation of a national welfare state faced many obstacles and took longer than in most continental countries. This is particularly true for social security: neither a public pension scheme nor unemployment insurance was adopted prior to 1945. Why did this hope prove to be an illusion? This chapter examines the driving and braking forces that have shaped Swiss social policy from 1848 to 1945. Special attention is paid to the impact of religion on early welfare state formation. Given the cultural modernization and the decline in religiosity in the postwar period, the impact of religion on social policy should be most pronounced during the formative period of the welfare state. Nevertheless, the fierce state–church conflict of the 19th century

I am grateful to the editors for valuable comments and to Julia Moser, Andrea Britze, and Janis Vossiek for research assistance.

176

Religion and the Consolidation of the Swiss Welfare State

177

and the resulting establishment of parties of religious defense had much more long-lasting consequences for welfare state building in Switzerland. My argument is that religion is indeed important for explaining the developmental trajectory of the Swiss welfare state, but it has unfolded its impact on social policy in indirect and complex ways. Two channels of influence were of particular importance. First, the heterogeneous societal makeup exerted a substantial impact on state and institution building. Federalism was the institutional response to a multidimensionally fragmented society and led, in consequence, to a territorial and confessional fragmentation of power resources. In addition, the ‘secondary institutions of federalism’ (Lijphart 1999) and the institutions of direct democracy constituted strong veto points through which opponents of public intrusion into social and economic affairs such as Catholic and Protestant Conservatives were empowered to defend the status quo. Together, these factors had a substantial impact on the timing and patterns of social security legislation. Second, the impact of religion on public policy is mediated by the party system and the partisan complexion of the federal government. Similar to the situation in the Netherlands prior to 1980 (van Kersbergen 1995: 43), an interdenominational Christian Democratic party did not arise. Protestant voters were mainly absorbed by the la¨ıcist Liberals, whereas genuine Protestant parties lacked electoral strength at the national level and therefore never gained a seat in the federal government. Political mobilization of Catholics, in contrast, was strong, and the Catholic-Conservatives (since 1912 organized in the Catholic People’s Party, renamed in Christian Democratic People’s Party in 1971) have been represented in the national government since 1891. Their entry into government was substantially influenced by the veto powers related to direct democracy. Its frequent use by Catholics in the late 19th century forced the politically powerful Liberals to coopt their former archenemy into government. Hence, the main rivals of the Kulturkampf period have formed coalition governments since the late 19th century. The process of ‘paradigmatic integration’ (Deutsch 1976) was continued when the Peasant, Trade and Citizen’s Party, a conservative agrarian party, received a seat in the federal government in 1929. Finally, World War II paved for Social Democrats the way to the corridors of power (Table 7.1). In a nutshell, the traditional Liberal hegemony was incrementally replaced by a balanced distribution of power as the country gradually moved from majoritarian to consociational practices during the 60 years before 1945. Because the political left was excluded from government until 1943, there was no red–black coalition in Switzerland before the 1940s. Patterns

Obinger

178 table 7.1. Partisan Complexion of the Federal Council since 1848 Period Party Liberals Catholic People’s Party (Christian Democrats) Peasant, Trade and Citizen’s Party (Swiss People’s Party) Social Democrats

1848– 1891– 1919– 1929– 1943– 1953– 1954– 1959– Since 1891 1919 1929 1943 1953 1954 1959 2003 2003 7 –

6 1

5 2

4 2

3 2

4 2

3 3

2 2

2 1

–

–

–

1

1

1

1

1

2

–

–

–

–

1

–

–

2

2

of coalition building were decisively shaped by the multiple institutional veto points, which in turn mainly result from the numerous cleavages in Swiss society. At least during the period under scrutiny, the referendum democracy proved to be a stumbling block for a coalition between Christian Democrats and Social Democracy that can be found in other continental countries. The major reason is that the optional referendum (and federalism) played a diametrically opposed role in the political strategies of both parties. For the Catholics, the referendum represented a sort of safety valve to avert majorization and public interference in local affairs. The veto power associated with the referendum forced the Liberals to share the power with the Catholic Party. In contrast, Social Democrats did not attack the reforms initiated by the Liberals because they basically supported Liberal efforts to extend the powers of the federal government. Moreover, federalism turned out to be a major impediment against leftist ideas to enhance the responsibilities of the federal government in social and economic affairs. The central thesis of this chapter is that the lack of a red–black coalition and the constitutional rigidities imposed by federalism and direct democracy largely account for the belated takeoff of the Swiss welfare state and its pronounced liberal traits (Obinger 1998a). The chapter is


179

organized as follows. Section 2 examines the impact of religion on state building and shows that federalism is the institutional response to the multiple cleavages inherent in Swiss society. Section 3 analyzes the repercussions of federalism and direct democracy on interest formation and the power resources of collective actors and illustrates the ways in which the constitutional setting has changed the social policy preferences and strategies, not only of political and economic actors but also of religious groups and the churches. Section 4 exemplifies how these factors have influenced social policy making between 1874 and 1945. Section 5 provides a conclusion.

7.2 religion and state building Switzerland is a religiously mixed society. Although the numerous cleavages in Swiss society are cross cutting in the sense that linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic divisions do not cluster territorially (Gruner 1969: 18), religious tensions overshadowed modern state and nation building from the very outset. By the mid-19th century, the share of Roman Catholics among the population amounted to approximately 40 per cent. Among the then twenty-five sovereign states (the cantons), which formed a loose confederation in 1815, eleven mostly rural states were predominantly Catholic, ten cantons were Protestant, whereas the remaining four cantons showed more balanced denominational patterns (Linder 2005: 36–37). This religious landscape was the product of several wars between Catholics and Protestants during the 16th and 17th century. Protestant churches were traditionally ‘canton churches’ (Kantonalkirchen or Landeskirchen) and thus strongly enmeshed with every canton’s political structure (Gould 1999: 91; Cattacin et al. 2003: 14). Because the position of the churches strongly depended on cantonal authorities, the Protestant clergy did not oppose the Liberals’ efforts to overthrow the ancient order from the 1830s onward (Gould 1999: 104). But because these plans naturally involved an attack against the Roman Catholic Church and its strong role in domains such as education, the Liberals encountered fierce Catholic resistance. When eight Catholic cantons1 formed a special alliance (the so-called Sonderbund) in 1845 and quit the confederation’s body of decision making (the confederal Diet) 1 year later, Protestant cantons regarded this move as an act of secession and mobilized troops. Following a short-lasting civil war between Catholic and Protestant 1

Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais.

180

Obinger

cantons, the victorious Liberals (the Freisinn) imposed a Federal Constitution against the will of Catholic-Conservative forces in 1848, thereby realizing core Liberal ideas such as people’s sovereignty,2 secularism, and the creation of a national market through the removal of trade barriers between the cantons. The Federal Constitution strongly borrowed from the liberal constitutions that had emerged at the cantonal level from 1830 onward (Kolz ¨ 1998: 27). State building, therefore, was a bottom-up process supplemented by a transfer of institutions from abroad. By using U.S. federalism as a blueprint, a federal polity was established that shifted only limited responsibilities to the federal government and guaranteed cantons a powerful influence on the national decision-making process. Federalism was a compromise between the more centralist-oriented Liberals and the federalist Catholic-Conservatives (Kolz ¨ 1998: 28). Gruner (1969: 23) even sees the formation of a federal state in 1848 as the result of a belated religious war. A symmetric bicameral system and equal representation of the cantons in the Council of States based on the Senate principle provided the smaller Catholic cantons with disproportional influence and veto powers. In addition, any constitutional amendment required high consensus thresholds. Since 1848, constitutional amendments are subject to a mandatory referendum, which requires the approval of voters nationally and in a majority of the cantons. This so-called double majority once again favored the smaller Catholic cantons. Religious tensions did not disappear, but were temporarily relieved as a result of the new constitutional setting. The Liberals did not impose Protestant churches on Catholic territories, which in addition enjoyed autonomy in many fields of public policy under the Federal Constitution of 1848. Even more important is that federalism changed the political strategy of the defeated Catholics. Their response to the new constitutional setting was a retreat to cantonal strongholds, where they began to establish a Catholic subsociety or Sondergesellschaft (Altermatt 1972, 1991). Similar to competitive state building in Canada (cf. Banting 2005), Catholics used the constituent units as a political and cultural fortress to defend a Catholic way of life within a federal polity. Although decentralization, bicameralism, and constitutional rigidity protected Catholic interests from majorization, the majority rule-based 2

In practice, however, suffrage at the national level was restricted to male citizens until 1971. In addition, the poor and Jews were initially excluded from political participation (see Mooser 1998: 50–52).


181

electoral system had the opposite effect because it gave rise to a Liberal hegemony in parliament and government. The Swiss federal government (Federal Council), a collegial body consisting of seven ministers, was exclusively composed of Liberals during the four decades following the formation of the federation in 1848. However, the Liberal movement represented a broad ideological spectrum, ranging from Manchester-Liberals to Radicals and Democrats who were committed to social policy reforms, anticlericalism, and a powerful federal government (Gruner 1969: 73– 79). Although predominantly Protestant in denomination, the Liberals regarded religion as a private affair and championed, in consequence, a clear-cut separation between the state and the various churches. Liberal anticlericalism mainly focused on the Roman Catholic Church, which was branded as a conservative force and accused of impeding societal progress and modernization. In particular, Liberals considered the Jesuit order ‘an anathema, as the apotheosis of Catholic obscurantism, intrigue, and subversion’ (Gould 1999: 106). This strong anti-Catholic stance, together with the antisecularist countermovement that has emerged in the wake of the First Vatican Council, triggered severe tensions between Catholics and Liberals. The resulting Kulturkampf peaked in the early 1870s. Catholic bishops and clergymen such as E. Lachat (Basel) and G. Mermillod (Geneva), who strongly backed the dogma of papal infallibility, were defrocked and expelled from the country. This struggle between Catholics and Liberals was fueled by distinctive and deeply entrenched attitudes toward modernization, state building, and the role of the Roman Church in education. Like in 1848, the Liberals prevailed in this conflict. By means of a total revision of the Federal Constitution in 1874, they finally succeeded in creating a secular state. Although the constitutional revision successfully passed the referendum hurdle,3 the former Sonderbund cantons, plus two other mostly Catholic cantons (Appenzell Inner Rhoden and Ticino), rejected the overhaul of the constitution because a series of its newly adopted provisions radically enforced secularization. The constitution of 1874 banned the pope-loyal Jesuit order and the establishment of monasteries and fraternities. In addition, the establishment of new dioceses required the permission of federal authorities, and the election of clergymen for parliament was prohibited. Finally, the Roman Catholic Church was not only repelled from primary education and jurisprudence but also lost jurisdiction with respect to marital affairs. 3

A more centralized Federal Constitution had been rejected in 1872, not at least due to strong Catholic resistance.

182

Obinger

The revision of the Federal Constitution was important in two other respects. First, the powers of the central state (including social policy) were enhanced. Second, and more important, the optional referendum was introduced in 1874. By collecting 30,000 (today 50,000) signatures, every parliamentary bill or decree is automatically subject to a (binding) referendum. Yet, this instrument of direct democracy turned out to be a boomerang for the Liberals because the Catholics did not, in contrast to the situation in 1848, react with a retreat to their cantonal strongholds, but rather used the optional referendum to obstruct federal legislation initiated by the Liberals (Neidhart 1970; Altermatt 1991: 146; Bolliger and Zurcher 2004: 73). To avert political deadlock, the Catholic¨ Conservatives gained one seat in the federal government in 1891. Once incorporated into government, Catholics adjusted their political strategy and abandoned their strict federalist course in the subsequent years (Wigger 1997: 131). From then on, they identified the Social Democrats as their main antagonist, mainly because of the Social Democratic party’s increasing Marxist orientation. In consequence, the Liberals and Catholics, the former intransigent opponents, formed a bourgeois bloc against the Social Democratic Party, which was excluded from the federal government for decades. As a result, no red–black coalition emerged in Switzerland before World War II that could have paved the way for the emergence of a more generous welfare state that one finds in other continental countries (Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume). However, the political left could rely on the people’s initiative by which 50,000 (today 100,000) citizens may demand an alteration of the Federal Constitution (Wili 1991). Introduced in the year in which Catholics had entered government, this instrument is typically used by the opposition and pressure groups because it offers bottom-up opportunities of agenda setting. The political left and the unions immediately used this instrument to promote social policy legislation (Obinger 1998b). However, it soon turned out that the people’s initiative was neither a vehicle to challenge the bourgeois political cartel nor an effective bottom-up instrument to promote public policy. The reason is that a double majority is required for adopting a constitutional amendment. Internal cohesion within the Catholic camp provided, the Catholic cantons once again held strong veto powers. The introduction of proportional representation (PR) in 1918 put an end to the Liberal hegemony. PR had been a long-time political aim, both of the Social Democrats and the Catholic-Conservatives (organized in the Catholic People’s Party since 1912), and was finally introduced against


183

the backdrop of the war-induced domestic turmoil that culminated in the Olten general strike in 1918. Both parties won seats in the National Council when the first election based on PR was held in 1919. But whereas the Catholic People’s Party received a second seat in the federal government at the expense of the Liberals, the Left, despite its considerable parliamentary strength, remained excluded from government. The separation of Protestant peasants from the Liberals in the wake of World War I gave rise to a further change in the partisan complexion of the federal government. Since 1929, the bourgeois bloc in the Federal Council consisted of four Liberals, two Catholics, and one representative from the conservative Peasant, Trade and Citizen’s Party (Bauern-, 4 ¨ ), which had its strongholds in (reformed) Gewerbe-, und Burgerpartei German-speaking cantons such as Bern and Zurich. Seeing the peasantry as the well of freedom and inclined to antimodernist ideas, this party strongly advocated an alliance between peasants and the bourgeois camp (Konig 1998: 50). It was World War II and the military threat of Nazi Ger¨ many that finally opened the doors to government for the Left (Table 7.1). In 1943, the Social Democrat Ernst Nobs was elected Federal Councillor after the party had abandoned its antimilitarist stance and backed war loans in order to reorganize the Swiss army. The lack of a red–black coalition gives a first important clue for the belated takeoff of the Swiss welfare state. However, the distribution of power resources and the patterns of coalition building are not enough for explaining the development of Swiss social policy. Welfare state building cannot be fully understood without analyzing Switzerland’s unique institutional framework and its repercussions on social politics and policies. In this section, we have already seen that the optional referendum substantially preconfigures coalition building. But this is far from being the only impact of political institutions on the developmental trajectory of the Swiss welfare state.

7.3 institutional repercussions: actor constellations, power resources, and coalition building The development of social policy was crucially influenced by the repercussions of the constitutional framework, which was preconfigured by the (religious) cleavages in Swiss society. The vertical and horizontal 4

This party is the predecessor of the Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei [SVP]).

184

Obinger

division of power had multiple and mutually reinforcing effects on social politics and policies. Federalism 1) gave rise to a territorial and confessional fragmentation of power resources, 2) reined in the powers of the federal government and bureaucracy, and 3) reinforced anticentralist and antiétatist norms and values (thereby matching the preferences of Catholics and Protestant Conservatives in French-speaking cantons), whereas direct democracy 4) provided a powerful leverage to defend the status quo. 7.3.1 A Weak Federal Government The central government was in several respects extremely weak from the outset. To begin with, the federal government had only limited policy jurisdictions. Section 3 of the revised Federal Constitution of 1874 stipulated that the ‘cantons are sovereign insofar as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution and, as such, exercise all rights which are not entrusted to the federal power.’ With the exception of labor law, cantons held all responsibilities in social policy. Any reallocation of powers between different tiers of government was subject to a mandatory referendum. Again, this type of referendum provided the smaller Catholic cantons with strong veto powers to avert a centralization of government. In a similar vein, the federal government was fiscally constrained and therefore not in a position to finance generous social programs on its own. In 1874, the federal government could only rely on revenues from tariffs, whereas direct taxes were exclusively levied by the cantons. A national income tax was introduced for the first time during wartime and on a temporary basis only. Again, any transfer of fiscal powers between different tiers of government had to pass the referendum hurdle. Finally, administrative capacities were only weakly developed at the federal level. The lack of an effective federal bureaucracy not only had a detrimental effect on welfare state building, but in the long run also contributed to the emergence of corporatist interest mediation because the federal government had to rely on the know-how embodied in interest organizations of business and labor for drafting and implementing federal bills (Neidhart 1970). 7.3.2 Fragmented Interest Formation and Power Resources Swiss federalism constituted a highly competitive arena for the organization of political, religious, and economic interests. As a result, the


185

country’s territorial fragmentation erected high barriers against the formation of national interest organizations and political parties (Gruner 1969: 29). Historically, political parties have first emerged at the local and cantonal level, and only the big political parties were able to establish national party organizations. To the present day, the national party headquarters are weak because the center of gravity of the party system is still located at the cantonal level. Moreover, a party’s ideological orientation often differs considerably from one canton to another so that national parties show weak programmatic coherence and internal cohesion. Social Democrats (1888) and Liberals (1894) were in the vanguard with regard to the formation of national party organizations. In the 20th century, however, both parties suffered from party splits. Whereas the Socialists witnessed the emergence of a Communist party in 1921, the Liberals lost support of the Protestant peasantry in the aftermath of World War I. A secular-conservative party representing agrarian and small business interests was founded at the national level in 1937. Beside socioeconomic cleavages, confessional divisions shaped the partisan landscape. An interdenominational Christian Democratic party did not emerge in Switzerland (Gruner 1969: 122). The Catholic-Conservatives founded the Catholic People’s Party at the national level in 1912 (renamed the Christian Democratic People’s Party in 1971) after several attempts to establish a national party organization had failed due to territorial fragmentation and particularism. Like in many continental countries, the Catholic People’s Party undoubtedly was a party of religious defense. Its ideological platform was based on four pillars and showed a remarkable stability over time. Catholics demanded 1) the protection of individual rights from state interference in the fields of education, family, marriage, and ecclesiastic affairs; 2) a guarantee by public authorities for the free development of ecclesiastic institutions, associations, and parties; and 3) the protection of municipalities and cantons from federal intrusion; and they favored 4) subsidiarity and solidarity as guidelines for public policy making (see Gruner 1969: 117–118). Its Protestant counterpart, the Protestant People’s Party (Evangelische Volkspartei), was established in 1919. It was strongly linked with the free churches and the Swiss Federation of Evangelic Workers. Based on the Gospel as its programmatic guide, the party was inclined to a strict morality, insisting on family values and demanding help for the aged and handicapped. Now, the party is mobilizing against abortion, the equality of homosexual partnerships under public law, and Sunday work. From the very outset, however, this confessional party lacked broad political

186

Obinger

support among Protestant voters. Between 1919 and 1945, it never gained more than 1 per cent of the vote at the national level and therefore remained excluded from government. However, Protestant free churches and other reformed Protestants such as Calvinists or Baptists played a major role at the cantonal level, especially in the western part of the country. National interest organizations faced many obstacles as well. Economic interest groups organized along confessional and territorial lines. This is first and foremost true for unions. Initially, however, it seemed that the labor movement would be able to bridge the gap between different ideologies and denominations. The Swiss Trade Union Confederation (Schweizerische Gewerkschaftsbund [SGB]) was established as a nonconfessional umbrella organization of trade unions in 1880, and the Swiss Federation of Workers (Arbeiterbund) consisted of different ideological and confessional suborganizations. In subsequent years, however, the SGB became more closely affiliated with the Social Democrats, thus provoking fears within the Roman Catholic Church that Catholic workers would become indoctrinated by Socialism (Ruf 1991: 66–67; Wigger 1997: 157). When Social Democrats and the SGB increasingly came under the influence of Marxism at the turn of the 20th century, Catholic workers started to establish Catholic workers’ associations and finally founded the Christian-Social Federation of Unions (Christlichsozialer Gewerkschaftsbund [CSG]5 ) in 1907. Catholic workers herewith followed an appeal by Pope Leo XIII, who had prompted Catholics to establish Christian-oriented interest organizations in his encyclical Rerum Novarum.6 Dating back already to the 1860s, the network of Catholic associations fully unfolded during the early 20th century. The period between 1920 and 1940 has even been referred to as the golden age of ‘milieu-Catholicism’ (Altermatt 1994: 5). The foundation of the Swiss Catholic People’s Association (Schweizerische Katholische Volksverein) in 1905 was a milestone in this respect. This peak association served as an umbrella organization for a broad range of Catholic associations, which not only were based in the traditional Catholic strongholds but also in the so-called Diaspora cantons. In addition, the Swiss Catholic People’s Association promoted and accelerated the formation of the Catholic People’s Party 7 years later. 5 6

Since 1921, Christlichnationaler Gewerkschaftsbund (CNG). Leading Swiss Catholic politicians such as Caspar Decurtins had a substantial influence on this encyclical.


187

table 7.2. Membership in the Trade Unions’ Peak Associations, 1920–1940 (in per cent) Peak Association (Political/Confessional Affiliation)

1920

1930

1940

Swiss Trade Union Confederation (Social Democratic) Swiss Association of White Collar Workers (Democrats = left wing of the Liberals) Christian-Social Federation of Unions (Catholic) Swiss Federation of Evangelic Workers (Protestant) Landesverband Freier Schweizer Arbeiter (Liberal)

74.6

68.7

64.4

18.4

19.2

18.4

5.6 0.7

8.3 2.3

11.1 3.5

0.6

1.5

2.6

Total (= 100%)

299,575

282,254

329,935

Source: Adapted from Ruf (1991: 73).

Despite this strong Catholic mobilization, the Swiss Trade Union Confederation clearly outnumbered the Christian-Social Federation of Unions in union density. In 1918, about 177,000 workers were affiliated with the SGB, whereas only some 8200 wage earners were members of the Catholic counterpart (Holenstein 1993: 329). Similar developments occurred within the Protestant camp. Because Protestants rejected membership in Catholic unions on religious grounds (Ziegler 1939: 66, 94), Protestant workers, under the influence of the free churches (the Methodist Church in particular), established a Protestant union (the Swiss Federation of Evangelic Workers) in 1920. Politically, this union was closely affiliated with the Protestant People’s Party. Starting with only 2244 members in 1920, membership steadily increased and amounted to 13,000 workers in the late 1930s (170). In addition to the problem of confessional fragmentation, unions also had to overcome occupational segmentation because white collar workers were organized under the roof of the Swiss Association of White Collar Workers (VSA). Still other occupational groups formed interest organizations outside the three peak associations SGB, CSG, and VSA. Finally, political fragmentation increased when wage earners sympathetic to the Liberals established the Landesverband Freier Schweizer Arbeiter (LFSA) in 1919, which, however, only played a marginal role in subsequent years (Table 7.2). As a result, the Swiss labor movement was divided along confessional, political, and occupational lines undercutting, in consequence, the power resources of wage earners as well as the coherence of the

188

Obinger

labor movement. In contrast to the SGB, the confessional unions and the LFSA strictly rejected the class struggle (Ruf 1991: 67–69). Instead, Catholic unions championed corporatist policies to balance the tensions between labor and capital in a peaceful fashion. In the 1920s, the already deeply entrenched corporatist ideas gained substantial influence within the Catholic People’s Party and finally became a cornerstone of the party’s social and economic platform of 1929 (Weber 1989). The spread of corporatist ideas was further prompted by the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno promulgated by Pope Pius XI in 1931. Moreover, the 1930s witnessed a contagion of Catholic groups by authoritarian ideas. The party’s youth faction drifted to the extreme right and aimed to overthrow the constitution by means of a total revision (Altermatt 1991: 158; Weber 1989: 17–18, 141ff). However, this initiative was rejected in a referendum by a broad majority in 1935. Territorial fragmentation and language barriers also led to a great variety of Protestant churches (Ziegler 1939: 8) and distinct state–church relations across cantons that have survived to the present day (see Cattacin et al. 2003). To cope with this cantonal fragmentation and improve ecclesiastic cooperation across cantons, intercantonal organizations were established in the aftermath of World War I. The Swiss Federation of Evangelic Churches was created in 1920 as an umbrella organization of the cantonal reformed churches. The Protestant free churches, mostly organized as associations, also established a peak association7 in 1919, whereas the Swiss Evangelic Alliance provided a common national platform for the reformed cantonal churches and the Protestant free churches. The Catholic Church, certainly more centralized and homogeneous than the Protestant churches, was nonetheless challenged when liberal Catholics established the Christian Catholic Church in reaction to the dogmas of papal infallibility and the papal primacy of jurisdiction enunciated at the First Vatican Council. However, this occurrence did not undercut the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church because only some 70,000 former Roman Catholics joined the Christian Catholic Church, which later was awarded state recognition as Landeskirche in some cantons. In sum, federalism and the existence of multiple societal cleavages contributed to a territorial and confessional fragmentation of interest groups, political parties, and even Protestant churches. This segmentation inflated the number of actors and interests involved in policy making 7

¨ Verband unabhangiger evangelischer Korporationen (now the Verband evangelischer Freikirchen und Gemeinden in der Schweiz).


189

and contributed to a substantial fragmentation of the power resources of the labor movement. Confessional fragmentation was not restricted to wage earners because the peasantry was also confessionally divided. Protestant peasants had initially allied with the Liberals. From the 1920s on, however, they were increasingly absorbed by conservative agrarian parties. Catholic peasants, in contrast, represented a core clientele within the Catholic-Conservatives, facing a growing labor faction, especially when the Christian-Social workers became officially integrated into the Catholic People’s Party in 1912. Irrespective of this confessional split and the resulting differences in political affiliation, the Swiss peasantry was part of the bourgeois bloc from the outset. Prior to the 1890s, sporadic coalitions between peasants and the (early) labor movement did exist, however. Early labor protection legislation is a case in point. Initiated by the Democratic wing of the Liberals and supported by the labor movement, labor protection was also backed by the peasantry on the basis of strong antiliberal and antiindustrial sentiments. But this loose coalition soon collapsed when industrialization and urbanization created a growing and increasingly radicalized working class (Konig 1998: 27–29). ¨ In summary, neither a red–black coalition nor a sort of red–green coalition similar to the Scandinavian countries was formed in Switzerland. Political institutions provide a compelling answer to this pattern of coalition building. To begin with, there was simply no paramount need to form such coalitions because the optional referendum was an effective vehicle for interest groups and political parties to defend particularistic interests. The most powerful parties in this respect – those that either could launch an optional referendum or just credibly threat to initiate a referendum – were integrated into the federal government. The crucial point is that Social Democrats did not exploit this veto power because they had no interest in attacking reforms initiated by Liberals that aimed at enhancing the federal powers in social and economic affairs. Exactly the opposite was true for the Catholic People’s Party. Indeed, we see in Section 4 that the Social Democrats supported all pro-welfare state bills subject to a referendum, even if the party regarded the proposed social policy measures as totally inadequate. In contrast, Social Democrats could not use the people’s initiative to challenge the bourgeois cartel given the high consensus thresholds required to change the status quo. The requirement of a ‘double-majority’ meant that left-wing initiatives could easily be fended off by a Catholic veto block. In addition to the multiple veto points, a strong rivalry between the ‘red’ and ‘black’ unions about the adequate political strategy in social

190

Obinger

policy making hampered a black–red coalition. Whereas the red unions championed class struggle, the Catholic unions aimed to smooth class conflict by means of corporatist policy making. The conflict over social policy between the ‘red’ and ‘black’ labor movement therefore was mainly a conflict about means, and less about goals. A case in point is the collapse of the Olten general strike of 1918 that resulted from a deteriorating social and economic situation in the wake of World War I. Catholics strictly condemned class struggle and considered the strike as a bolshevist attempt to overthrow the constitutional order (Altermatt 1991: 155–156; Holenstein 1993: 298–301). This strong loyalty to the constitutional order was honored with a second seat for the Catholic People’s Party in the Federal Council in 1919. Liberals definitely recognized the Catholics as a reliable partner so that the latter ultimately got rid of their image of being Son¨ derbundler. In consequence, the internal cohesion within the bourgeois bloc increased, and it was anti-Socialism that kept Liberals and Catholics together. Social Democrats and the ‘red’ unions were branded as vaterlandslose Gesellen (Altermatt 1991: 152). Moreover, the crusade of the Roman Catholic Church against the Social Democratic labor movement peaked in the wake of Olten general strike. In 1920, a declaration (the so-called Bettagsmandat), issued by the Catholic episcopacy, openly condemned membership of Catholics in Socialist workers’ organizations and/or the Social Democratic Party (Holenstein 1993: 374; Spieler 1994: 262–263). Hence, Switzerland fits into the general European pattern emphasized by Thomas Ertman (Chapter 2, this volume): once the fierce conflict between the Liberals and the Roman Church and its political allies was settled and the Social Democrats became strong, Liberal parties and Catholic parties often formed coalitions against the ‘Socialist challenge.’ 7.3.3 Political Strategies and Values: Anticentralism and Antiétatism According to Paul Pierson, federalism significantly changes the policy preferences and political strategies of social actors. In addition, political or ethnic minorities will attempt to shift policy making toward whatever arena seems most favorable to their interests so that ‘struggles for increased political and economic power are likely to become intertwined with questions of jurisdictional control over social policy’ (Pierson 1995: 450, 454). Catholics’ strategy to build a counterculture at the cantonal level is a case in point. The retreat of Catholics from the federal arena in the wake of the events of the 1840s was a strategic response to the secular Federal Constitution imposed by the Liberals. A federal polity strongly


191

based on the idea of local autonomy and the associated devolution of power provided the institutional shelter that allowed Catholics to maintain their traditions, to preserve the influence of the Roman Church in Catholic areas, and to create a Catholic counterculture at the cantonal level. More specifically, Catholics considered the cantons as bulwarks against modernization and its concomitants such as big government, bureaucratization, and secularization. Because they were mostly concentrated in rural areas and showed strong leanings to the ancient order with its enshrined privileges of the Roman Church, Catholics opposed industrialization and were highly skeptical of new developments in science and technology. In addition, big government emphasized by the Radical and Democratic wing of the Liberals was perceived as an engine of centralization and thus seen as a threat to traditional Catholic norms and the Catholic way of life. Moreover, the economic backwardness of the Catholic periphery and its economic dependency on the more industrialized liberal centers reinforced antimodernist and anticentralist attitudes (Altermatt 1991: 58). Catholics therefore sought to gain political control at the cantonal level in order to protect the Catholic subsociety from intrusion by the Liberals who then controlled the federal arena. Because the cantons enjoyed almost exclusive jurisdiction in affairs such as education and welfare under the Federal Constitution of 1848, Catholics exploited local policy autonomy to protect the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church on education and marital affairs, at least until the constitutional revision in 1874. Later, in the 1930s, when corporatist ideologies gained increasing importance against the backdrop of a severe economic and political crisis, some Catholics once again preferred a stronger role for the cantons in social benefit provision. Catholics also suggested a reallocation of social policy responsibilities from the state to corporatist arrangements (Weber 1989). However, anticentralism and the rejection of big government were not exclusively Catholic sentiments because similar values were shared by conservative Protestants affiliated to free churches and liberal groups in French-speaking cantons who feared majorization by a German-speaking elite and therefore strongly celebrated federalism and cantonal autonomy. This not only holds true for the Liberal-Conservatives, who were mainly backed by Protestant voters in Latin cantons (Rimli 1951: 145–159), but also for many French-speaking Liberals who strongly opposed centralism and big government (Zimmermann 1948; Gruner 1969). These groups opposed secularization and public intrusion in social affairs. Instead,

Obinger

192

table 7.3. Social Policy-Related Referendums in Switzerland, 1874–1945 Impact of Bill/Initiative on Social Policy Referendum Type People’s initiative

Total Expansive Initiated by Number (Rejected) (Number) 3

3 (3)

Optional 10 referendum

8 (5)

Restrictive Initiated by (Rejected) (Number)

Trade unions, None Social Democrats (3) Interest groups 2 (2) of business and peasants, bourgeois parties (10)

–

Trade unions, Social Democrats (2)

Note: The optional referendum was introduced in 1874, whereas the people’s initiative was established in 1891. Source: From Moser and Obinger (2007).

antiétatist Protestants such as Calvinists and Baptists established a dense network of philanthropic associations at the local level during the 19th century. Poor relief provided by Protestant Conservatives was guided by a strict morality emphasizing self-help, industry, and sobriety (David and Schaufelbuehl 2007). Together with the Catholics, these groups formed a powerful alliance that attempted to defend the sovereignty and autonomy of the cantons in social and fiscal affairs. 7.3.4 Direct Democracy The most effective vehicle for all these antiétatist groups was the optional referendum that, in general, provides powerful leverage to defend the status quo (Linder 2005). This instrument has been frequently used by interest organizations of business and labor, albeit for completely different motives. The trade unions and Social Democrats successfully used the optional referendum to oppose welfare state retrenchment, something that occurred for the first time during the interwar period. Interest organizations of business and peasants relied on this instrument to frustrate welfare state building: five out of eight federal bills aiming at expanding social security were rejected between 1874 and 1945 (Table 7.3). Given the exclusion of Social Democrats from the federal government until 1943, the party and the red unions launched several people’s initiatives to promote the introduction of social programs. Three people’s


193

initiatives were subject to a referendum, and all of them were rejected by the voters (Table 7.3). Overall, Table 7.3 reveals a strong status quo bias of direct democracy. Vested interest organizations of business and peasants, as well as rightwing and confessional parties, successfully contested new federal social policy legislation. For example, the introduction of health and accident insurance (1900), old age pensions for civil servants (1891), and a general public pension scheme (1931) failed due to a referendum. Once in place, however, the left and trade unions have been successful in defending the status quo in social affairs. Both referendums initiated against propositions by the government to curtail achieved social standards were rejected. These mechanisms and the resulting impact on social policy making are illustrated in more detail in the next section, which analyzes the process of early welfare state formation between 1874 and 1945.

7.4 welfare state consolidation, 1874–1945 So far, I have concentrated on the impact of religious cleavages on state building and the ways in which the constitutional setting has influenced actor constellations, the power resources of collective actors, coalition building, and political strategies. This section examines how these institutionally mediated effects have shaped social policy making between 1874 and 1945. Particular attention is paid to labor protection, health and accident insurance, old age pensions, and income support for families and the unemployed. According to the Federal Constitution of 1874, the cantons were responsible for almost all matters of social policy. In addition, they controlled the most important tax powers. In the absence of federal jurisdiction, social security programs were established both by the cantons, cities, and municipalities and by friendly societies, (Protestant) philanthropic associations, trade unions, and entrepreneurs (Zacher 1899; Reichesberg 1906; Krumbiegel 1913; Gruner 1988; Tschudi 1989; David and Schaufelbuehl 2007). However, many cities and cantons remained inactive, whereas in still other cantons, social policy initiatives were frustrated by the use of the referendum procedure. Public unemployment insurance failed to find public consent in the city of Basle in 1900, old age pensions were rejected in Geneva in 1910, and the introduction of minimum wages failed in both Bern (1898) and Zurich (1899). In addition to the public programs established in cities and cantons, workers’ associations of both denominations and entrepreneurs set up compensation funds.

194

Obinger

The number of funds increased from 652 in 1865 to 2006 in 1903, covering almost 500,000 people at the turn of the 20th century. In sum, local policy preemption has given rise to a patchwork of decentralized social security arrangements, which differed markedly from one another in terms of funding, organization, and levels of benefit provision. Given the central state’s lack of jurisdiction in social and fiscal affairs, welfare state building, similar to state and nation building in general, thus was a bottom-up process. Shifting social policy competencies and fiscal powers to the national level, however, had to overcome the inbuilt rigidities imposed by the Swiss constitution and also had to cope with the widespread anticentralist attitudes in Swiss society (Saxer 1951). It is thus hardly surprising that the process of welfare state building between 1874 and 1945 moved on from defeat to defeat. Interestingly, however, this process commenced with a remarkable success. 7.4.1 A Success Story: Labor Protection Under section 34 of the Federal Constitution of 1874, the federal government was only empowered to regulate working conditions in factories. The Liberal federal government immediately made use of federal jurisdiction in this field and enacted the Federal Factory Act in 1877 that made Switzerland a European pioneer in terms of labor protection. The Liberals therefore not only promoted market building (recall that the Federal Constitution of 1848 removed trade barriers between the cantons) but also initiated the Polanyian countermovement (Manow and van Kersbergen, Chapter 1, this volume) through early efforts of social policy legislation. This puzzle can only be explained if one takes into account the considerable ideological heterogeneity within the Liberal movement (Gruner 1969). Nevertheless, other factors have also contributed to this success. The federal competence in legislation was certainly a major cause of why factory legislation could be implemented so early and speedily. Moreover, the federal government could rely on prior cantonal legislation. In the 1860s, the more industrialized cantons such as Argovia, Glarus, Schaffhausen, and Basle established Factory Acts that served as pacemakers for the Federal Factory Act. Last, but not least, labor protection is a pure regulatory policy and does therefore not require fiscal resources on a large scale. Nevertheless, the Federal Factory Act, which was also supported by Catholics and peasants on the basis of antiindustrial and antiliberal attitudes, was attacked by an optional referendum launched by interest


195

groups of business and industry. However, the bill was approved by 51.5 per cent of voters in 1877. Based on the Federal Factory Act, the working day for industry was restricted to 11 hours, and child labor was prohibited. The Factory Act was replaced by an improved bill in 1914, and the 8-hour working day was introduced in 1918. Soon thereafter, however, the bourgeois government decided to increase the working day again. This caused severe tensions both within the Liberal Party (Zimmermann 1948) and the Catholic People’s Party. The latter was plagued by internal conflicts between the agrarian faction and the party’s Christian social wing. Nevertheless, it was the red labor movement that launched an optional referendum against the lifting of working time. The referendum committee was able to collect 200,000 signatures, equivalent to 20 per cent of the population entitled to vote (Giovanoli 1932: 410). The plebiscite was held in 1924, and voters rejected the proposal of the federal government. This referendum marks the first time that a federal bill aimed at welfare state retrenchment was rejected by the Swiss voters. Yet, the referendum also empowered business organizations and the political right to attack progressive labor protection legislation. One example is the failure of the federal bill on collective labor law (Bun¨ ¨ desgesetz uber die Ordnung der Arbeitsverhaltnisse). Although the bill was passed unanimously by parliament, the Liberal-Conservative Party and business organizations successfully launched a referendum against the bill in 1920. Fears of federal intrusion in cantonal affairs and resistance against a mounting bureaucracy were the main reasons why the bill was attacked by these groups (Zimmermann 1948: 59). In addition to the regulation of working time and working conditions, a Federal Liability Act was enacted for factory workers in 1881 that was subsequently extended to other groups of workers. It obliged employers to pay compensation to injured workers. Yet, the Federal Liability Act soon turned out to be dysfunctional because many injured workers did not receive compensation or did not claim it at the courts in order to avoid dismissal. 7.4.2 From Liability Legislation to Health and Accident Insurance In the late 1880s, the malfunctioning of the Federal Liability Act, together with the exemplary effects of German and Austrian social insurance legislation, convinced the Liberal federal government to adopt a new approach to social policy by advocating health and accident insurance (cf. Maurer 1980: 780–781). Ludwig Forrer, Liberal National Councillor, who later

196

Obinger

was also elected Federal Councillor, vindicated the insurance approach with the slogan: ‘Employer’s liability means quarrel, insurance stands for peace!’ (quoted from Maurer 1980: 780). However, federal intervention in this field faced various problems. Given the federation’s lack of authority to act in social policy, the legislation process was necessarily split into two stages. The first step was to pass constitutional amendments empowering the federal authorities to undertake social security legislation. This reallocation of jurisdiction proved to be difficult because each amendment was subject to an obligatory referendum, and the Swiss have always been hesitant to entrust the federal government with new powers (Saxer 1951: 222). In particular, this was true for the Catholics and conservative Protestants based in the Latin cantons. Notwithstanding these difficulties, voters approved the constitutional amendment that empowered the federal government with the authority to act in health affairs in 1890. However, this did not automatically lead to a new federal policy. For this to occur, the government needed to adopt so-called implementing legislation. Soon after the constitutional amendment was passed, Ludwig Forrer drafted a bill, the so-called Lex Forrer, which was strongly influenced by Bismarckian health and accident insurance (Krumbiegel 1913). Forrer suggested a mandatory and predominantly contribution-based scheme of workers’ insurance, which would be mainly organized around public and semipublic sickness funds. A public accident insurance company was to be put in charge of mandatory accident insurance. During the deliberations of the bill, leading Catholic corporatists such as Josef Beck and Caspar Decurtins suggested that cooperations (Berufsgenossenschaften) should be put in charge of health insurance. This proposal, however, was incompatible with liberal ideas, and Ludwig Forrer consequently replied that the era of the guilds is definitely over (Rutishauser 1935: 164). The bill was finally backed by all major parties (including the Catholic Party) and passed both houses of parliament almost unanimously. Yet, industry and small business opposed increasing nonwage labor costs, whereas French-speaking Liberals rejected compulsory insurance. In addition, the existing providers of sickness benefits attempted to defend the status quo. Private sickness funds argued that competition by public sickness funds would jeopardize business, whereas the providers of mutual relief schemes fiercely opposed state intervention into social affairs. Many of these schemes were operated by religious organizations of both denominations and regional philanthropic elites (David and Schaufelbuehl 2007). In contrast to the Social Democrats, the Swiss Federation of Workers


197

branded the bill bureaucratic and disapproved of the state supervision of self-administered mutual compensation funds. It therefore launched a people’s initiative in 1893 that proposed a national health service (free medical services) funded by revenues from a tobacco monopoly. However, this initiative failed because the organization was unable to collect the 50,000 signatures necessary for a plebiscite. Business groups and right-wing forces, branding the bill both as collectivist and centralist, were more successful because they were able to collect sufficient signatures to launch an optional referendum against the Lex Forrer. The bill was distributed among the voters in the run-up to the plebiscite. Because it consisted of 400 articles and had a shipping weight of 2 pounds (Gruner 1988: 640), the Federal Health and Accident Insurance Act became a synonym for federal bureaucracy and big government. Konig (1998: 32) ¨ refers to the Lex Forrer as the first federal bill subject to a referendum that simply was not graspable for ordinary citizens. Not surprisingly, the Swiss rejected the Federal Health and Accident Insurance Act in 1900. The most important reason for its defeat was the compulsory nature of the insurance, which was regarded as the beginning of state Socialism (Maurer 1980: 783). Rutishauser (1935: 167) argues that the referendum bore resemblance to a tax plebiscite. In addition, the resistance of private sickness funds as well as federalist-motivated objections to increased federal expenditure, bureaucracy, and state monopolies – attitudes shared by many French-speaking Catholics, conservative Protestants, and Liberals – contributed to the bill’s defeat (Funk 1925: 66–67; Rutishauser 1935: 167; Rimli 1951: 194). Six years after the bill was rejected, a second bill was drafted. The bourgeois federal government was fully aware of the interests backing the referendum (Bundesblatt 1906 VI: 252) and thus made far-reaching concessions to the opponents of the Lex Forrer. Employers no longer had to pay contributions and the insured had to pay per capita premiums instead of income-related contributions. Compulsory insurance was abandoned, although the cantons were empowered to introduce compulsory insurance for certain groups. The federal government confined itself to providing positive incentives. The existing private or corporatist sickness funds received federal subsidies if they guaranteed the minimum standards outlined in federal legislation. With respect to accident insurance, employers were released from contributory payments for nonoccupational accidents, and both farmers and small business were excluded from coverage. However, to prevent ‘cream skimming’ by private insurance companies, the monopoly of the Swiss Accident Insurance Institute

198

Obinger

was preserved. This gave rise to a second referendum that was again launched by business interest organizations (Rimli 1951: 198). In a tactical maneuver aimed to mitigate Catholic resistance against the bill, the federal government decided to place the accident insurance company in Lucerne, a Catholic stronghold in central Switzerland. This strategy turned out to be successful, and the redrafted bill was adopted by voters in 1911. This brief account of the adoption of health and accident insurance shows how policy change was not only delayed for nearly two decades but also fundamentally affected by direct democracy. Early policy preemption at the local level, an effect mainly stemming from federalism, was a major impediment to achieving far-reaching policy changes. Given the ‘patchwork quilt’ nature of local social security schemes, the federal government could not act unilaterally and had a limited degree of freedom to replace these arrangements. Because many political, religious, and economic interests had already crystallized around the existing decentralized social programs, the providers of these programs, anticentralist and antiétatist groups, and employers were reluctant to accept federal policy intervention. The defeat of the Lex Forrer crucially shaped subsequent policies as it opened the way for a liberal framework law with universal coverage instead of an imitation of mandatory and class-based health insurance along Bismarckian lines (see Immergut 1992). Employers were exempted from contributory payments so that the cost burden was shifted to the insured who now had to pay per capita premiums and not the earnings-related contributions initially proposed. In addition, the fate of the Lex Forrer crowded out the option of a class-based workers’ insurance for the future because the optional referendum turned out as a powerful vehicle to overthrow alleged privileges for specific occupational groups. This was already evident in 1891, when the Swiss Peasants’ Association had successfully initiated an optional referendum against very moderate old age and disability benefits for federal civil servants (cf. Bundesblatt 1890 IV: 301–302). Almost all signatures backing this referendum were collected in Catholic cantons. The widespread mistrust in bureaucracy and the special treatment of a particular occupational group put a stop to the bill (Funk 1925: 51). 7.4.3 Income Support for the Unemployed Local policy preemption also impeded and delayed the adoption of unemployment insurance. Delay can be explained by several factors: the


199

absence of federal jurisdiction, strong policy feedback from local social security arrangements, institutional factors, and a lack of political will. Already in 1893, the Social Democrats had launched a people’s initiative to improve the position of the unemployed, either through federal unemployment insurance or by subsidizing existing private funds from the general budget. Yet, this initiative was decisively rejected by voters in 1894. In subsequent years, the bourgeois federal government blocked federal unemployment insurance on cost grounds. Given the politics of nondecision at the federal level, the cantons began to provide subsidies to the existing public and private unemployment compensation funds. By 1914, seven cantons had adopted the so-called Ghent system; that is, they provided public subsidies to privately run unemployment insurance schemes (Gruner 1988: 767). Initially, on a provisional basis (until 1924), the central state stepped in and provided subsidies from 1916 onward. Severe social tensions in the aftermath of World War I increased the pressure for political action. Given limited federal powers in this field, the Federal Council enacted a framework law in 1924 that anchored the Ghent system at the federal level. At this point, the federal government limited its intervention to regulating minimum standards and to providing subsidies to the existing unemployment funds, expecting that federal subsidies would stimulate the creation of new unemployment funds at the local and cantonal level. However, this system was ill equipped to cope with soaring unemployment during the Great Depression. Moreover, economic depression fueled a political crisis. Mistrust of democracy increased, and right-wing groups launched an initiative to overhaul the constitution. Corporatist ideas, as outlined in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, gained significant influence in the Catholic People’s Party, which finally also supported the people’s initiative demanding a total revision of the Federal Constitution (Weber 1989). The federal government responded to the economic crisis with protectionist measures and imposed austerity policies to curb inflation. Jean Marie Musy, Minister of Finance from the Catholic People’s Party, was the most prominent exponent of a strict austerity course. Musy’s deflationary policy package included a 10 per cent cut of federal employees’ salaries (Weber 1989). Whereas this plan was fully backed by the Catholic People’s Party, the red unions launched an optional referendum, which was also supported by left-wing Liberals and smaller bourgeois parties. In 1935, a majority of voters rejected the proposed wage cuts. After the successful referendum against the increase in working time, this referendum was a further success for trade unions in defending the status quo.

200

Obinger

Motivated by this success, the SGB launched a people’s initiative (the socalled Kriseninitiative), which proposed a series of measures ranging from public employment programs to income support for the unemployed. Because of the state interventionist nature of this policy package, this initiative was strictly opposed by the bourgeois bloc, including the Catholic People’s Party. Instead, in line with its corporatist reorientation, the party proposed relieving the state from social and economic responsibilities and suggested shifting them to occupational cooperations (Weber 1989). Like all social policy-related people’s initiatives, voters rejected the Kriseninitiative in 1935. Nevertheless, the SGB soon launched a further initiative to improve the situation of the unemployed. However, this once more met with the strong resistance of the federal government. The SGB finally withdrew its initiative after the federal government had announced that it would pass a constitutional amendment that would empower the federal government with the jurisdiction to enact unemployment insurance (Sigg 1978: 199). Although this amendment was adopted in 1947, it took 30 more years before mandatory unemployment insurance was finally established. 7.4.4 Old Age Pensions: The Defeat of the Lex Schulthess At the turn of the 20th century, both the Liberals and Social Democrats had put the introduction of a general pension scheme on the political agenda. These early initiatives were rejected by the Federal Council on cost grounds (cf. Bundesblatt 1919 IV: 38). During and in the wake of the Olten general strike, the Catholic-Conservatives also called for the introduction of old age pensions. Although the Olten general strike utterly failed, the immediate postwar years witnessed many social policy activities to cope with the social disruption caused by the war. Against this backdrop, the federal government announced the establishment of a federal pension scheme. The government had been put under pressure by a constitutional initiative launched by the Liberal National Councillor Rothenberger in 1920, as well as a petition by the Swiss Peasants’ Association that proposed a tax-funded universal pension scheme. In response to the latter, the government stated that ‘it needs no explanation that any attempt to raise public revenues on such a scale is infeasible’ (Bundesblatt 1919 IV: 115). Instead, the federal government proposed a scheme that involved mandatory old age, survivors’, and invalidity insurance with universal coverage. The inclusion of the whole resident population was clearly


201

a lesson learnt from the fate of the Lex Forrer. Facing the referendum threat, the federal government rejected a class-based insurance by arguing that ‘the state must not care to which occupation an individual belongs’ (Bundesblatt 1929 II: 186). In addition, it pointed out that ‘those who have to pay but do not have a chance to receive benefits often tend to vote against a bill’ (Bundesblatt 1924 II: 731–732). Given the fiscal limitations, the scheme was to be financed mainly from contributions supplemented by public grants. Hence, the burden of financing was mainly shifted to employers and employees to bypass the revenue shortage of the federal government. However, the federal government tied both the introduction and the generosity of the program to enhanced federal taxing powers (Bundesblatt 1919 IV: 127, 149–150). Specifically, the federal government demanded new taxes on tobacco and beer, a federal inheritance tax, and the extension of the alcohol monopoly. Facing the recession of the early 1920s, parliament canceled the beer tax to protect the breweries. The enlargement of the alcohol monopoly was rejected at the ballot box in 1923, whereas the cantons refused to cede jurisdiction of the inheritance tax to the central state. In this situation, the federal government had to scale down the proposed project, and, instead, to proceed with the piecemeal development of social insurance (Bundesblatt 1924 II: 685). As a result, invalidity insurance was split off from old age and survivors’ insurance to ensure that a minimum federal mandate for legislation could be adopted. After six years of discussion, the constitutional amendment, which empowered the federation to enact old age insurance, passed the obligatory referendum hurdle in 1925. The implementing bill, the so-called Lex Schulthess named after the Liberal Federal Councillor Edmund Schulthess, was submitted to preparliamentary consultation in 1928. Owing to insufficient tax revenues, benefits were watered down compared to the first draft of 1919. Contributions and benefits were flat rate and significantly lower than the benefits provided by the existing private and public occupational pensions funds.8 Like the Lex Forrer, the bill was easily approved by the two houses of

8

Given the long period of nondecisions in public pension policy, old age provision was preempted by private and occupational initiatives. Occupational pension funds date back to the late 1880s and experienced a substantial expansion in the 1920s, when approximately 150 new pension funds were established each year. In 1925, about 17.4 per cent of the labor force was already covered by occupational pension schemes. Moreover, about 800,000 persons had life insurance at that time. Hence, occupational pensions and private insurance were well established when the Lex Schulthess was submitted to parliament for deliberation (see Lengwiler 2003).

202

Obinger

parliament. Social Democrats, Liberals, and a majority of the Catholic People’s Party voted for the bill (Sommer 1978: 151). In addition, the bill was backed by the trade unions and the major business organizations (Leimgruber 2008: 99). However, Protestant liberal-conservative groups and right-wing Catholics launched a referendum against the Lex Schulthess in 1931. Based in French-speaking cantons, these groups strongly opposed the compulsory nature of the insurance, which was considered to be e´ tatist, centralist, and a step toward Socialism (Rimli 1951: 276; Sigg 1978: 163; Binswanger 1986: 21). Even Jean-Marie Musy openly supported the referendum (de Nicolo 1962: 136; Leimgruber 2008: 98) and thus disavowed the collegial Federal Council. Although Musy basically supported old age pensions, he strongly favored cantonal solutions and thus opposed any kind of centralist and bureaucratic approaches. Moreover, the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno rendered support to the opponents of the Lex Schulthess insofar as the proposed cantonal policy jurisdiction was in line with the principle of subsidiarity. In addition, Quadragesimo Anno provided a programmatic platform for a ‘third way’ between Socialism and Liberalism by justifying a corporatist makeup of society and a greater role for cooperations in policy making. By referring to Quadragesimo Anno, Abbé André Savoy, the leader of the French-speaking Christian-Socials and prominent advocate of corporatist ideas (Weber 1989: 50), rigorously opposed public old age insurance. In his view, insurance was to be the exclusive matter of individual, private, or corporatist initiative (Lepori 1994: 59). In the runup to the plebiscite, the French-speaking Catholic newspaper Le Pays mobilized readers against the Lex Schulthess in the following way: ‘If you want to stick to the corporatist ideal emphasized by the recent papal encyclical, then vote against the Lex Schulthess!’9 However, the Catholic camp was divided. Whereas the French-speaking corporatists mobilized against the bill, the German-speaking and more pragmatic representatives of the Catholic Party supported the Lex Schulthess (Weber 1989; Lepori 1994). Beyond Catholic resistance, employees enrolled in occupational pension plans opposed the bill in order to avert ‘double insurance’ because the Lex Schulthess was not designed to replace occupational pensions (Lengwiler 2003). The Social Democrats supported the bill in order to salvage a solution of some kind, whereas the Communists considered the benefits on offer to be entirely inadequate. As a consequence, the Lex Schulthess 9

Quoted from Lepori (1994: 61), my translation.


203

was attacked by a curious alliance consisting of anticentralist Liberal and Catholic groups on the one hand and the far left on the other (Zimmermann 1948: 124). To provide a counterproposal to the Lex Schulthess, Catholic-corporatist and right-wing groups led by Abbé Savoy launched a people’s initiative (Studer 1998: 175), which demanded the extension of means-tested benefits controlled by the cantons. This move forced the voters to choose between social insurance and social assistance. A majority favored the latter and rejected the Lex Schulthess on December 6, 1931. Not surprisingly, the bill was rejected in the Catholic French-speaking regions, where it was branded as ‘dangereuse loi dínspiration germanique et socialiste’ (Sommer 1978: 157–158). The defeat of a public pension scheme had two major consequences. First, the introduction of old age and survivors’ insurance was delayed until 1948,10 and invalidity insurance was postponed even longer, until 1960. Second, the defeat of the Lex Schulthess had long-lasting implications for the public−private divide of benefit provision (Leimgruber 2008). Social policy in the 1930s followed the trajectory outlined by the Catholic and Liberal-Conservative proponents of the people’s initiative. During the Great Depression, the federal government provided grants to social assistance programs and subsidized charitable foundations such as Pro Senectute and Pro Infirmis. In addition, the lack of public pensions further stimulated the growth of privately organized pension schemes. The number of employees covered by occupational pension schemes increased from 258,000 in 1925 to 1,342,000 in 1966. From 1931 on, it therefore became increasingly evident that public old age insurance would never be able to replace the manifold forms of pension provision that preceded state provision. Hence, the referendum in 1931 was a critical step in the progress toward the Swiss multipillar approach in pension policy that emerged in the 1970s. Once again, the optional referendum had decisively preconfigured the patterns of social security schemes. 7.4.5 Family Policy: A Catholic Domain Since the late 1920s, the Catholic People’s Party increasingly advocated public measures to improve the situation of families (Wager 1944; Gernet ¨ 1994: 176). Because neither the federal government nor the cantons 10

A second bill on public pensions that was passed by parliament in 1946 was also attacked by liberal and Catholic groups (Obinger 1998a: 167–170). However, about 80 per cent of voters approved the bill in 1947.

204

Obinger

provided income transfers to families before World War II,11 the party proposed the introduction of family wages in line with the male breadwinner model and demanded public income support to families with dependent children. Because the federal government did not respond to these claims, the party decided to launch a people’s initiative (the so-called Familieninitiative) in 1941. Facing this initiative, the federal government worked out a counterproposal in 1944, suggesting a constitutional amendment to empower the federal government with policy jurisdiction in family affairs. Hereupon, the Catholic People’s Party withdrew its initiative, and the government’s counterproposal was approved by a majority of voters in 1945. As a result of this plebiscite, a new constitutional provision was adopted that empowered the federal government to provide family allowances and maternity benefits. During the postwar period, however, the federal government only introduced family allowances for peasants. The corresponding bill of 1952 was by itself mainly a legacy of World War II. In 1944, the federal government used its emergency powers to introduce family allowances for mountain farmers and agricultural employees in order to secure a sufficient supply of food during wartime and to stop migration into cities (Maurer 1980: 798; Tschudi 1989: 34). With the exception of family allowances for peasants, income support for families remains a cantonal responsibility to the present day. In November 2006, however, the Swiss approved a federal framework bill in a referendum that will lead to a greater harmonization of cantonal cash benefits offered to families. Furthermore, maternity insurance was only adopted in 2004, after three attempts to introduce maternity benefits failed in a referendum.

7.5 conclusion Religion has undoubtedly influenced welfare state building in Switzerland. First, the religious cleavage in Swiss society had a profound impact on state building. Although the Swiss federation created by the Liberals was strictly la¨ıcist, the Federal Constitution of 1848 instituted a division of power that granted the federal government only limited responsibilities and guaranteed cantons substantial policy autonomy as well as considerable influence on national decision making. Catholics used the political autonomy guaranteed by federalism to build a territorially bounded Catholic subsociety in their cantonal strongholds. Catholic 11

The only exception from this rule applied to members of the federal civil service.


205

antimodernism stood in sharp contrast with Liberals’ efforts to create a secular state. In addition, direct democracy provided Catholics and antiétatist conservative Protestants with considerable veto powers to defend cantonal policy autonomy and to oppose big government. To mitigate the veto powers of the Catholic-Conservatives resulting from the optional referendum introduced in 1874, the party was soon integrated into the federal government. Social Democrats, in contrast, were politically marginalized by an increasingly diversified bourgeois bloc that controlled the federal government during almost the entire period of observation. Hence, and in contrast to many continental countries, there was no red–black coalition in Switzerland before 1943 that could have supported welfare state development. This pattern of coalition building can be attributed to the multiple veto points enshrined in the country’s polity that itself was strongly shaped by the religious cleavage. Whereas federalism and the optional referendum represented core elements within the strategic repertoire of Catholics, the left benefited neither from federalism nor from direct democracy. Federalism is by its very nature an obstacle against ideas of big government, whereas the left did not use the optional referendum as long as the Liberals were inclined to strengthen the powers of the federal government, including social policy. The situation only changed when the bourgeois bloc started to impose retrenchment policies during the interwar period. A black−red coalition also failed due to the sharp ideological conflicts between the Left and the Catholic People’s Party. Furthermore, the confessional fragmentation of the labor movement and the resulting antagonism between red and black unions had undercut the coherence and power resources of wage earners. The conflict between both camps mainly stemmed from distinct views about the adequate political strategy for promoting and organizing social policy. Whereas the Social Democratic unions celebrated the class struggle, the Christian unions championed corporatism as a sort of third way between capitalism and Socialism. The dominance of center-right parties and political deadlock caused by the institutional veto points associated with federalism and direct democracy are the most important factors accounting for the belated development of the Swiss welfare state and its liberal makeup. The veto power associated with the optional referendum did not only pave the way for a coalition between Liberals and Catholics but also decisively influenced the timing of welfare state consolidation because of the strong status quo bias resulting from this type of referendum. Furthermore, the referendum has considerably preconfigured welfare state patterns ever

206

Obinger

since the idea of introducing a class-based social insurance was rejected by the people. Instead, the referendum favored social policies where costs and benefits are symmetrically distributed. Hence, the referendum contributed to the introduction of universal insurance schemes and, in consequence, to very distinct patterns of stratification and status reproduction one finds in other continental welfare states. Finally, many social programs such as unemployment and health insurance remained voluntary, whereas the level of benefits was low due to the traditionally limited fiscal resources of the federation, which were additionally constrained by direct democracy. References Altermatt, Urs (1972), Der Weg der Schweizer Katholiken ins Ghetto: Die Entstehungsgeschichte der nationalen Volksorganisation im Schweizer Katholizismus 1848−1919, Zurich/K oln: Beziger. ¨ ¨ Altermatt, Urs (1991), Katholizismus und Moderne: Zur Sozial- und Men¨ talitatsgeschichte der Schweizer Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 2nd edition. Zurich: Benziger. Altermatt, Urs (ed) (1994), Schweizer Katholizismus zwischen den Weltkriegen 1920−1940, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg. ¨ Banting, Keith (2005), Canada: Nation-Building in a Federal Welfare State, in Herbert Obinger, Stephan Leibfried, and Francis G. Castles (eds), Federalism and the Welfare State: New World and European Experiences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 89−137. Binswanger, Peter (1986), Geschichte der AHV, Zurich: Pro Senectute. Bolliger, Christian, and Regula Zurcher (2004), Deblockierung durch Koop¨ tation? Eine Fallstudie zur Aufnahme der Katholisch-Konservativen in die schweizerische Landesregierung 1891, Swiss Political Science Review 10 (4): 59−92. Bundesblatt (various issues), Bern: Bundeskanzlei. Cattacin, Sandro, Cla Reto Famos, Michael Duttwiler, and Hans Mahning ¨ (2003), Staat und Religion in der Schweiz. Anerkennungskampfe, Anerken¨ Migrations- und nungsformen, Eine Studie des Schweizerischen Forums fur ¨ Bevolkerungsstudien, Bern: SFM. David, Thomas and Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl (2007), Protestant Philanthrophy and the Welfare State in Switzerland (1850–1914), unpublished manuscript, Institut d’histoire e´ conomique et sociale, University of Lausanne, Lausanne. de Nicolo, Marco (1962), Die Sozialpolitik des Schweizerischen Gewerkschaftsbundes (1880−1960), Winterthur: P. G. Keller. Deutsch, Karl W. (1976), Die Schweiz als paradigmatischer Fall der Integration, Bern: Haupt. ¨ Funk, Friedrich Otto (1925), Die eidgenossischen Volksabstimmungen von 1874 bis 1914, Bern: Gustav Grunau. Gernet, Hilmar (1994), Der Schweizerische Katholische Volksverein im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Partei 1930−1960, in Urs Altermatt (ed), Schweizer


207

Katholizismus zwischen den Weltkriegen 1920−1940, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg, 167−181. ¨ Giovanoli, Fritz (1932), Die eidgenossischen Volksinitiativen 1874−1931, Sch¨ ¨ Statistik und Volkswirtschaft 68 (3): 404−429. weizerische Zeitschrift fur Gould, Andrew C. (1999), Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gruner, Erich (1969), Die Parteien in der Schweiz, Bern: Francke. Gruner, Erich (ed) (1988), Arbeiterschaft und Wirtschaft in der Schweiz, Zurich: Chronos. Holenstein, Dieter (1993), Die Christlichsozialen der Schweiz im Ersten Weltkrieg: Entwicklung der christlichsozialen Organisationen und ihre Stellung in der schweizerischen Arbeiterbewegung und der katholischen Sondergesellschaft 1914−1920, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg. ¨ Immergut, Ellen M. (1992), Health Politics: Interests and Institutions in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kolz, Alfred (1998), Der Weg der Schweiz zum modernen Bundesstaat: His¨ torische Abhandlungen, Chur/Zurich: Ruegger. ¨ Konig, Mario (1998), Politik und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert. Krisen, Kon¨ flikte, Reformen, in Manfred Hettling, Mario Konig, Martin Schaffner, Andreas ¨ Suter, and Jakob Tanner (eds), Eine kleine Geschichte der Schweiz. Der Bundesstaat und seine Traditionen, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 21−90. Krumbiegel, Kurt (1913), Die schweizerische Sozialversicherung insbesondere das Kranken- und Unfallversicherungsgesetz vom 13. Juni 1911 verglichen mit der entsprechenden deutschen Gesetzgebung, Jena: G. Fischer. Leimgruber, Matthieu (2008), Solidarity Without the State? Business and the Shaping of the Swiss Welfare State. 1890−2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lengwiler, Martin (2003), Das Drei-Saulen-Konzept und seine Grenzen: Private ¨ und berufliche Altersvorsorge in der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert, Zeitschrift ¨ Unternehmensgeschichte 48 (1): 29−47. fur Lepori, Antonio (1994), La réception de Quadragesimo Anno en Suisse romande, in Urs Altermatt (ed), Schweizer Katholizismus zwischen den Weltkriegen 1920−1940, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg, 57−68. ¨ Lijphart, Arend (1999), Patterns of Democracy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Linder, Wolf (2005), Schweizerische Demokratie, 2nd edition. Bern: Haupt. Maurer, Alfred (1980), Landerbericht Schweiz, in Peter A. Kohler and Hans ¨ ¨ F. Zacher (eds), Ein Jahrhundert Sozialversicherung in der Bundesrepublik ¨ Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Osterreich und der Schweiz, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 731−833. Mooser, Josef (1998), Eine neue Ordnung fur ¨ die Schweiz: Die Bundesverfassung von 1848, in Brigitte Studer (ed), Etappen des Bundesstaates: Staats- und Nationsbildung der Schweiz, 1848−1998, Zurich: Chronos, 45−62. Moser, Julia, and Herbert Obinger (2007), Schlaraffenland auf Erden? Auswirkungen von Volksentscheiden auf die Sozialpolitik, in Uwe Wagschal and Markus Freitag (eds), Direkte Demokratie – Bestandsaufnahmen und LIT, 331−362. Wirkungen im internationalen Vergleich, Hamburg/Munster: ¨

208

Obinger

¨ Demokratie: Eine Analyse Neidhart, Leonhard (1970), Plebiszit und pluralitare der Funktion des schweizerischen Gesetzesreferendums, Bern: Francke. Obinger, Herbert (1998a), Politische Institutionen und Sozialpolitik in der Schweiz, Frankurt a.M.: Lang. Obinger, Herbert (1998b), Federalism, Direct Democracy, and Welfare State Development in Switzerland, Journal of Public Policy 18 (3): 241−263. Pierson, Paul (1995), Fragmented Welfare States: Federal Institutions and the Development of Social Policy, Governance 8 (4): 449−478. Reichesberg, Naum (1906), Die Arbeitslosenversicherung in der Schweiz. Bern: Scheitlin, Spring & Cie. Rimli, Bruno (1951), Sozialpolitische Ideen der Liberal-Konservativen in der Schweiz (1815−1939), Zurich: Europa Verlag Zurich. Ruf, Hans (1991), Spitzenverbande der schweizerischen Arbeitnehmerorgani¨ sationen, in Robert Fluder, Heinz Ruf, Walter Schoni, and Martin Wicki ¨ ¨ (eds), Gewerkschaften und Angestelltenverbande in der schweizerischen Privatwirtschaft, Zurich: Seismo, 63−200. Rutishauser, Hans (1935), Liberalismus und Sozialpolitik in der Schweiz, Lachen: Gutenberg. Saxer, Arnold (1951), Die Entwicklung der Sozialversicherung in der direkten Demokratie, in Walter Rohrbeck (ed), Aus der Privat- und Sozialversicherung des In- und Auslandes, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 222−251. ¨ Sigg, Oswald (1978), Die eidgenossischen Volksinitiativen 1892−1939, Bern: Francke. Sommer, Jurg ¨ H. (1978), Das Ringen um soziale Sicherheit in der Schweiz, Chur: Ruegger. ¨ Spieler, Willy (1994), Zur Marginalisierung der politischen Linken in der katholischen Kirche, in Urs Altermatt (ed), Schweizer Katholizismus zwischen den Weltkriegen 1920−1940, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg, 253−278. ¨ Studer, Brigitte (1998), Soziale Sicherheit fur ¨ alle? Das Projekt Sozialstaat, in Brigitte Studer (ed), Etappen des Bundesstaates: Staats- und Nationsbildung der Schweiz, 1848−1998, Zurich: Chronos, 159−186. Tschudi, Hans Peter (1989), Entstehung und Entwicklung der schweizerischen Sozialversicherungen, Basel: Helbling & Lichtenhahn. van Kersbergen, Kees (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State, London, New York: Routledge. Wager, Franz (1944), Familie und Alter: Ein konservativer Beitrag zur sozialpoli¨ tischen Diskussion. Heft 3 der Schriftenreihe ‘Sammlung zum Aufbau’, hg. vom Generalsekretariat der Schweizerischen Konservativen Volkspartei, Bern. Weber, Quirin (1989), Korporatismus statt Sozialismus: Die Idee der beruf¨ ¨ sstandischen Ordnung im schweizerischen Katholizismus wahrend der Zwischenkriegszeit, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg. ¨ Wigger, Bernhard (1997), Die Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei 1903− 1918: Politik zwischen Kulturkampf und Klassenkampf, Freiburg: Universitatsverlag Freiburg. ¨ Wili, Hans-Urs (1991), Jux Populi? Vox Dei? 100 Jahre eidgenossische Volksini¨ ¨ Schweizerisches tiative auf Partialrevision der Bundesverfassung, Zeitschrift fur Recht 110 (1): 485−519.


209

Zacher, Georg (1899), Die Arbeiter-Versicherung in der Schweiz, Berlin: Verlag der Arbeiter-Versorgung. Ziegler, Alfred R. (1939), Die evangelisch-soziale Bewegung der Schweiz, Zurich: ¨ Verlag Schweiz. Verband evangelischer Arbeiter und Angestellter. Zimmermann, Hans (1948), Sozialpolitische Ideen im schweizerischen Freisinn 1914−1945, Zurich: Juris Verlag. ¨

8 The Church as Nation? The Role of Religion in the Development of the Swedish Welfare State Karen M. Anderson

8.1 introduction Religion as an explanatory variable is conspicuously absent in most accounts of the historical development of the Scandinavian welfare states. Most explanations of the emergence of a ‘Social Democratic’ welfare regime in Scandinavia emphasize the power resources of class actors, especially the labor movement (Korpi 1978; Stephens 1979; EspingAndersen 1985), the influence of cross-class coalitions (Swenson 2002), or the impact of policy legacies and autonomous state actors (Heclo 1974; Weir and Skocpol 1985). A survey of the large literature on the formative period of the Swedish welfare state reveals few references to the role of religion or the Church of Sweden, and the same is true of the period after 1932, when the Social Democratic Party (SAP) was arguably the single most important actor in Swedish social policy development.1 The classic analyses of the development of party systems in Western Europe attribute the weakness of religious parties in Scandinavia to the absence of a religious cleavage (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; cf. Kaspersen and Lindvall 2008). As Manow and van Kersbergen discuss in the introduction to this volume, proportional representation combined with Scandinavian cleavage structure led to the emergence of a party system with 1

The literature on the formative period – from about 1880 to 1930 – is mostly in Swedish. Key works are Montgomery (1951), Hojer (1952), Berge (1995), and Edebalk (1996). ¨ See Heclo (1974), Baldwin (1990), and Olsson (1993) for research in English.

210

The Church as Nation?

211

plenty of space for various socioeconomic interests, such as agrarian parties, whereas religious parties were weak or nonexistent.2 The Scandinavian pattern of church–state relations was established during the 1500s. In the wake of the Reformation, Danish and Swedish monarchs usurped church influence and wealth,3 incorporated the clergy into the state apparatus, and assumed the welfare functions that the church had previously performed, such as hospital care and poor relief. This fusion of church and state reduced religiously based conflict, and located defenders of the established religion firmly within the state apparatus. As Morgan (Chapter 3, this volume) and Manow (2004) argue, increasingly secular Scandinavian states assumed responsibility for welfare functions in the period of industrialization and democratization, when the labor movements emerged and the ‘social question’ reached the political agenda. The essential point is that the Lutheran Church in Scandinavia did not oppose state involvement in social welfare. This chapter investigates the role of religion in the formative period of the Swedish welfare state. Did an increasingly secular state assume responsibility for social risks such as pensions, sickness, and occupational injury, as it would later do in family policies? Did the fusion of church and state and the weakness of religious cleavages facilitate increased state involvement in social welfare? The account of the formative period of Swedish social insurance presented here provides much support for the Manow/Morgan thesis that low levels of religiously based conflict in Sweden facilitated the emergence of activist welfare statism. The ‘secularization of political life’ (Morgan 2003) in the 1800s and 1900s meant that Liberal intellectuals, state administrators, and Social Democrats competed to define the emerging social policy agenda in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A closer look at the role of the Church of Sweden in this process, however, reveals a puzzle. The Church supported the 1847 Poor Law and the 1862 Local Government Act that established the duty of secular local authorities to support their poor residents; yet, by the late 1800s, the Church had grown increasingly hostile to growing state activity in the field of social policy. Church doctrine (at least as it was applied in Sweden) in the second half of the 1800s had turned conservative and claimed that

2

3

Norway, with its fairly strong Christian Democratic Party, is the exception to the Scandinavian pattern. The Swedish Christian Democratic Party entered the Riksdag for the first time in 1991. Norway was part of Denmark at the time, and Finland was part of Sweden.

212

Anderson

economic conditions such as income differences and poverty were the will of God and should be accepted as such. This view implied that the state had no business intervening to improve the material existence of citizens and wage earners, except to assist the Church in its implementation of poor relief. Despite the Church’s privileged position, it could not prevail on issues of social policy, and it vigorously opposed Social Democratic (and Liberal) proposals for social reform until well into the 20th century. A coalition of Social Democrats, Agrarians, and Liberals pushed for the introduction of the earliest social insurance initiatives in the 1890s, as well as the important pension reform of 1913. Liberal and Social Democratic views dominated until 1932 when the balance of political power shifted decisively toward the Social Democrats and their new ally, the Agrarian Party.4 When it became clear in the early 1900s that Social Democracy would emerge as a powerful political force, the Church moderated its stance concerning Social Democracy and social reforms, but it was too late for the Church to try to regain the initiative. The Social Democratic– Liberal consensus had prepared the ground for more far-reaching Social Democratic social policies, and the Church of Sweden was mainly an onlooker in this historical process. In line with the analytical framework advanced in this volume, this chapter argues that Lutheranism shaped Scandinavian welfare state development because Lutheranism as an organized religion initially welcomed state involvement in social welfare. The Church of Sweden viewed the state as an essential partner in the poor relief system until the late 1800s. However, this chapter highlights the potential for conflict between the Church of Sweden and emerging state social policy, even if this conflict did not develop into a strong church–state cleavage as in the Netherlands or France. In contrast to the state churches in Norway and Denmark, the Swedish state church was orthodox and conservative. As Thorkildsen (1997) puts it, the Swedish (and Finnish) church was a ‘high church’ and the Danish and Norwegian churches were ‘low churches.’ The clergy lost their position in the four-estate Riksdag (1866) precisely when the ‘social question’ began to take on new urgency. After having supported the secularization of poor relief in the mid-1800s, the Church tried unsuccessfully to regain the initiative in social policy in the late 4

¨ The SAP and Agrarian Party (Bondeforbundet) concluded a ‘crisis agreement’ in 1933. The SAP supported agricultural price supports in return for the Agrarians’ support of SAP economic policies. This deal inaugurated the ‘red–green’ alliance between the SAP and Agrarians that lasted (with some modifications during World War II) until 1957. The alliance broke up over the issue of supplementary pensions (see Heclo 1974).


213

19th century. In other words, Manow and Morgan are correct that the secularization of political life in Sweden facilitated the development of a strong role for state social policy, but this occurred against the backdrop of a conservative, privileged state church’s unsuccessful attempts to influence the direction of social policy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially poor relief. Bringing Lutheran values into the analysis complicates things even further. According to Thorkildsen (1997: 159), Lutheranism’s emphasis on the importance of daily work and a ‘priesthood of all believers’ corresponds to two values central to the Scandinavian welfare states: full employment and equality. In other words, Lutheran theology seems to provide the justification for, or at least did not contradict, universal social policies and high levels of employment, as expressed in the ‘all should eat, all should work’ justification of social assistance that Kahl (Chapter 10, this volume) stresses as a characteristic of Lutheranism. Why did the Church of Sweden then stick to its orthodox interpretation of Lutheran theology in social policy matters? The chapter argues that the Church of Sweden was so close to the state and so dependent on state resources and support that it settled into a period of stagnation that reinforced its conservativism. The Church of Sweden, because of its privileged position, showed few signs of renewal or flexibility as the ‘social question’ emerged in the second half of the 1800s. To put it more bluntly, the Church of Sweden became organizationally complacent and showed few signs of trying to adjust to changing external conditions, such as the challenges posed by industrialization and the emergence of revivalism (Finke and Stark 2005). So, the Church stuck to its old conservative interpretation of Lutheran doctrine that legitimized inequality (and alienated workers and the middle class). By the time the Church regained interest in the social question around the turn of the 20th century, it was too late. Liberals and Social Democrats had already begun to cast themselves as the spokespersons of social reform. This environment contrasts sharply with the experience of Catholic churches and Catholic parties during the same period. The Catholic Church and the parties that defended it faced much more hostile environments than the Church of Sweden and thus faced stronger pressure to react. They did this by displaying more openness to the world around them, and they were much more likely to seek new sources of support. This is why the Catholic Church actively tried to expand its support by, among other things, mobilizing workers in Catholic trade unions and political parties (see van Kersbergen and Manow, Morgan, and Lynch, Chapters 1, 3, and 4, respectively, this volume).

214

Anderson

This chapter begins with a survey of the religious and political landscape during the 1800s when the first elements of the welfare state were introduced. The subsequent sections address the role of the Church of Sweden and other political forces in early social welfare legislation. I conclude with a short discussion of the role of the Lutheran state church in Scandinavian (Swedish) welfare state development in light of the arguments that frame the rest of the chapters in this volume.

8.2 politics and religion during the formative period of the swedish welfare state Politics. Political and economic development occurred relatively late in Sweden. Sweden was one of the last European countries to industrialize (in the 1870s), parliamentarism was established only in 1917, and the struggle for universal suffrage was delayed; all men got the right to vote in 1909 and women in 1918. Proportional representation was introduced in the Second Chamber (the Lower House) in 1907. As late as 1865, Parliament was composed of four chambers, each corresponding to a medieval estate: clergy, burghers, nobility, and the peasantry. In 1866, a bicameral Parliament replaced the estate Parliament, but the reform more or less preserved the existing distribution of power in Parliament.5 Some groups did lose power, however, including the clergy, and this was to have important repercussions for the development of poor relief after 1866. Louis De Geer, the architect of the reform, is often called a Liberal, but the reform consolidated the power of conservative forces and delayed the emergence of an organized Liberal movement. According to Rustow (1955: 25), the reform ‘laid the foundations for an alliance between bureaucracy, landed wealth, and industry.’ The old four-estate Parliament had hindered the formation of political parties, so the 1865 reform facilitated the emergence of modern political parties, although they were slow to develop and initially weakly organized. The first organized political party was the Lantmannaparti (Ruralist Party) in the Lower House in 1868. After the 1865 reform, land-owning peasants were the largest grouping in the Lower House, so there were gains to be made by trying to behave as a cohesive bloc. In 1888, the Ruralists Party split into a free trade and protectionist wing only to merge again in 1895. Thereafter, the party represented a more 5

Only 20 per cent of males could vote in elections to the Lower House because of property requirements.


215

conservative ideology,6 but the rural interests of the party became much less pronounced when the party merged with one of the forerunners of the Conservative Party in 1912.7 Liberal ideas were very influential in Sweden in the 1800s, and many members of Parliament were acknowledged Liberals even before the Liberal Party (liberala samlingspartiet) was finally formed in 1900.8 The Social Democrats formed their own party organization prior to this, in 1889. With no political party representing them, rural interests formed ¨ two parties. In 1913, the Farmer’s Party (Bondeforbundet) was formed, appealing mainly to the interests of smallholders. In 1915, the more conservative and pro-defense National Association of Farmers ( Jordbrukar¨ nas Riksforbundet) was established. The two parties cooperated closely in Parliament, getting 12 seats in the 1917 election and 29 in the 1920 election. In 1921, they merged under the name Farmer’s Party.9 Nationally organized political parties grew in tandem with the struggle to extend the franchise, and this common mission was a powerful force uniting the Social Democrats and Liberals. For the Social Democrats, revolutionary ideology was subordinated to the campaign for universal suffrage. The more or less simultaneous emergence of organized Liberalism and Socialism in the context of the campaign for universal suffrage was to have important implications for the first Swedish social insurance policies. As Rustow puts it, ‘Sweden is . . . perhaps the only country where political Liberalism and Socialism emerged simultaneously’ (1955: 43). The Liberals were willing to cooperate with the SAP, not only to extend the suffrage but also to enact social policy legislation. This early alliance between the Social Democrats and Liberals decisively shaped social policy from the early 1900s until the 1930s (Hojer 1952: 38).10 A ¨ 6

7 8

9

10

The Ruralist Party was not an Agrarian Party because it represented landholders and not agricultural laborers. The Ruralist Party is one of the forerunners of the current Conservative Party (moderata samlingspartiet). This new party was called Lantmanna- och borgarepartiet. ¨ In 1902, Frisinnade Landsforeningen, the national organization for the Liberal Party, was formed. The Upper House was indirectly elected by the County Councils. Thus, all references to national elections are for the Lower House. By 1902, the Liberals were the largest party in the lower chamber. In 1914, the Liberals split with the dissenters, joining the conservatives. At the time, the Liberals were internally divided between free traders, who also believed religion and alcohol were private matters, and members of the free churches, who were pacifist and temperate (drank no alcohol). The campaign for universal suffrage had kept the two factions together. Before the split, the Liberal Party was losing members to the SAP and Agrarians. The parties joined again in 1934 under the name Folkpartiet.

216

Anderson

Liberal–Conservative coalition was out of the question because of bitter differences between the two over defense spending. Rustow (1955: 44) characterizes the period 1890 to 1920 as the ‘transition from oligarchy to democracy.’ Prior to 1920, less than half of males could vote, parties were weakly organized, and the principle of government responsibility to Parliament had not yet been established. In Parliament, parties and individual members represented the interests of three groups: state bureaucrats, land-owning peasants, and industrialists. Until the turn of the 20th century, parties played little role in social policy. Initiatives came from individual members of Parliament, and these were most often Liberals (Hojer 1952). Liberals more or less dominated ¨ the few parliamentary ventures into the sphere of social policy. By the early 1900s, the Liberals were the largest party in the Second Chamber (Lower House) of Parliament, and from 1920 to 1932, the Liberals were the pivotal party. Government turnover was frequent, but the Liberals always participated despite losing ground to the Conservatives after 1917. In summary, parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage were slow to arrive in Sweden. Liberalism was the dominant political ideology of the 1800s, but Socialist ideas began to challenge Liberalism in the late 1800s. Despite differences in ideology, Liberals and Social Democrats were united in their common struggle to achieve universal suffrage and to introduce social legislation. Soon after the introduction of universal male suffrage, the Social Democratic Party emerged as the largest political party in the directly elected Second Chamber. But government formation and policy achievements were hampered by the fragmentation of the parties (which resulted in unstable minority governments), as well as the veto power of the First Chamber. In the early 1930s, a sea change occurred. Farmers fled the Conservatives for either of the two new Farmer’s parties, leaving the Conservatives as the representatives of business and the Farmer’s as representatives of more popular, rural interests. In the early 1930s, the Social Democratic–Liberal alliance broke up over the issue of how to fight the Depression, and the 1933 alliance between the SAP and Farmer’s Party marked the end of a long period of Liberal dominance (Rustow 1955: 3; see also Esping-Andersen 1985). This paved the way for the 1933 ‘crisis agreement’ between the SAP and Farmer’s Party, in which agricultural price supports were traded for unemployment benefits and active labor market policies for urban


217

laborers.11 In 1934, competing Liberal factions (previously split over free trade and temperance) fused into the new Liberal Party (Folkpartiet). In 1943, various left splinter parties merged into the Communist Party ¨ (later, Vansterpartiet Kommunisterna) (Rustow 1955: 3; Hadenius et al. 1991). This ‘classic’ Swedish five-party system remained stable until the late 1980s. Religion. Sweden’s history as an independent state stems from the peasant rebellion led by Gustav Vasa in 1521, and Swedish political development has been marked both by early and effective state building, combined with late industrialization and democratization (Rustow 1955; Heclo and Madsen 1987; Scott 1988). Indeed, the roots of Sweden’s welfare state date to the expropriation of Church lands and the establishment of a state church, which resulted in the state usurping the Church in care for the poor and the aged, and in the provision of hospital services. The process of replacing Catholicism with Lutheranism was slow and uneven, but complete by 1593. In the 1600s, religious freedom was not tolerated and ‘identification between the state and the church’ was ‘total’ (Gustafsson 2003: 51; see also Bluckert 2000). This fusion lasted well into the ¨ 1800s. Dissenters could be exiled until the second half of the 1800s. Only since 1858 have citizens been permitted to gather for religious services without a priest (see Ekstrom ¨ 1999). In the 1870s, citizens could leave the Church of Sweden, but only to join another Christian church. Full religious freedom was not achieved until the 1950s, and even then, few Swedes left the Church (Gustafsson 2003). In the 19th century, opposition to the privileged status of the Church of ¨ ¨ Sweden grew fierce. The revival movement (vackelser orelsen) had begun in the 1700s within the Church of Sweden, and pressure was building for more religious freedom. Parliament tried to reform the laws on religious freedom throughout the 1800s, but the state church blocked many of them. Many seeking religious freedom emigrated to North America, whereas others joined with the emerging Liberal movement to agitate 11

The Social Democratic-Farmer’s Party crisis agreement also marked the beginning of Social Democratic ‘hegemony.’ Between 1932 to 1946 and 1951 to 1969 (other than for a period of 3 months in 1936), the Social Democrats led every Swedish government. During this period, the SAP achieved a majority in the Second Chamber only twice. Instead, their control of the government was made possible by coalitions with the Farmer’s Party (1936–1939, 1951–1957) and the passive support of the communists (later the Left Party), as well as all-party support during the war years.

218

Anderson

for religious freedom. The 1864 freedom of association reform spurred the growth of the ‘free churches,’ (frikyrkorna) Protestant churches that had broken away from Lutheranism, including Baptists, Methodists, and other evangelical groupings. The free churches attracted members from all strata of society, especially the industrial and rural working classes. The 1864 reform also facilitated the emergence of other organized groups in civil society, such as labor unions, the temperance movement, and consumer organizations (collectively known as the popular movements; see Lundkvist 1977). The free churches challenged the privileged role of the Church of Sweden, as did the labor movement, which was initially antireligious. Leaders of the free churches came mainly from among the agricultural classes and the urban upper classes. The membership of the free churches did include large numbers of industrial workers, however. According to Palm (1982), the free churches began as a rural movement, a protest against the agricultural conditions of the 1800s. As the industrial working class increased in the late 19th century, many of these workers joined the free churches. The free churches’ stance toward the nascent Socialist labor movement was ambivalent, however. The leadership opposed industrial action and Socialist goals, but did not take it so far as to forbid church members from joining Socialist labor unions. In contrast, the free churches, Liberals, and Social Democrats cooperated in the campaign for universal suffrage and in fighting for social reforms. The free churches devoted some energy to establishing Christian labor unions that would not be affiliated with any political party. The Swedish Workers’ Association was established in 1889, a year after the Social Democratic Party was formed, with the explicit aim of providing an alternative to Socialist labor unions and the SAP (Palm 1982). The SWA was short lived, despite full backing of the leaders of the free churches. Palm (1982) reports that most workers who belonged to the free churches were torn between their religious affiliation and their status as a worker who might join a union. According to Ekstrom ¨ (1999: 21), there was widespread recognition that the Church of Sweden was ‘in crisis’ at the end of the 1800s. Church attendance had fallen, and fewer church members took communion. Moreover, Ekstrom ¨ argues that the Church itself was partly to blame for this development: the rise of the free churches was a clear sign that the Church of Sweden was responding inadequately to the ‘religious demands of a new era’ (see also Bexell 2003).


219

This brief review of political and religious conditions in the 1800s demonstrates that the Church of Sweden was not an active participant in shaping the social and political agenda of the 19th century. The Church’s stance was essentially reactive: the Church managed to slow the process of reforms that increased religious freedom, but it had no organized political arm in the form of a political party. To be sure, many conservative members of Parliament (including some Church officials) represented the Church’s views. Most important, the Church’s status was being challenged by powerful Liberal, Social Demoratic, and ‘free churches’ forces. 8.2.1 The Church of Sweden and Social Policy before 1900 Since the medieval period, the Church has been heavily involved in poor relief. Before the Reformation, poor relief was a decentralized activity of the Catholic Church. Each parish, led by the priest, provided poor relief financed by a share of tithes (paid in the form of grain) reserved for this purpose (Engberg 2005: 57). After the Reformation, the state took over this function, but only partially. The state financed and ran the hospitals for the disabled poor, and the parish remained responsible for poor relief for the able bodied. Many had no other option but to engage in begging. According to Engberg (2005: 58), the Reformation meant that poor relief became a task for state and society, but the Church remained heavily involved because the system was implemented locally at the parish level by Church officials, mainly, the local pastor. In 1624, King Gustaf II Adolf issued the first Hospital Ordinance that expanded the scope of the hospitals, but this soon proved too expensive, and the crown issued another ordinance in 1642 establishing the principle that each parish was required to care for its own poor, including the sick and disabled. When possible, relatives were required to provide for poor family members, and the state hospitals were reserved for the poor without family ties. Begging was prohibited by law, but continued nonetheless. The 1686 Church Law strengthened the principle of local responsibility for the poor by requiring each parish to build a poorhouse, but implementation was uneven. By 1788, the crown decreed that each parish should pay for the hospital costs of its own residents (Arner 1923; Engberg 2005). Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, each parish provided relief for its able-bodied poor according to local conditions. There was much local variation, with indoor relief more common in the south and outdoor relief more common in the north. Orphans and the elderly

220

Anderson

were boarded out to the lowest bidder, and poor families often received food and shelter for a specified period of time from each farm in a specific ‘poor district’ (fattigrote). Poor relief was financed by obligatory and voluntary fees and taxes (Arner 1923; Engberg 2005).12 In the 1700s, a number of ordinances strengthened and clarified the roles of the state and local authorities in poor relief. A 1763 ordinance divided the poor into three categories: the old and sick without relatives were the parish responsibility, the poor with contagious diseases would be cared for in hospitals, and orphans should be cared for in foster homes. The ordinance also required parishes to finance poor relief, as it did all other local activities. Poor relief now took on more of the character of a permanent responsibility for both state and parish (Arner 1923: 9; Engberg 2005: 60). In 1788, an ordinance followed that clarified which parish had to support which poor by introducing the principle of rights ¨ based on residence (hemortsratt). Parishes had the right to deny residence to anyone outside the parish (Arner 1923: 5; Montgomery 1951: 41; Engberg 2005). By the early 1800s, these ordinances settled the issue of who should provide for the poor: the law required the parishes to care for their own poor. The state would only care for the relatively small number of persons with mental illnesses or contagious diseases. The legislation of the 1700s led to much local variation in poor relief and much uncertainty about how to apply the principles of residencebased relief. The 1809 Riksdag decided that a more comprehensive law was needed and appointed a commission to investigate the matter. The commission issued its report in 1823, but the Riksdag decided not to pursue the matter further. Conflicts between parishes concerning residence rights in the poor relief system became so serious that the issue landed on the agenda of the 1828 Riksdag. By now, there was a sizable landless rural proletariat and the economic downturn of the 1840s led to higher costs for poor relief. The Riksdag appointed a second committee, which began its work in 1837 (Engberg 2005: 61). This second committee did not have to start from scratch: the material gathered in the 1823 committee report as well as the comprehensive information gathered in a nationwide survey of poor relief in all parishes (from 1837) was available. In 1839, the committee proposed that the state should take responsibility for poor relief without, however, providing a legal right to relief. Engberg notes that 12

Parish residents were expected to donate to the poor relief fund on occasions such as weddings, births, and funerals. The law also required that 1/8 per cent of an estate be paid to the local poor relief fund.


221

Malthusian ideas were important in Sweden, so there was widespread fear of creating dependency. The committee explicitly stated that poor relief should be emergency assistance based on Christian values rather than a legal right. The proposal was modified somewhat and was approved by the 1840–1841 Riksdag. The crown delayed implementation until 1847 (Montgomery 1951: 49–102; Engberg 2005: 62). The law was a compromise between Conservative and Liberal ideas: the state’s role in providing poor relief was strengthened, but its punitive character was retained. The new law introduced obligatory local taxation to pay for poor relief as well as several administrative changes with important implications for ˚ church–state relations. A secular poor relief board (fattigvardsstyrelse) would now administer poor relief. In rural areas, the church council ˚ and the parish council (sockennamd) ¨ (kyrkorad) were separated, and the parish council assumed responsibility for poor relief.13 The parish ¨ assembly (sockenstamma) would appoint the members of the poor relief board. The law required that the pastor (kyrkoherde) be a member of the poor relief board. To sum up, poor relief became a secular affair, but the close connection between church and state was maintained in the form of obligatory membership of the pastor on the relief board. The law also placed a clear obligation on the part of the poor to work. Only those unable to work were eligible for poor relief (Engberg 2005: 63–64). The new law thus clearly established the obligation of local authorities to provide relief to their poor residents at the same time that it preserved local authorities’s autonomy in implementation. This meant that there was great variation among the more than 2400 parishes in terms of form and the generosity of poor relief. Despite the importance of the law in terms of establishing a national framework for locally provided poor relief, not much changed on the ground; the parishes retained their autonomy concerning the delivery of poor relief, and they more or less continued doing what they had always done (Engberg 2005: 69). In contrast, the law’s administrative requirements did prompt a wave of organizational change as local poor relief boards sprang up where none existed previously. The local government reform (kommunallagen) of 1862 built on the provisions of the 1847 legislation by legally separating the parishes from local administrative units, even though both shared the same geographic space. The parish council was renamed the municipal council (kommu¨ nalnamnd), and a clear division of labor was created: parishes decided 13

Despite the name ‘parish council,’ this was a secular organ.

222

Anderson

on church-related issues, whereas municipal councils decided on all other issues.14 Thus, secular influence over poor relief, at least administratively, increased. As in 1847, secularization had little immediate impact: poor relief was still a charity based on a religious rationale. The Church opposed this additional loss of influence, with little effect (Duhne 1969). In the 1860s, the economic downturn and the resurgence of Conservative ideology called attention once again to poor relief. Mass emigration to North America provided some relief, but the growing mass of landless rural laborers was cause for concern. Municipalities complained about the increasing costs of poor relief, and these complaints made their way into political discussion. An 1871 ordinance made poor relief much stricter at the same time that it preserved the pastor’s role in the system. The ablebodied poor lost their right to relief during periods of unemployment. Only children and the sick and disabled now had the legal right to relief, and the poor lost their right to appeal poor relief decisions. What was the Church of Sweden’s role in the poor relief legislation of the 1800s? As noted, the 1847 Poor Law and the 1862 Local Government Law built on existing arrangements and clarified the responsibility of the local authorities and church councils in the provision of poor relief. Arner (1923) argues that the close ties between the church and the state were part of the motivation for state action to reform poor relief in the early 1800s. The Church could not solve this problem on its own, and Arner considers it ‘natural’ that Church and state would cooperate in trying to solve the poor relief problem (Arner 1923: 18; see also Engberg 2005). The state’s role was to establish the obligation of parishes to care for their own poor, but poor relief would continue to be a church-run activity. As Arner (1923: 18–19) puts it, ‘the Church needed the legal support of the state in order to carry out its activities,’ and ‘state legislation was not aimed at taking the Church’s leadership position away.’ The Church strongly supported the (unsuccessful) 1823 poor relief proposal precisely because its leadership position would have been retained. Arner’s analysis of debates concerning the 1823 proposal in the clergy’s chamber of the four-estate Parliament supports this view (1923: 53–83). The Church was less enthusiastic about the 1847 legislation, despite its similarity to the 1823 proposal, because the proposal called for the secular administration of poor relief. To be sure, the local pastor was an automatic member of the poor relief board, but this was a clear break 14

Besides poor relief, the Church’s other main responsibility was primary education. School has been compulsory since 1842.


223

with previous practice, and it reflected the growing conviction that poor relief was a state responsibility. The Church would be a natural partner in this, but would not possess complete authority. The Church strongly opposed the downgrading of the pastor’s status on the relief board, with little effect. The Riksdag adopted the proposal with a comfortable margin; the clergy was the only estate to oppose the administrative provisions of the legislation (Arner 1923: 144–145). How did Lutheran doctrine shape the Church of Sweden’s response to the poor relief reforms of the 1800s? In line with Kahl’s (Chapter 10, this volume) interpretation of Lutheran theology, Swedish poor relief stressed the importance of work, and Church leaders welcomed increasing state involvement in poor relief as long as the Church’s leadership position was preserved. The Church often adopted a punitive approach to poor relief, although a more lenient interpretation of the ‘all should eat, all should work’ doctrine would have been possible. To be sure, the state assumed responsibility for the poor, but for most of the 18th and 19th centuries this responsibility was limited to the sick and disabled.15 The able bodied were required to work and were usually excluded from poor relief. When the able bodied could not find work, they usually resorted to illegal begging. The poor relief laws of the 1800s were a direct response to the growing problems associated with wandering beggars. Thus, religious doctrine appears to be an important factor shaping the behavior of religious actors, but its precise function is shaped in specific historical and political contexts. To put it differently, doctrine shapes the behavior of local actors, but doctrine can be interpreted generously or restrictively. The Church of Sweden’s application of Lutheran doctrine in poor relief vacillated between generous and restrictive definitions of deservingness, depending largely on economic and political conditions, a point generally underscored in the second part of Kahl’s chapter (Chapter 10, this volume). The Church’s view of social reformism was also conservative. Even if the Church supported relief for the very poor, Church teachings explicitly reinforced the existing social order and offered no rationale for trying to substantially improve the material conditions of the poor. As Hojer ¨ (1952: 23) puts it, ‘the thought that it might be a Christian duty to work for better social conditions was completely foreign to the men of the Church of Sweden.’ The Church of Sweden’s general response to demands for social policy in the 1800s was that ‘it was a divine law that wealth and poverty shall coexist on earth, and the poor man is comforted with the 15

The 1847 Poor Law is an important exception to this, as discussed previously.

224

Anderson

fact that it will be easier for him to enter heaven than it is for the rich man’ (Hojer 1952: 22). For the Church, charity was the duty of the Christian, ¨ but this did not entail any rights on the part of the poor. The poor were viewed officially as persons who were not willing to work, wasteful, or imprudent, and, in any case, poverty was God’s will.16 In sum, Church doctrine certainly supported helping the very poor, especially the disabled, but this belief did not imply any commitment to significantly improving the living standards of the lower strata of society. To put it more bluntly, poor relief provided help to the abjectly poor so that they could join the ranks of the ordinary poor, who were the majority of Swedish society in the 1800s. Two developments in the 1880s prompted the Church to take a more active interest in poor relief. First, the rise of Social Democracy and its calls for more social reform raised the specter of even more state intervention in social issues, and the Church’s leaders saw this as a threat. Second, the economic downturn exposed the limits of poor relief as an instrument for alleviating poverty. It soon became clear that the existing system of poor relief was inadequate for dealing with emerging social problems. Church leaders responded by changing their position on poor relief, at least rhetorically: instead of viewing secular poor relief as a threat to the Church’s teachings, Church leaders now publicly advocated supplementing state poor relief with Church-sponsored measures. The idea was simply to increase the role of religious values in the state-run system, without replacing it entirely with a Church-run system. Church leaders discussed providing religious training to the social workers involved in administering poor relief and expanding church-based poor relief efforts (Hojer 1952). ¨ Nothing much came of the Church’s few concrete proposals for strengthening the role of the State Church in poor relief. Moreover, the Church’s view of public poor relief remained skeptical: even though poor relief was stingy and means tested, the Church insisted it should be provided on the basis of love and not ‘entitlement.’ Church leaders continued to argue that poor relief severed the link between the rich and poor because public benefits broke the link between charity and gratitude that should unite rich and poor (Duhne 1969: 165). The Church still emphasized that moral failing was the source of all ills, including poverty. This view of publicly organized poor relief prevailed until the turn of the 20th century. The Church continued to criticize public poor relief because it 16

Thus, the Church of Sweden’s interpretation of Lutheran theology differed from other Lutheran churches in Europe (see Kahl, Chapter 10, this volume).


225

created a legal entitlement and left little scope for ‘care of the soul’ and moral education. Only in the early 20th century did the Church begin to advocate a more active Church role in the administration of state poor relief. 8.2.2 Early Social Insurance 1880s–1900 The rapid industrialization of the Swedish economy after 1870 was the backdrop to the first serious calls for social insurance legislation. Between 1870 and 1900, the number of persons employed in industry nearly doubled from 15 per cent to 29 per cent. The number engaged in agriculture decreased in the same period from 72 per cent to 55 per cent (Hojer ¨ 1952: 35). Sweden, like the rest of Scandinavia, was home to a strong Liberal movement in the 1800s. Industrialization and freedom of occupation (the guild system was abolished in 1846) encouraged this development (Kuhnle 1981: 135). Economic Liberalism stressed individual self-reliance and skepticism toward state intervention. Liberalism was strongest in Denmark, but Sweden was a close second. During this period, the first mutual aid societies were formed, particularly sickness and burial funds, beginning about 1820 (Johansson 2003). Most scholars of Swedish welfare state development cite 1884 as the decisive year for the emergence of a genuine debate about social policy. In 1884, a Liberal member of the Lower House, S. A. Hedin, introduced a bill requesting an official commission of inquiry in the area of ‘workers’ insurance.’ Hedin’s motion was inspired by Bismarck’s reforms in Germany. The motion described developments in other countries and requested an investigation and proposal for Sweden. The Agrarians in Parliament supported the bill on the condition that it include all workers, not just industrial workers. According to Olsson, Hedin’s motion reflected his ties to free churches and the temperance movements (Baldwin 1990; Olsson 1993: 46). Hedin’s motion was approved by Parliament and marked the beginning of a period of discussion about the role of the state in social insurance. Parliament appointed a committee, and on the basis of the committee proposals, the 1891 sickness fund law was adopted. The committee rejected employer financing as too costly and argued instead for minimal state subsidies. The resulting law was weak because it only required regulation of existing funds’ activities (see Johansson 2003). A new parliamentary committee was appointed in 1893 to investigate the issue of old age pensions and accident insurance. The committee proposed that financing be shared by employers and employees, but

226

Anderson

Parliament rejected bills in 1895 and 1898 based on the committee’s work, largely because of the opposition of self-employed farmers and those representing farm laborers. Thus, there was no consensus on social insurance legislation beyond the very weak sickness fund legislation adopted in 1891. An exception to this deadlock was the 1886 legislation requiring employers in the railroad industry to provide compensation for workrelated accidents. This was the basis for more comprehensive legislation in 1901 that extended the provisions to employers in specific sectors. Employers could insure themselves in one of the newly created national insurance agencies. Conservative opposition to the legislation was strong, and it was based, at least rhetorically, on religious principles. Hojer ¨ (1952) reports that a conservative member of Parliament characterized the law as ‘undoubtedly Socialist’ and ‘paving the way for comprehensive legislation that would depart from the old adage, “help yourself and God will help you.” It is the duty of each and every one to provide for himself and to not leave this to others’ (42–43). The only Social Democratic member of Parliament, Hjalmar Branting, voted against the legislation, claiming it was worse than nothing. In sum, the first decades of social policy activity in Parliament produced dismal results, at least from Social Democratic and Liberal perspectives. What was the role of the Church of Sweden in the late 19th century when social policy questions reached the political agenda? Hojer ¨ (1952: 50) observes that the Church’s view on social policy questions had changed little during the 1800s. Hojer summarizes the Church’s ¨ position with the following quotation from a prominent church official: ‘human society, with its class differences, its wealth and its destitution, are given by God.’ According to Archbishop Rueterdahl (cited in Hojer ¨ 1952: 50), ‘A Christian submits with humility to the condition that has been decided for him.’ Given this perspective, it was Church policy to oppose social reforms that aimed to ameliorate poverty and other social ¨ ills. A citation from Vaktaren (The Sentinel), the magazine for state and church, illustrates a common view among Church officials, that Socialism was basically the same as social reformism. Moreover, Socialism was the ‘arch enemy of the church, the state and every individual, peaceful citizen and should be fought by all available means’ (51). As Hojer puts it, the ¨ church was the guardian of spiritual values, whereas the social reformers were ‘materialists’ (51). The Church’s view began to change somewhat in the 1890s. It was by now clear that the labor movement was emerging as an important


227

social actor, and the Church’s vocal opposition to measures that would improve workers’ material existence aroused suspicion. The Church’s opposition to social reforms had already caused many workers to turn away from the Church (Hojer 1952: 51). Church opposition to social ¨ reforms mainly concerned measures to improve the economic conditions of lower classes. The Church was less opposed to measures aimed at improving social services, such as foster children care.

8.3 social democrats, liberals, and agrarian competition in social policy: 1900–1932 The 1913 pension reform was a turning point in Swedish social policy development because it introduced a universal right to income support in old age. The reform was adopted under the Liberal Prime Minister Karl Staaff, coming nearly three decades after Hedin’s call for workers’ pension insurance in 1885. Baldwin (1990) argues that agrarian interests blocked attempts to introduce pensions between 1895 and 1913 because proposals included only industrial workers and not the agrarian self-employed or rural laborers. Agrarian interests opposed measures that would finance pensions by employer contributions and that excluded rural laborers. Both agrarian employers and landless laborers would lose in such a system. When the Social Democrats and Liberals realized that ‘political power resided in the countryside’ (83), they changed their proposals to appeal to both agrarian and working-class interests. The resulting legislation consisted of income-related pensions financed by individual contributions as well as income-tested supplements for those with inadequate earnings-related benefits. One of the primary motivations for the 1913 pension law was to reduce reliance on poor relief.17 The 2400 municipalities administered poor relief, which was highly punitive and stigmatizing. Earlier low rates of infant mortality and high rates of emigration resulted in a high old age dependency ratio in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century; it was twice as high as in England and Germany. Poor relief was financed by local taxes, and implementation varied greatly. Income-tested supplements in the new pension legislation were specifically designed to reduce reliance on poor relief, thereby reducing costs for local government, and to eliminate the inhumane elements of poor relief.

17

This section is based on Heclo (1974), Baldwin (1990), and Edebalk (2000, 2003).

228

Anderson

The 1913 pension law introduced two principles that would later become cornerstones of Swedish social policy: universalism and significant tax financing. The weakness of the Social Democrats, the strength of Agrarian interests, and the Liberals’ embrace of universalism explain the shift in emphasis from workers’ insurance to universalism. Farmers preferred full tax financing for obvious reasons, but the state of public finances precluded this option, so farmers had to settle for partial tax financing. In summary, early social insurance legislation bore the imprint of Liberal, Agrarian, and Social Democratic interests. Between 1880 and 1910, farmers were still the largest group in Swedish society, despite the rapid growth of the industrial working class. The Church of Sweden had little influence on this legislation.

8.4 secular ideological influences on early swedish social policy If the Church of Sweden did not take the lead in shaping the debate on social reforms, who did? As noted, Liberalism was a powerful political force in Sweden in the 19th century, and Liberal ideas were perhaps the strongest source of inspiration for social policy ideas. Until a coherent Social Democratic ideology emerged in the early 1900s, Liberals were not directly opposed to the Church of Sweden but criticized the Church as an organ for reactionary groups. As noted, the Free Church movement was closely associated with Liberalism: both were united in their struggle for universal suffrage and religious freedom, and both had strong roots in the urban bourgeoisie (Rosenberg 1948). 8.4.1 Liberal Intellectuals Nonreligious Liberal groups such as the organization Verdandi founded in 1881 were important sources of ideas about social reform. Verdandi published Swedish translations of John Stuart Mill, and Karl Staaff, a prominent Liberal member of the lower chamber of Parliament and later prime minister, was a member. Economists also played an important role among Liberal intellectuals. Gustav Cassel18 and Eli Heckscher were among the more prominent, and 18

In 1902, Cassel published a book, Socialpolitik (social policy), that had a significant impact on public debate.


229

their writings and speeches had a significant impact on Liberal thinking on social reform. Olsson (1993: 54) describes the period as follows: In particular the 1880s marked a breakthrough of a new era in the intellectual life of Sweden: the cultural and religious orthodoxy under united state-church auspices was challenged by a heterogeneous European-influenced counter-culture which included natural scientists, artists and social philosophers.

Founded in 1902, the CSA, the National Association of Social Work, also came to play an important role in shaping the emerging social-liberal social policy discourse. The CSA was politically neutral but firmly liberal in its outlook, promoting the values of voluntarism, preventive self-help, and individual responsibility. The CSA had strong ties to the Liberal Party, the temperance movement, and various churches, and it sponsored research, conferences, training, and philanthropic activities that promoted the role of civil society (rather than the state) in solving social problems. CSA members came mainly from the urban upper middle class, and male CSA members were later an important source of talent for the emerging welfare bureaucracies. The CSA was sharply critical of existing poor relief arrangements and devoted much of its early activities at working toward improving poor relief.19 As Qvarsell (2003) puts it, the CSA was a meeting place for those engaged in the increasingly controversial social questions of the time. Ironically enough, the CSA, although a philanthropic organization, actively promoted a stronger central state role in poor relief, as well as a stronger state role in other areas of social policy. This paradox must be seen in the context of the state’s minimal and passive role in social policy questions at the turn of the 20th century. The CSA reached its peak in influence in the first three decades of that century and was an important actor pushing for the establishment of central state institutions in the field of social welfare. The National Board of Social Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) was set up in 1912, and the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1921, at least partly due to CSA influence and activities (Qvarsell 2003). The CSA played a major role in shaping the 1918 Law on Poor Relief (Edebalk 2003). 8.4.2 Social Democrats, the Church of Sweden, and Early Social Policy Ideas When the SAP was established in 1889, it did not have a clear social policy position. Early SAP social policy was overshadowed by the 19

On the CSA, see Olsson (1993) and Qvarsell (2003).

230

Anderson

temperance issue: more people belonged to the temperance organizations than to unions before the 1909 general strike, and many unionists were molded by their experience in the temperance movements. Moreover, as previous sections demonstrate, the SAP’s chief objective in its early years was the attainment of universal suffrage, and all other ambitions were subordinated to this one. The SAP was fiercely anticlerical from its inception. The Church of Sweden was considered to represent conservative forces in society, and besides, the Church strongly opposed any social reforms that would alter the existing social order. Thus, Church doctrine and Social Democratic ideology were diametrically opposed.20 It is not surprising that the Social Democrats allied so quickly with Liberals in pursuit of social reforms and universal suffrage. Tingsten (1973) divides Social Democratic–Church relations into two rough periods. From the 1880s until roughly 1910, the Social Democratic Party vigorously opposed the fusion of church and state, especially church control over education. The Church was equally hostile to the Social Democrats, engaging in ‘direct antisocialist agitation’ (587). The Social Democrats were not only anticlerical in these early years but they were also antireligious, criticizing the free churches. By the turn of the 20th century, the Social Democrats had moderated their stance, voicing their respect for religion as a private matter, but still vigorously opposing the Church of Sweden. The SAP could not afford to offend workers with religious sympathies or to alienate the Liberals (with their ties to the free churches) with whom the SAP often cooperated during elections (597). In other words, the Social Democratic Party’s calls for the separation of church and state seemed to fall on deaf ears, so the party began to tone down its anticlerical rhetoric.21 The Church of Sweden also began to adopt a more moderate position regarding Social Democracy and social reform at this time. As Tingsten (1973: 597–598) puts it, ‘Step by step, hostility diminished on both sides; the sharp attacks became fewer, expressions in favor of a certain mutual acknowledgement (if with great reservations) more numerous.’ To be sure, the Church still opposed Social Democracy because it encouraged the poor to be dissatisfied with their fate and to seek improvement in their material status. 20

21

On the relationship between the Social Democratic Party and the Church of Sweden, see Gustafsson (1953). The expulsion from the party of the fiercely antireligious ‘Young Socialists’ in 1908 also contributed to the SAP’s moderation.


231

In the first decade of the 1900s, prominent Social Democrats began to articulate the party’s newfound religious moderation. Instead of opposing the State Church and religion, SAP leaders now criticized the Church of Sweden for its conservatism and argued that fundamental Christian values were compatible, even congruent, with Socialism. By the 1920s and 1930s, the Church of Sweden took on a much more politically neutral stance and became much more active in social reform. Tingsten characterizes the mutual acceptance of Social Democracy and the Church of Sweden as a long-term, interactive process. By the 1930s, the Social Democrats were the largest political party and thus less threatened by the Church. The party further toned down its rhetoric and policies critical of the Church starting in the 1930s.

8.5 discussion and conclusion To recap the central empirical message of the preceding sections, the Church of Sweden played a moderately supportive role in the secularization of poor relief in the 1800s, largely because the Church’s key role in this system was more or less preserved. As the ‘social question’ took on new urgency in the late 1800s, however, the Church tried to regain some influence over poor relief, but failed. When the introduction of social insurance reached the political agenda at the turn of the 20th century, the Church was largely absent; it played no role in the debates in Parliament about the introduction of workers’ insurances in the 1880s and 1890s, and it had little influence on the more substantial social insurance reforms passed between 1900 and 1930. Why did the Church have so little influence on early social policy reforms? Given its privileged status as a State Church, the Church of Sweden should have been in an ideal position to influence early social policies. For example, the Church might have produced experts/bureaucrats who could use their influence to push specific policy ideas. This did not happen; instead, the Church preached a conservative conception of social policy in which the poor were expected to accept their miserable lot. The politicians and bureaucrats who shaped early social policy debates had little to do with the Church of Sweden; they were Liberals and Social Democrats. Moreover, Church opposition to emerging state social policy had no political outlet in the form of a political party or some other societal platform. One of the keys to understanding the limited role of the Church of Sweden in early social policy legislation was the 1847 Poor Law and the 1862 Local Government Reform that transferred responsibility for poor

232

Anderson

relief from the Church parishes to the secular municipalities and decreased or abolished other aspects of the Church’s local influence. These reforms set a precedent for state involvement in social welfare, even if it took more than 50 years for the state’s role to expand. Limited religious freedom and the emergence of the free churches also challenged the dominance and influence of the Church of Sweden. The Church of Sweden never really recovered from this loss of influence, and it made the fatal mistake of clinging fiercely to traditional Church doctrine about the causes and consequences of poverty and other social ills at a time when large segments of society were looking to the emerging Social Democratic and Liberal movements to produce political solutions. Church leaders changed their strategy around 1900, but their efforts to regain the social policy initiative from Liberals and Social Democrats were inadequate and too late. Whereas the Liberal Party had a strong link to the free churches, the Social Democrats were able to weather attempts by the Liberals and free churches to establish a Christian labor movement. The SAP incorporated religion into its party apparatus with the establishment of the Broder¨ skapsrorelse (Social Democratic Brotherhood) in the 1930s. This party organization was open to SAP members of all ecumenical faiths and had the effect of depoliticizing religion within the party. The Social Democratic Brotherhood never dominated the party, but at least it meant that the religious cleavage in Swedish society did not reinforce the Socialist– non-Socialist cleavage. If the Church did not play a leading role in shaping the social policy debate, who did? In line with much previous research (Baldwin 1990; Edebalk 1996; Olsson 1993), I stress the role of Liberalism, Agrarian interests, and Social Democracy in shaping welfare state institutions before 1930. Social-liberal social policy initiatives were undoubtedly powerfully influenced by the ongoing secularization of Swedish society that began about 1880. In public debates about the role of social policy, Liberal economists and social-liberal organizations such as the CSA played an important role, and it is fair to say that they, and not the Church of Sweden, shaped the terms of the debate. It is probably not incorrect to argue that as the Church of Sweden continued to promote its orthodox Lutheran vision concerning the causes and consequences of poverty and other social ills, few in society listened. Thus, church–state fusion was accompanied by the gradual secularization of political life, and the transfer of important welfare functions from the church to the state (poor relief) strengthened the secularization process. However, the Church of Sweden was not a completely supportive participant in this process. The Church tried to influence the course of


233

social policy in the formative period of the welfare state, but failed. Liberals, Social Democrats, and Agrarians competed to control the content of early social policy.22 All three groups advocated state involvement in social insurance, but they differed on how benefits should be financed and whether social insurance should be universal or available only to workers.23 These crucial distinctions cannot be explained by religious factors. As I argue, the role of the Church in early social policy was often oppositional, and the working class actively opposed Church doctrine concerning the causes of social problems. If anything, the Church’s opposition to secular social welfare probably increased the attractiveness of state welfare to the working class. The Church of Sweden preached that individuals should accept the fate ordained by God until the early 1900s. The dismal state of public social policy until about 1910 meant that even Swedish Liberals moderated their calls for individual responsibility. Existing social policies (mainly poor relief) were so meager at the turn of the 20th century that most Liberals advocated increasing the role of the state in social policy. They continued to espouse individual responsibility, but in combination with an expanded state role. In summary, an increasingly secular state assumed responsibility for social risks such as pensions, sickness, and occupational injury (as it would later do in family policies), but this seems to have been little influenced by the Church of Sweden. The ‘religious political space’ in Sweden was occupied by a conservative state church that opposed public/secular social policies beyond the minimal requirements of means-tested poor relief. The privileged status of this state church meant that its position was protected, and the vast majority of the population remained members. However, the Church’s privileged status as a state church also meant that it faced little pressure to adjust its teachings to new social and economic circumstances. So, the Church of Sweden retained a conservative, traditional set of teachings that had little appeal to the emerging working classes. The Church of Sweden’s official state church status also did not mean that political actors would actually listen or heed its teachings, so alternative sources of social policy ideas emerged. In other words, church–state fusion left a vacuum that could be filled by secular Social Democratic and Liberal forces.

22

23

Predictably, Conservatives were opposed to increased state involvement in social insurance. Liberals were also divided on the issue of individual responsibility versus universal entitlement.

234

Anderson

References ¨ ¨ ˚ Arner, Anders (1923), Studier ofver svenska kyrkans stallning till fragan om de ˚ under 1800-talet, Lund: Gleerupska Universitets-Bokhandeln. fattigas vard Baldwin, Peter (1990), The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State 1875–1975, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ¨ och egenansvar: De sociala fors ¨ akringarna ¨ Berge, Anders (1995), Medborgarratt i Sverige 1901–1935, Lund: Arkiv. ¨ ¨ Bexell, Oloph (2003), Sveriges kyrkohistoria: Folkvackelsens och kyrkofornyelsens tid, Stockholm: Verbum. Bluckert, Kjell (2000), The Church as Nation: A Study in Ecclesiology and Nation¨ hood, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Cassel, Gustav (1902), Socialpolitik, Stockholm: Hugo Gebers forlag. ¨ Duhne, Christian (1969), Svenska kyrka och socialdemokratin: Till belysning av ¨ allandet ˚ forh dem emellan under brytningstiden, Stockholm: Verbum. ¨ ardsstaten ¨ ¨ Edebalk, Per-Gunnar (1996), Valf trader fram: Svensk socialforsakring 1884–1955. Lund: Arkiv. Edebalk, Per-Gunnar (2000), Emergence of a Welfare State – Social Insurance in Sweden in the 1910s, Journal of Social Policy 29 (4): 537–551. ard – om svensk Edebalk, Per-Gunnar (2003), Folkpension och aldringsv ˚ ˚ socialpolitik 1903–1950, Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift 2–3: 131–150. Ekstrom, Soren (1999), Svenska kyrkan i utveckling: Historia, identitet, verk¨ ¨ samhet, och organisation, Stockholm: Verbum. ¨ ˚ Engberg, Elisabeth (2005), I fattiga omstandigheter: Fattigvardens former och ¨ understodstagare i Skelleftea˚ socken under 1800-talet, Umea: ˚ Original. Esping-Andersen, GPsta (1985), Politics against Markets, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark (2005), The Churching of America, 1776–2005, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Gustafsson, Berndt (1953), Socialdemokratin och kyrkan 1881–1890, Lund: Hakan Ohlssons boktryckeri. ˚ Gustafsson, Goran (2003), Church–State Separation Swedish-Style, West Euro¨ pean Politics 26 (1): 51–72. Hadenius, Stig, Bjorn ¨ Molin, and Hans Wieslander (1991), Sverige efter 1900: en modern politisk historia. Stockholm. Aldus/Bonnier. Heclo, Hugh (1974), Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Heclo, Hugh, and Henrik Madsen (1987), Policy and Politics in Sweden: Principled Pragmatism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hojer, Karl J. (1952), Svensk socialpolitisk historia, Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt ¨ och soners forlag. ¨ ¨ ¨ Johansson, Peter (2003), Fast i det forflutna: Institutioner och intressen i svensk ¨ akringspolitik ¨ sjukfors 1891–1931, Lund: Arkiv. Kaspersen, Lars Bo and Johannes Lindvall (2008), Why No Religious Politics? The Secularization of Poor Relief and Primary Education in Denmark and Sweden, Archives européennes de sociologie, XLIX, (1): 1–25. Korpi, Walter (1978), The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions, and Politics in Sweden, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.


235

Kuhnle, Stein (1981), The Growth of Social Insurance Programs in Scandinavia: Outside Influences and Internal Forces, in Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 125–150. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan (1967), Party Systems and Voter Alignments, New York: Free Press. ¨ ¨ Lundkvist, Sven (1977), Folkrorelserna i det svenska samhallet 1850–1920, Stockholm: Sober-forlag. ¨ Manow, Philip (2004), ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, Esping-Andersen’s Regime Typology and the Religious Roots of the Western Welfare State, Paper prepared for workshop on ‘Religion and the Western Welfare State,’ Cologne, April 30–May 1. Montgomery, Arthur (1951), Svensk socialpolitik under 1800-talet, Stockholm: Kooperativa forbundet. ¨ Morgan, Kimberly J. (2003), The Politics of Mothers’ Employment, World Politics 55 (2): 259–289. Olsson, Sven (1993), Social Policy and Welfare State in Sweden, Lund: Arkiv. ˚ ¨ Palm, Irving (1982), Frikyrkorna, arbetarfragan och klasskampen: frikyrkoro˚ ˚ relsens hallning till arbetarnas fackliga och politiska kamp aren kring sekelskiftet, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell international. Qvarsell, Roger (2003), CSA och socialpolitiken kring sekelskiftet 1900, Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift 2–3. ˚ (1948), Kyrkan och arbetarrorelsen, ¨ Lund: Gleerups forlag. Rosenberg, Sven-Ake ¨ Rustow, Dankwart A. (1955), The Politics of Compromise. A Study of Parties and Cabinet Government in Sweden, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scott, Franklin D. (1988), Sweden: The Nation’s History, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Stephens, John D. (1979), The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Swenson, Peter (2002), Capitalists against Markets, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thorkildsen, Dag (1997), Religious Identity and Nordic Identity, in Øystein SPrensen and Bo Strath ˚ (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 138–160. Tingsten, Herbert (1973), The Swedish Social Democrats: Their Ideological Development, Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press. [Translation of Den svenska socialdemokratins idéutveckling, published in 1941.] Weir, Margaret, and Theda Skocpol (1985), State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 107–163.

9 The Religious Factor in U.S. Welfare State Politics Jill Quadagno and Deana Rohlinger

In the political class theories discussed by Manow and van Kersbergen in the first chapter in this volume, the welfare state was depicted as a project of the Left and more specifically of Social Democrats and trade unions. Although proponents of this strong class power thesis acknowledged that Catholicism was a factor in shaping the institutional features of welfare states in Christian Democratic nations, they otherwise neglected the effects of religious doctrine, anticlericalism, Protestantism, and church– state conflict on welfare state development. Political class theories fail to consider how these forces have influenced decisions regarding such contentious issues as whether the state or society should be responsible for the protection of mothers and children and the socialization of children. The United States never fit the narrative of class politics envisioned by power resource theory and departs in key features from the historical trajectory of continental Europe and the Scandinavian countries discussed in the other chapters. Whereas the labor movement in Europe emerged out of the struggle for the franchise, in the United States, voting rights were nearly universal by the 1880s (at least for adult white males). Furthermore, the European labor movement regarded the modern state as the source of autonomy, whereas the labor movement in the United States viewed the state as an instrument of coercion for breaking strikes and halting the advance of unionization (Sombart 1906 [1976]). Suspicion of state power made the American trade unions wary of government welfare We thank Kimberly Morgan, Catherine Bozendahl, David Meyer, David Leege, Kenneth Wald, Kees van Kersbergen, and Philip Manow for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

236

The Religious Factor in U.S. Welfare State Politics

237

programs and in favor of union-controlled benefits, which they negotiated through collective bargaining contracts (Quadagno 1988; Stevens 1988). The United States is also distinctive in regard to religious traditions and church–state relations. Unlike continental Europe, which inherited a religious cleavage based on church–state conflict, the United States was founded as a secular nation. The Puritans came to America in revolt against the English church hierarchy (Morone 2003). The first amendment to the Constitution mandates a separation of church and state: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ There is no official state religion or religious party in the United States, and the historical tradition is one of religious pluralism. Even in the colonial era, the denominations associated with the Puritans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians were dominant only in New England. The Church of England had significant minority representation in the southern colonies, whereas the mid-Atlantic colonies were settled by members of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Catholics were a prominent minority in Maryland (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2007). Although the Puritans insisted that there be no state church, they constructed their society around a crusading religious spirit. Their search for God organized all preliberal institutions. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835, ‘Religion never intervenes directly in the government of American society, but it should be considered the first of their political institutions. . . . Christianity reigns, without any obstacles, the universal faith’ (1945: 46). This religious fervor remains a distinctive characteristic of the United States. Compared to people in other countries, Americans are more likely to belong to a church, more likely to attend religious services, and more likely to believe in God (Lipset 1996; Manza and Brooks 1997). As one recent international survey reports, 55 per cent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives compared to 16 per cent of the British, 14 per cent of the French, and 13 per cent of Germans; 44 per cent of Americans attend church at least once a week compared to 27 per cent of the British, 21 per cent of the French, 4 per cent of Swedes, and 3 per cent of Japanese; 94 per cent of Americans believe in God compared to 46 per cent in Sweden, 61 per cent in Britain, and 56 per cent in France. Finally, 76 per cent of Americans believe in life after death compared to 39 per cent in France, 45 per cent in Britain, and 38 per cent in Germany (Inglehart and Norris 2004). For the analytical framework developed in this volume, which emphasizes the interplay between societal cleavage structures (frozen in party

238

Quadagno and Rohlinger

systems) and electoral rules, then, the U.S.-American case poses a serious puzzle. The United States has a majoritarian electoral system and, therefore, a two-party system. Yet, as we show, the religious cleavage is still highly relevant for U.S. politics in general and for U.S. social policies in particular because religion becomes a highly salient issue in the intense intraparty competition. Moreover, with a lot of programmatic overlap between Democrats and Republicans, parties can mobilize along denominational lines, and religiously based social movements transfer their allegiance from one party to another, thereby forcing the issues they consider salient onto the political national agenda.

9.1 religion in political movements and party affiliation Although the United States has never had a church-based political party equivalent to Europe’s Christian Democratic parties, many political movements have been religious based. Religious-based movements have been effective both in influencing politics and agendas and in mobilizing citizens into political activism. In the 1830s, evangelical Protestantism gave rise to two political movements – the American Temperance Society, which at its peak had a national network of more than 8000 auxiliaries and 1.5 million members, and the American Anti-Slavery Society, which claimed 1838 auxiliaries across the North and 120,000 members. These organizations sponsored a network of church schools, published religious tracts, and established a national infrastructure of religious resources in every state and territory (Young 2002). Only political parties and fraternal organizations could boast similar institutional penetration, but they were unorganized and decentralized in comparison. In the early 20th century, the Anti-Saloon League led the fight for prohibition (Burke 1908; Szymanski 2003). The league was conceived by the pastor of a Congregational church in Chicago, and organized and managed by a synod of churches. The majority of league leaders were trained ministers who used the pulpit to promote prohibition, appeal for financial support, and provide information on candidates’ positions preceding elections. As one observer noted, ‘the Anti-Saloon League is merely an agent of the churches’ (Chalfant 1923: 280). The league succeeded in garnering support for state laws and the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution banning the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol. The Ku Klux Klan, which peaked in the 1920s, was largely a conservative Protestant movement that arose to counter perceived threats


239

to Christianity by the growing influence of blacks, Catholics, Jews, and communists. Founded by a Southern Methodist preacher, the Klan only admitted to membership white, adult males who believed in Christianity, white supremacy, and Americanism. Its symbol of terror was the flaming cross. Although the Klan engaged in vigilante violence, it also spoke to the fears of ordinary southerners and recruited widely from fraternal organizations and Protestant churches, reaching more than 1 million members at its peak. In 1924, three-fourths of the delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention were Klan members (Maclean 1994). The civil rights movement of the 1960s was rooted in the black church (McAdam 1999). As Morris (1999: 524) explains, ‘The Black Church, which had a mass base and served as the main repository of Black culture, proved to be capable of generating, sustaining and culturally energizing large volumes of protest.’ Its leadership arm, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), coordinated nonviolent direct action through churches across the South and worked with student groups to organize sit-ins and demonstrations (Calhoun-Brown 2000; McAdam 1999). The SCLC was led by a young black minister, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who mobilized support for the movement by drawing on familiar Christian themes of forgiveness and charity, coupled with appeals to Gandhian principles (McAdam 1996). Religion has also had a significant effect on voting behavior and party affiliation in the United States, often more so than class position (Manza and Brooks 1997). In the early 20th century, Catholics were split in their party preference. Irish Americans, who immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century, favored the Democratic Party, associating Republicans with a wave of nativism in the pre–Civil War years. Catholics from Eastern Europe, who came in the second large immigrant wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, initially advantaged the Republicans. However, the rise of antiimmigrant sentiment in the Republican Party during the 1920s turned Catholics away from the GOP (Appleby 1997). From the New Deal until the 1960s, Catholics, Jews, and evangelical Protestants formed the core constituency of the Democratic Party, whereas mainstream Protestants were solid Republicans. After 1960, racial turmoil associated with the civil rights movement caused liberal Protestants to drift toward the Democrats, whereas white evangelical Christians and Catholics began moving toward the Republicans. In the late 20th century, a new religious cleavage emerged, based not on denominational membership, but on level of commitment to orthodox religious beliefs. Increasingly, doctrinal conservatives identified with the

240


Republican Party, forming an influential conservative coalition that has pushed the party to the right (Layman 1997). Some critics even contend that the Republican Party has become a theocracy (Phillips 2006). However, the success of this coalition depends on an often contentious alliance with traditional Republicans who do not share the emphasis on moral values and who are uneasy inserting religious objectives into policy matters. As a result, the Republican Party has experienced periods of intense intraparty competition that threatens to undermine the coalition between religious and fiscal conservatives. In the following section, we examine the distinctive ways that these conflicts have shaped welfare state politics.

9.2 religion and social welfare The Puritan settlers to the New Land were overwhelmingly English and Calvinist, and they brought with them an approach to social welfare derived from the English Poor Law of 1598 and 1601. This tradition, as Kahl (Chapter 10, this volume) explains, associated poverty with sin, viewed work as an end in itself, and believed outdoor relief to be a disincentive to work. In practice, however, the American version differed in many respects. Unlike England, where masses of unemployed laborers created social disorder, in the colonies, the main recipients of relief at first were the proper objects of care – sick, the disabled, widows, and the aged. It was not until the 18th century when growing numbers of transient refugees from the colonial wars placed a burden on towns and villages that the administration of relief became harsher. The able bodied were sent to workhouses, which increasingly dotted the countryside, whereas outdoor relief was reserved for the deserving poor (Quadagno 1988). By the 19th century, the emphasis on self-help that was embodied in Calvinism and the antipathy toward the state resulted in an extensive network of voluntary organizations, both secular and religious, to support those who were unable to work because of poor health, sickness, and old age. Throughout this century, Protestant congregations sponsored a diverse network of charities and clubs that provided health care and social welfare services, largely independent of public funds (Morgan 2006). The Catholic Church also established many hospitals and schools in this period. A shift in sentiment toward the role of the state occurred during the Progressive era. The Progressive reform movement in the 1910s was led by Protestant social reformers who believed that public power was needed to protect the common welfare. They sponsored state laws for minimum


241

wages, state old age pensions, insurance against industrial accidents, and limits on the working hours of women and children. Although for much of the 20th century the Catholic Church in the United States was associated with conservative causes, ultranationalist movements, and anticommunism, it was also liberal on social justice issues. In 1919, during the Progressive era, American bishops first called for regulating unrestricted market economies, and the Catholic Church supported a Program of Social Reconstruction, based on the 1891 papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, which championed a living wage and insurance for illness, disability, unemployment, and old age (Derickson 2005). Yet, the Catholic Church opposed reforms that threatened the principle of subsidiarity, the dictum that higher governing bodies ought not to do what more local associations can achieve, or that threatened to usurp functions that should be performed by the family, the basic unit of society. For example, American bishops opposed the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which funded health education programs for pregnant women and new mothers, for fear it would lead to a federal effort to promote birth control (Morgan 2006). The progressive spirit waned in the 1920s but was revived by the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was in this era that the Catholic alliance with the Democratic Party was solidified. American cardinals openly expressed dissatisfaction with capitalism; the Catholic Worker Movement promoted progressive policies on social justice, poverty, and civil liberties; and many Catholic magazines repudiated the free enterprise system, couching support for New Deal programs in the language of ‘social solidarity’ with the poor (Fones-Wolf 1994: 220). Indeed, it was liberal Catholic politicians who helped lay the foundation for the social programs that were the cornerstone of the New Deal (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2007). The Federal Council of Churches, the voice of liberal Protestantism, also enthusiastically supported the New Deal because it ‘embodied many of the social ideals of the churches’ (quoted in Fones-Wolf 1994: 219). In the same period, however, the Christian Conservative Crusade, led by right-wing radio evangelist Father Charles Coughlin, opposed the welfare state and other liberal ideals (Lienesch 1982). The Social Security Act of 1935 reflected two themes derived from these opposing religious traditions: social insurance programs granted to workers as an earned right and means-tested social assistance in the poor law tradition for the undeserving poor. The post–World War II era was a period of intense anticommunist sentiment, shared by many religious groups because of the expressed antipathy of communism toward organized religion. When President Harry Truman proposed a plan for national health insurance in 1946, he faced

242


opposition from several religious groups. Two evangelical organizations, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and the Church League of America, decried Truman’s plan as a communist-inspired plot (Wilcox 2000). The Catholic Church, which ran 775 hospitals across the United States, was also against the Truman plan on the grounds that it could lead to ‘a stifling of initiatives, a coercion of independence and a concentration of power,’ according to Father Alphonse Schwitalla, president of the Catholic Hospital Association.1 Throughout the 1950s, the Catholic Church maintained a low political profile on social welfare issues, devoting most of its energies to lobbying for state aid for Catholic schools and hospitals (Reichley 1986). In 1959, however, the Catholic Church cautioned that a bill to expand day care services for Aid for Families and Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients could undermine the traditional family. According to the Monseigneur Raymond Gallagher, Secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Charities, We believe it is un-American to place such large numbers of children under governmental care in order to free so many mothers to enter the labor market. . . . I would think that the nature of our society is such that it would first have made every effort possible to train men to fill the job opportunities that are available. Putting it another way, who is to say that the United States can endure a blow to family life of this proportion where indiscriminate recruiting of mothers of small children for industry continues without giving evidence of having thought through to the very ultimate the effect that this has on family life generally.2

More fundamentally, expanded federal funding could interfere with the principle of subsidiarity. Catholic Charities agencies operated more than 50 day care centers and did not want the government to intervene in how these facilities were run.3 To mitigate these concerns, Congress allowed religious organizations to run the expanded day care programs. By 1965, 17 states operated day care centers through public welfare 1

2

3

Testimony of Father Alphonse Schwitalla, President of the Catholic Hospital Association, National Health Program, Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U.S. Senate, 80th Congress, 1st Session on S. 545 and S. 1320. Part 1, May 21, 1947: 289. Letter from Monseigneur Raymond Gallagher to Mrs. Katherine B. Oettinger, Chief, Children’s Bureau, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, April 27, 1962. National Archives, Record Group 102, Records of the Children’s Bureau, Central File 1958–62, Box 832, File: June 1960–1962, Day Care of Children of Working Mothers. Memorandum Re: Day Care from Katherine Oettinger, February 1, 1965. National Archives, Record Group 102, Records of the Children’s Bureau, Central File 1958–62, Box 1005, File: July 1963–1968.


243

agencies, 33 provided family day care, and 31 purchased day care from existing centers, many in churches.4 Vatican II, a 1962 meeting of the world’s bishops, gave official approval to already developing trends that revolutionized church liturgy and ritual. The bishops condemned poverty, war, and social injustice, and urged parishioners to apply Christian values to the world’s problems. This spirit was reflected in the participation of the Catholic Church in President Lyndon Johnson’s community action programs created by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Community action agencies funded many programs run by church groups and local civil rights organizations, which were closely linked to black churches. One of the most ambitious community action programs was Systematic Training and Redevelopment, or Operation Star, a demonstration project initiated by two Catholic priests and run by the Catholic Church. Operation Star established an alternative social welfare system in Mississippi to train the hardcore unemployed and the functionally illiterate. With offices, staff, access to nationwide news media, and an established bureaucratic hierarchy, the Catholic Church was the only organization with the capacity to circumvent Mississippi’s segregated educational system (Quadagno 1994).

9.3 the new right–evangelical alliance Since the 1920s, the spread of science and technology and rapid urbanization had weakened evangelical Protestantism as a major cultural and political force. Although northern denominations embraced modernity, the center of evangelicalism shifted to the South, and to a great extent, evangelicals withdrew from public life. Therefore, it was surprising to many observers when, in the 1970s, a conservative political movement among evangelicals was rekindled. What motivated evangelicals to become involved in politics was a suspicion of government bureaucrats; fear of losing control of their local subcultures; and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights, and abortion (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988; Regnerus, Sikkink, and Smith 1999). The first indication that the evangelical position on political engagement was changing appeared in the 1960 election. When the Democratic Party nominated John Kennedy, a Catholic, for president, a large number 4

Letter from Betty Jane White, Secretary in Children’s Program, Board of Christian Education to Gertrude Hoffman, Oct. 23, 1964. National Archives, Record Group 102, Records of the Children’s Bureau, Central File 1963–66, Box 1005, File: July 1963–1968.

244


of white, southern Protestants defected to the Republican Party. In the 1968 election, independent states rights candidate, George Wallace, received substantial support among theologically conservative southern Democrats (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2007). Race factored heavily into the defection of white southerners as the northern wing of the Democratic Party took increasingly liberal positions on racial issues, particularly school desegregation. In the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter, a born-again southern Baptist, ran for the Democratic Party nomination, and evangelicals provided Carter’s margin of victory over his opponent, President Gerald Ford. Their support was short lived, however, as it became apparent that Carter was more liberal than he had appeared during his campaign (Reichley 1986: 25; Manza and Brooks 1997). They were especially angered over Carter’s decision to deny tax exemptions to white Christian academies that were springing up throughout the South in the wake of school desegregation efforts. The political potential of evangelicals was noted by the New Right, a self-selected term to distinguish its adherents from the ‘slightly effete conservative leadership of the East Coast’ (Crawford 1980: 7). The New Right consisted of a loose-knit coalition of large multipurpose groups such as the American Conservative Union and the Conservative Caucus, as well as think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, periodicals and publishing houses, tax-exempt legal foundations, and a vast array of single-issue groups. The New Right’s goal was to mobilize conservative opinion around free market economics, anticommunism, and national defense, and turn that opinion into electoral clout (Bruce 1990: 479). Although New Right conservatives were well funded and well organized, they needed a grassroots base (Lienesch 1982). Evangelicals had little experience with politics and low voter turnout, but great potential to become a grassroots force for conservative principles. They represented more than 20 per cent of the population and had a massive infrastructure of Christian schools, bookstores, specialized magazines, and newspapers, as well as a vast communications network of Christian radio and television programs and stations. Televangelist preachers reached millions of viewers weekly and had a fund-raising capacity that dwarfed that of political parties or individual candidates (Diamond 1995; Oldfield 1996; Hardisty 1999; Wilcox 2000). Evangelicals were most concerned with protecting Christian schools from Internal Revenue Service investigations over the issue of racial balance, but were also vehement in their opposition to communism (Oldfield 1996). They believed the United States had an important role in God’s plan for worldwide evangelism, and saw communism as a threat to the


245

nation and to evangelicalism (Oldfield 1996). New Right leaders introduced evangelicals to modern direct mail fund raising, media manipulation, and grassroots campaign tactics, helping the conservative Christian movement grow in political sophistication and influence. Still unclear was exactly how the movement would fit into partisan politics (Reichley 1986: 26). The answer came in the wake of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

9.4 religious conservatives in u.s. welfare politics Religious values can provide a basis for an alliance across denominations, but, as we show, this alliance is inherently fragile because of fundamental differences in underlying traditions rooted in the Calvinism ethic or the Catholic concern with social justice. In welfare state politics, some issues united religious groups and made rollbacks to benefits easy to initiate, whereas others were much more contentious and, therefore, difficult to frame in ways that would appeal to constituents with different values and beliefs. 9.4.1 Banning Medicaid Funding of Abortion The Roe decision legalizing abortion greatly altered the number and type of religious groups involved in political action (Blanchard 1995). Before Roe, the Catholic Church was cautious about when and how it weighed in on political debates, fearing the public might view any intervention as a violation of the separation of church and state. For example, although the National Catholic Welfare Council, an organization of bishops, issued statements on racial equality and justice for farm workers in the 1960s and came out against the Vietnam War in 1973, the church as an institution did not actively pursue these causes. Abortion was different because it represented what the Catholic Church defined as a fundamental moral issue. As Cardinal Krol explained in testimony before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, the right to life was ‘a basic human right which must undergird any civilized society.’5 Other religious groups that shared this position included the Greek Orthodox Church, the American Association of Evangelicals, Orthodox Presbyterians, the American Association of Christian Schools, and Baptists for Life, a grassroots 5

U.S. Senate, Statement of John Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Judiciary Committee, March 7, 1974, p. 153.

246


organization formed in 1973, whose members included Southern Baptists, American Baptists, the General Assembly of Regular Baptists, the Independent Baptist Churches, and the National Baptists Convention.6 For the Mormon Church, abortion was ‘one of the most revolting and sinful practices in this day when we are witnessing the frightening evidence of permissiveness leading to sexual immorality.’ The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church testified that ‘without the right to life, all other rights are meaningless.’7 Another Christian organization, the American Life League, advocated a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion without exception even if a pregnancy threatened a woman’s life (Blanchard 1995; Diamond 1995; Maxwell 2002). Following Roe, the Catholic Church officially sanctioned civil disobedience and embarked on a sustained effort to change the law (Burns 1992). In 1975, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a sophisticated blueprint for political action, spending large sums of money to mobilize the church’s infrastructure against abortion rights (Tribe 1990). In each state, bishops organized committees to coordinate political efforts in the diocese. In each parish, pro-life groups worked toward a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe. The Catholic Church working in concert with other pro-life Christians created a separate, multidenominational organization, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), to support pro-life groups behind the scenes. The NRLC sought to overturn Roe and pursued a short-term strategy to erect whatever barriers might be legislatively possible to limit abortion access (Rohlinger and Meyer 2005; Rohlinger 2006). The first pro-life victory came in 1976, with a ban on Medicaid funding of abortion. Medicaid, the joint federal/state program of health insurance for the poor, paid for nearly one-third of all legal abortions performed in the United States, mostly on AFDC recipients. Pro-lifers viewed Medicaidfunded abortions as government-subsidized murder. If they could not outlaw abortion entirely, they could try to stop the federal government from paying for it. The Medicaid funding ban was introduced in 1974 in the House of Representatives by Representative Dewey Bartlett (R-OK) as an amendment to that year’s appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor

6

7

House of Representatives, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, H521–2, Proposed Constitutional Amendments on Abortion, Part 1, Feb. 4, 1976. U.S. Senate, Statement of David McKay before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Judiciary Committee, March 7, 1974, p. 318.


247

and Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The appropriations bill contained the federal share of funds to the states for AFDC and Medicaid. Following Roe, several states had passed measures banning the use of state Medicaid funds for abortion, but fifteen states still paid for abortions. The Bartlett amendment specified that no federal funds could be used to pay for abortion except when necessary to save the life of the mother. As Bartlett explained, tax dollars should not be used to pay for a procedure that many people vehemently opposed. Rather there needed to be ‘better more meaningful care for the poor, more meaningful assistance to the unwed mother, and a public consensus to improve the lot of all unwanted, including unwanted children.’8 When the bill reached the Senate, opponents argued that an appropriations bill was not the proper place to consider such an important measure. The committee’s purpose was to appropriate funds, not to change the authorization of any government programs. Further, cutting off Medicaid funds for abortion would discriminate against poor women: The most fundamental purpose of the Labor-HEW appropriation bill is the equalization of access to education and health services and the elimination of practices which, intentionally or not, discriminate against individuals on the basis of income.9

That view prevailed, and the Bartlett amendment was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 50–34. In 1976, pro-life forces gained a new champion, Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL), who again tacked a strict Medicaid abortion funding ban – with no exceptions – onto that year’s Department of Labor/HEW appropriations bill. The Hyde amendment passed in the House, 207–167, over the objections of the congressional black caucus whose leader declared the vote marked ‘the process of establishing a second post-Reconstruction period in this country’ (quoted in Tribe 1990: 155). After a provision was inserted allowing abortion when the mother’s life was endangered, the bill also passed in the Senate. The legislation affected all poor women, but its impact fell most heavily on African American women who represented a disproportionate share of AFDC recipients and on whom a disproportionate number of abortions were performed. Although the Medicaid abortion ban was a minor provision in terms of the amount of funds involved, it was the first welfare benefit cut since 8 9

Congressional Record, Sept. 17, 1974: 31454. Congressional Record, Sept. 17, 1974: 31456.

248


the Social Security Act was enacted in 1935. More important, the Hyde amendment represented a retrenchment in democratic rights: it rescinded a poor woman’s constitutional right, granted by the Supreme Court, to choose whether to give birth to a child. Because the Medicaid abortion ban was included in an appropriations bill, it would have to be reenacted each year, guaranteeing a continuing political struggle. For the pro-life movement a more permanent solution had to be found. Many of the state statutes limiting abortion rights had been declared unconstitutional, but in 1977 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Maher v. Roe that states could deny funding for nontherapeutic abortions, a decision that appeared applicable to federal funding as well. Thus, the question of whether these state restrictions were constitutional was resolved in favor of the pro-life movement. Another victory occurred in 1980, when the narrow restriction ‘severe or long-lasting physical health damage as determined by two physicians’ was dropped from that year’s federal appropriations bill (Tribe 1990: 156). 9.4.2 The Christian Conservative Movement in the Republican Party The Hyde amendment not only signified a test of the political might of the pro-life movement, but also more generally the emergence of a socially conservative mood reflecting a backlash against big government, resentment toward welfare recipients, and concern that society had become lax about moral issues and sex. Yet, a cohesive, conservative religiousbased movement had not yet blossomed. In the 1980 presidential election, the Republican Party openly wooed evangelicals. The Republican platform supported school prayer, family values, and a constitutional amendment to restore the ‘right to life for unborn children.’10 The Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, attended a national affairs briefing sponsored by the Religious Roundtable and promised that, in his administration, ‘traditional moral values’ would be ‘reflected in public policy’ (Reichley 1981–1982: 543). Reagan was rewarded for his efforts with the endorsement of the Moral Majority, an evangelical organization created by the Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1979 to defend Christian schools. Led by pastors in the Baptist Bible Fellowship, the Moral Majority played a visible role in Reagan’s 10

Republican Platform, 1980 (Washington, DC: Republican National Committee, 1980), 10–15.


249

campaign, organizing voter registration drives, issuing moral ‘report cards,’ and attacking liberal members of Congress. Reagan soundly defeated his rival, President Jimmy Carter, and the Democrats lost control of the Senate for the first time since the 1940s (Oldfield 1996). Uncontrollable inflation, high unemployment, and a hostage crisis in Iran were primarily responsible for Carter’s defeat, but the defection of evangelicals and working-class Catholics from the Democratic Party was also a factor. When Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, he won 80 per cent of the evangelical vote as well as 55 per cent of the Catholic vote. Throughout the 1980s, the pro-life movement advanced its agenda with only limited success (Diamond 1995). The Reagan administration instituted a ‘gag rule,’ which prohibited personnel at federally funded clinics from discussing abortion with clients, and the ‘Mexico City Policy,’ which prohibited nongovernmental organizations receiving federal funding from providing or promoting abortion services. Reagan also banned the use of fetal tissue in medical research, stymied the importation of emergency contraception into the United States, and prohibited privately funded abortions in overseas military hospitals (Rohlinger 2004). On the key issues that motivated evangelicals, however, a constitutional amendment banning abortion and school prayer, the Reagan administration seemed disinterested. In the 1988 presidential election, the Pentecostal televangelist preacher, Pat Robertson, decided to seek the Republican Party presidential nomination, in part out of dissatisfaction among evangelicals with Reagan’s failure to actively promote their agenda. During his campaign, Robertson trained activists in every precinct in the country, creating a grassroots evangelical network to raise funds and recruit volunteers (Bruce 1990: 484; Shibley 1998). In response his opponent, Vice President George Bush, cultivated conservative Christians, meeting individually with evangelical leaders, appointing a religious liaison, and discussing his own faith in public settings (Oldfield 1996). The Bush campaign organization also identified the 215 largest southern churches, located a supporter in each church, and distributed a special video directed at evangelicals to be played in churches. Robertson lost badly in the primaries, but his attempt to capture the party had long-lasting consequences. During his campaign, evangelicals gained control of many GOP state and local organizations, embedding religious conservatives deeply into the Republican Party machinery. Furthermore, the Republican Party adopted many of the Moral Majority’s

250


campaign issues and invited conservative Christian leaders to speak at the Republican National Convention. As Robertson recognized, Could it be that the reason for my candidacy has been fulfilled in the activation of tens of thousands of evangelical Christians into government? . . . for the first time in recent history, patriotic, pro-family Christians learned the simple techniques of effective party organizing and successful campaigning. Their presence as an active force in American politics may result ultimately in at least one of America’s major political parties taking on a profoundly Christian outlook in its platforms and party structure (quoted in Oldfield 1996: 183).

However, many Republican Party regulars found disturbing their evangelical allies’ confrontational tactics and insistence that candidates adopt uncompromising positions in exchange for political support (Leege 1992). In some states, extreme Christian Right candidates so alienated moderate Republicans that they supported the Democratic candidate. In this case, it was not competition between parties for the votes of religious conservatives, but rather intraparty competition that undermined Republicans’s electoral chances (Hacker and Pierson 2005). Bush won the election with 70 to 80 per cent of the evangelical vote, and it seemed clear that the fortunes of the Republican Party were now inextricably linked to the Christian conservative movement. Although the Moral Majority collapsed in 1989 following Robertson’s defeat and a scandal involving a televangelist preacher, the Moral Majority’s successor, the Christian Coalition, shaped this nascent religious conservative movement into a cohesive political force. The Christian Coalition was founded in 1989 by Robertson who turned the organization over to Ralph Reed (Shibley 1998). Between 1990 and 1995, it grew from 25,000 members to 1.6 million members with 1600 local chapters, a national lobbying staff headquartered in Virginia, and 50 independently incorporated state organizations (Oldfield 1996; Rozell and Wilcox 1996). Under Reed’s guidance, the Christian Coalition became a sophisticated political machine, dedicated to training Christians for political action, keeping them informed on legislative issues, and promoting a conservative policy agenda (Wilcox 2000). Local chapters organized grassroots activities and sponsored political candidates. Starting with lower level offices such as school boards, city councils, and county election, the Christian Coalition created a pool of candidates qualified to run for higher offices in future races (Oldfield 1996; Usher 2000). Whereas in the past openly evangelical candidates had never been able to muster more than 35 or 40 per cent of the vote against GOP regulars


251

in primary races, under Reed’s direction they learned to eschew religious language that made them appear intolerant and use secular arguments to support the same position (Guth 1995; Rozell and Wilcox 1996). Reed also took advantage of differences in state parties’ delegate selection processes to capture the Republican Party machinery. Unlike the Democratic Party, which mandates that all potential delegates get prior approval from a campaign, Republicans have no such mandate. Of the five methods of selecting Republican delegates, three are permeable to grassroots activists. The first of these is where state parties select delegates directly in party caucuses. In the second process, state parties use precinct-level caucuses to choose delegates to district conventions, which then choose delegates to state conventions where national delegates are selected. Finally, state parties may choose delegates in one stage at a state party convention. In each of these processes, caucus, caucus/convention, and convention, grassroots activists can control party meetings with a small number of participants (Usher 2000). By mobilizing Christians to attend precinct party caucus meetings, the Christian Coalition succeeded in taking control of state delegates to the national convention in states with permeable procedures. In these states, far-right delegates could ascend to positions of power without making concessions to more moderate groups. The Christian Coalition also formed alliances with other like-minded groups like the antifeminist Concerned Women for America (CWA), founded in 1979 by stay-at-home Christian mothers and home schoolers (Rozell and Wilcox 1996). Built through women’s prayer groups and bible study groups, CWA grew quickly and became involved in litigation and national politics (Rohlinger 2002, 2004). Another ally was Focus on the Family, the national umbrella organization for thirty-five stateaffiliated family policy councils. Led by James Dobson, a radio minister whose program was broadcast on more than 4000 stations, Focus on the Family had a staff of more than 1300 people, a $78 million budget, and a mailing list of 2.5 million (Wilcox 2000). Both organizations held conferences, workshops, and conventions; graded candidates based on their voting records; sponsored voter registration drives in churches; and provided activists for state caucuses and conventions. Reed also created the Catholic Alliance to strengthen political ties with conservative Catholics but never succeeded in winning Catholic support to any significant extent (Oldfield 1996; Rohlinger 2004). Although Catholic leaders are deeply conservative on abortion, they are considerably more liberal on social

252


and economic issues and oppose many positions taken by the Christian Coalition (Appleby 1997). The 1992 presidential election was a watershed in the ascendance of religious conservatives. At the Republican convention, more than 300 Christian delegates helped shape the party platform (Regnerus, Sikkink, and Smith 1999). Christian Right leaders were also given prominent billing on the program, with Jerry Falwell declaring a religious war ‘for the soul of America’ and Pat Robertson condemning the Democratic Party candidate, Bill Clinton, for his ‘radical plan to destroy the traditional family’ (quoted in Oldfield 1996: 89). Yet, Bush only received 62 per cent of the white evangelical vote, and turnout among evangelicals was low overall. He had broken his promise not to raise taxes and had invited gay rights leaders to attend the signing of the Hate Crimes Bill. The Democratic Party candidate, Bill Clinton, won by a narrow margin (Oldfield 1996). 9.4.3 Abortion Politics and Health Security Clinton’s victory was a stunning blow for the pro-life movement. Prolifers had won a victory with the 1989 Supreme Court decision in the case of William Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. Webster upheld a restrictive Missouri law that prohibited the use of public funds for abortions except to save a woman’s life, required that a fetal viability test be performed if a woman was at least 20 weeks pregnant, and stated that human life begins at conception. As Webster opened the door to further restrictions on abortion, religious groups immediately introduced state legislation to test the new limits (Tribe 1990; O’Connor, Orloff, and Shaver 1999). These gains were threatened by Clinton who backed a proposal to repeal the Hyde amendment entirely and supported the Freedom of Choice Act, which prohibited restrictions on third-trimester abortions and 24-hour waiting periods. The Clinton administration also overturned parental consent requirements and signed the Freedom of Access to Abortion Clinic Entrances into law. However, when Clinton sought to fulfill his campaign promise for universal health care, his pro-choice stance on abortion became an impediment. Clinton’s Health Security plan would have guaranteed universal coverage through a complex arrangement that included a National Health Board and regional purchasing alliances. It would have also given the large health maintenance organizations a central role in health care financing (Quadagno 2004, 2005). A key controversy concerned the inclusion


253

of abortion under ‘pregnancy-related’ services. Health Security would require all health plans to cover abortion, effectively nullifying the Hyde Amendment and the laws of thirty-seven states that restricted state funding of abortion. It would also cap rate increases in health insurance premiums, a provision that pro-life forces feared could lead to health care rationing or the withholding of care or even infanticide and euthanasia. Christian right activists used the abortion issue to link moral values to antistatist positions. As Wanda Franz (1994a: 3), the president of NRLC at the time, warned Children would grow up finding out that their siblings were killed and that they themselves could have been killed, too, because the government’s health plan offered their mothers abortion as an ‘option.’ Mothers would find themselves under pressure to abort their children because the bureaucrats administrating (it) will be under pressure to save money by avoiding more costly services for birth.

Ralph Reed (1994: 29), head of the Christian Coalition, also linked abortion to broader conservative issues, claiming that ‘the Clinton plan is really a Trojan horse for a not-so-hidden agenda to expand government bureaucracy, pay for abortions with tax dollars, and promote a radical social agenda.’ Health Security posed a conflict for the Catholic Church. In 1981, the American Catholic Bishops had published a pastoral letter citing Pope John XXII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris, which listed ‘medical care among those basic human rights which flow from the sanctity and dignity of human life. . . . ’ Catholics ‘had a responsibility to contribute to the development of a just and humane national health policy.’11 The letter had warned, however, that Catholic institutions should not permit practices that violated Catholic teaching, particularly regarding abortion. Because Health Security included abortion services, the bishops initiated a letterwriting campaign opposing that feature of the bill. In testifying on behalf of the Catholic Bishops of the United States, Helen Alvare explained We believe that the fundamental right to health care is grounded in the right to life, a right of all human beings regardless of age, sex or condition of dependency. True healthcare reform, therefore, could never promote attacks on life itself. Tragically, the administration’s plan, by including abortion as a mandated benefit, undermines(s) health reform at its root . . . abortion advocates . . . have

11

“Health and Health Care,” A Pastoral Letter of the American Catholic Bishops, Nov. 19, 1981, United States Catholic Conference, pp. 5, 11.

254


not hesitated to burden the entire momentum for health care reform with their agenda.12

The Southern Baptist Convention also vehemently opposed including abortion in health care reform. A the Convention’s Director for biomedical and life issues, Ben Mitchell warned, (B)ecause of our historically attested and committed opposition to public funding for elective abortion, the Southern Baptist Convention is prepared to marshal as many of our resources as necessary to oppose vigorously any health plan that includes coverage. . . . This is such a critical concern for us that we are prepared to oppose any reform which is otherwise excellent if it includes coverage for elective abortions.13

Concerned Women for America echoed these views, calling on Clinton to ‘protect religious freedom, defend the sanctity of all life,’ born and unborn, and ‘protect marriage and the home.’14 Religious conservatives launched a massive campaign against Health Security, lobbying legislators, distributing postcards and letters through churches, and developing a national media campaign (Hardisty 1999). The Christian Coalition alone spent $1.4 million to defeat the measure. By the spring of 1994, Clinton’s plan was dead. Its demise is usually attributed to the opposition of the health insurance industry and small business organizations, who hired thousands of lobbyists and public relations firms, and spent more than $140 million to kill it (Quadagno 2004, 2005; West and Loomis 1999). However, the significance of religious conservatives in stirring up grassroots opposition should not be underestimated. In the 1994 congressional elections, the Christian Coalition organized a Road to Victory plan (Diamond 1995). Thirty-eight per cent of evangelicals who attended church on a regular basis reported being urged to vote for Republican candidates by church leaders (Rozell and Wilcox 1996). 12

13

14

“Hearings on Women’s Health,” Testimony of Helen Alvare, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 2nd Session, January 26, 1994, 171. “Hearings on Women’s Health,” Testimony of C. Ben Mitchell, Director for Biomedical and Life Issues, Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 2nd Session, January 26, 1994, 186. An open letter to President Clinton, Concerned Women of America, USA Today, January 25, 1994, p. 5A.


255

In Oklahoma, a state where 50 per cent of voters were biblical literalists, the Christian Coalition distributed more than 100,000 voter guides, reporting candidates’ views on tax increases, gun control, school prayer, and tax funding for abortions. Republicans swept the offices of governor and lieutenant governor, picked up seats in the state legislature, and won a 7–1 majority in the House. All five of Oklahoma’s Republican House members and both Senators received strong backing from evangelicals (Bednar and Hertzke 1995: 11–13). The NRLC also worked to defeat pro-choice politicians in both parties. In all, religious conservatives gained control of eighteen state Republican parties and were influential in thirteen more. Nationally, the Republican Party recaptured the Senate and broke the Democratic Party’s 40-year hold on the House of Representatives (Skocpol 1996). One-fourth of House Republicans claimed to be evangelicals. Of the 137 congressional candidates supported by the NRLC, 93 won: ‘Not a single pro-life incumbent governor or member of Congress was defeated by a pro-abortionist. Not one!’ (Franz 1994b: 3). 9.4.4 Reform of Aid to Families with Dependent Children Following the election, the new Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich (R-GA), announced he would bring to fruition the Republican Party’s ‘Contract with America’ (Diamond 1995). Gingrich would abolish the Department of Education (to punish teachers’ unions); cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and education; slash the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor; and enact a tough welfare reform bill. Reform of AFDC was the first priority. Out-of-wedlock births had increased from 5.3 per cent of all births in 1960 to 32.2 per cent by 199615 ; almost one-third of these births were to teenage mothers, and a disproportionate share were African American, a trend Republicans attributed to perverse incentives in AFDC. As Phyllis Schafly, the head of the conservative Eagle Forum, explained, AFDC was a ‘grossly unjust and immoral system . . . millions of people were taught that they were entitled to pick the pockets of law-abiding, taxpaying families if they met two conditions: they didn’t work and they were not married to someone who does work’ (1996: 1–2). 15

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1996. Indicators of Welfare Dependence and Well-Being: Interim Report to Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

256


The Christian Coalition supported many provisions of the Republican Contract with America but believed that it paid insufficient attention to moral issues. They responded with an alternative ‘Contract with the American Family’ that included a religious equality amendment to the Constitution; a family tax credit; spending cuts for the arts, humanities, and education (all institutions that subjected Christian children to secular humanist values); restrictions on abortion; and expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for two-parent households. The one priority on which there was clear agreement was AFDC reform. AFDC offended evangelicals’ basic moral values – that sex should take place within marriage and be tied to procreation, that the father should hold patriarchal authority in the family, and that children should be strictly disciplined (Oldfield 1996). In attacks with not-so-subtle racial messages about the black family, evangelicals argued that AFDC subsidized family breakup, encouraged promiscuity, and allowed men to shirk their familial responsibilities. AFDC reform would empower ‘private citizens to free themselves from dependency on government programs’ (Reed 1994: 10). For the next 2 years, the Christian Coalition gave welfare reform priority even over antiabortion activities. Members visited senators and their staffs and camped out in the Senate hallways during floor debates (Reese 2005). Seeking to bridge the conflicts with traditional Republicans that had fractured the party, Reed and other Christian leaders also met with heads of conservative think tanks to carve out positions and strategies. President Clinton had promised to ‘put an end to welfare as we know it’ during his 1992 presidential campaign. In his initial version of welfare reform, AFDC recipients would receive assistance for 2 years, then would have to find a job or ‘start earning their way through community service’ (DeParle 2004: 103). However, they would also receive medical insurance, child care, and job training. When the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a harsh welfare reform bill (HR 4) in March 1995, it contained no guarantee of health insurance or child care. Single mothers younger than age 18 years would be ineligible for any benefits, and states could prohibit payments to single mothers younger than age 21 years. A ‘family cap’ would deny additional payments to welfare recipients who bore a child while receiving benefits. These stringent provisions highlighted the conflicts between evangelicals and Catholics over social issues. The Christian Coalition proposed an approach to the poor that reflected a Calvinist ethic. The organization sought to end all cash, food, and housing assistance to any unmarried mother younger than 26 years and to require mothers with children older


257

than preschool age to work (DeParle 2004). The Christian Coalition also endorsed bonuses to poor mothers who married, ‘responsible fatherhood’ programs, and mandatory child support (Reed 1994: 10). Concerned Women of America agreed that these provisions would ‘break the cycle of dependency’ and demand ‘moral accountability’ from the poor (Reese 2005: 205).16 The Catholic Church took a stance more in keeping with Catholic moral values that those who were better off had a Christian responsibility to support the poor and that Catholics should pursue programs for the common good. Catholics feared that the provisions endorsed by the Christian Coalition would eliminate an important safety net for the poor. When Wisconsin enacted a state welfare program that became the blueprint for national welfare reform, the Catholic bishops declared that ‘calls for affirming personal responsibility must not become a signal to abandon the poor. . . . Welfare reform that is purely pragmatic, based only on reducing costs and that is conceived in isolation from the needed values of our whole society will not be fruitful’ (Yamane 2005: 2). Catholic Charities USA, the social service arm of the Catholic Church and the nation’s largest private social service network, had 1400 agencies and 272,000 staff and volunteers, and served 10.6 million people a year. Testifying on behalf of Catholic Charities, the Reverend Fred Kammer declared, We are opposed to a family cap provision as untested, dangerous and cruel. We oppose rigid lifetime limits for AFDC in the face of chronic and systemic unemployment. . . . The churches and charities, beginning with our own, say this would produce a tidal wave of hungry and homeless kids and moms, a torrent of newly abused children and profoundly wrong social and moral outcomes.17

When the Personal Responsibility Act passed in the House, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops noted, ‘We cannot support reform that . . . eliminates resources that have provided an essential safety net for vulnerable children.’18 16

17

18

Child support enforcement also won the support of liberal feminist groups such as the National Women’s Law Center and the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, which believed that fathers should be forced to support their children. Statement of Rev. Fred Kammer, President Catholic Charities USA, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives. 104th Congress, 1st Session, January 13, 1995, Part 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 714–717. U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 1995. Welfare Reform. Washington, DC: Office of Social Development and Peace.

258


The NRLC, too, charged that the family cap and ban on payments to teenagers would encourage abortion (Franz 1995a). Although AFDC did subsidize immoral and irresponsible behavior, the child could not be held accountable: ‘How can it be morally acceptable to punish the child, even execute him by abortion, for the sins of his parents?’ (Franz 1995b: 3). To pacify pro-life groups, the Republicans agreed to include a bonus to states that reduced illegitimate births without increasing abortion. The final measure that President Clinton signed into law on July 31, 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOA), replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). PRWOA converted AFDC into a program of block grants to the states at a fixed level of federal funding, eliminating the federally guaranteed entitlement to public assistance that had been in place since 1935 (Walker 1996; Gilbert 2002). It required welfare recipients to engage in work or training after 2 years. It also gave the states considerable latitude in determining how to allocate funds between cash benefits, child care, job training, and education, and in designing incentives and sanctions to motivate welfare recipients to work. Yet, PRWOA did not require states to provide education or job training to mothers displaced from welfare and allowed states to waive the work requirements. Although Congress was most concerned with the work provisions, evangelical Christians focused on ‘family values’ and the moral behavior of poor women. The ‘findings’ reported in the opening paragraph of the bill declared that marriage was ‘the foundation of a successful society,’ responsible parenthood was integral to successful child rearing, and the prevention of out-of-wedlock pregnancy was an ‘important government interest.’19 To this end PRWOA allocated $100 million to reward states that reduced illegitimate births and provided $50 million annually for abstinence education and marriage promotion programs. As a concession to pro-life groups, states were allowed to retain benefits for teen mothers at their discretion, but could refuse assistance to teenagers who were living on their own or to mothers who failed to cooperate in establishing paternity (Durham 2000; Reese 2005). A proviso was included that the abortion rate must not rise. The Christian Coalition also won a ‘charitable choice’ provision that allowed religious organizations to contract for service delivery on the same basis as other governmental providers. PRWOA further specified that neither the state nor the federal 19

H.R. 3734, Sec. 101. Findings.


259

government could require a faith-based organization to alter its internal governance or remove ‘religious art, icons, scripture or other symbols.’20 The conflict between evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church over the PRWOA provisions illustrates the fragility of the alliance that makes up the so-called Christian Right. Although religious conservatives may be unified on some moral issues, they have fundamental disagreements on how to use economic incentives and for what ends. These disagreements make it difficult for them to frame policy issues in ways that garner support among constituents with different beliefs and values. 9.4.5 Faith-Based Social Services When George W. Bush became president in 2000, he expanded charitable choice in controversial ways that resulted in a backlash against his administration, even among party regulars. In 2002, he signed two Executive Orders calling for the creation of a high-level White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and instructing five Cabinet departments to establish Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In announcing his decision, he noted that as part of welfare reform and efforts to address community problems such as drug addiction, the federal government and the states had already begun to collaborate with community and faith-based groups. He proposed expanding this collaborative effort by allowing successful faith-based and grassroots groups to compete for federal funds based on new regulations that would enable and expand the works of these organizations (Bush 2001). His initiative targeted three groups. The first were evangelical providers who seek to convert clients to their religious faith; the second were service providers, often clergy who treated clients by encouraging them to live up to moral values rather than using standard accepted practices; and the third were otherwise professional staff who provided services based in a house of worship. In many respects, the Bush administration’s faith-based initiative was carrying on a longstanding tradition in keeping with the historical tradition of volunteerism. This tradition had allowed federal support for day care for working mothers and community action programs, and currently included billions for organizations such as Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, and Lutheran Social Ministries. In the past, however, 20

H.R. 3734, Sec. 104. Services Provided by Charitable, Religious or Private Organizations.

260


regardless of the depth of religious conviction of program staff, the services themselves were secular, and religious convictions were hidden. Where the Bush program differed was in the transparency of religious commitment and the acceptance of proselytizing as a component of service receipt. Thus, liberals rightfully feared that it blurred the separation of church and state and created an opportunity for abuse and a potential for funds to flow in a biased way toward groups affiliated with one particular denomination or religious tradition. The faith-based initiative must also be considered from the broader issue of party competition. Republicans hoped that overt endorsement of vocal religious expression would solidify its evangelical base. In this sense, liberal critics correctly interpreted Bush’s orders as a payoff for the GOP’s white, conservative evangelical core. However, some of the religious conservatives whom the GOP was trying to woo were concerned about the impact of faith-based initiatives on the integrity of religious autonomy and feared excessive government entanglement in the affairs of religious institutions. Republicans also hoped their support for social services would attract African Americans, Hispanics, white ethnic Catholics, and white, upper-income suburban women who increasingly saw the GOP as too socially conservative. The initiative did receive some support from African Americans because it funded programs operated by inner-city black churches that primarily benefited the urban poor (Black, Koopman, and Ryden 2004). Some Democrats were also willing to support faith-based social programs as a way to demonstrate that the party was not hostile to religion (Black, Koopman, and Ryden 2004). By the end of Bush’s first term, however, continuing controversy over potential religious bias against staff and clients and the tolerance for proselytizing effectively stymied the faith-based initiative. 9.4.6 Christian Conservatives and Social Security Privatization During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush had proposed privatizing Social Security by diverting a portion of payroll tax revenues into private accounts. The ensuing debate provides additional evidence regarding the fragility of the evangelical/Republican alliance and the difficulty of tying moral values to fiscal issues. In his first term, consumed by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Bush made no mention of privatization. When he was reelected in 2004, however, he interpreted his victory as a mandate


261

to move forward. Given that evangelicals had helped defeat Clinton’s Health Security and supported Republicans on AFDC reform, Bush presumed that they would also back Social Security privatization. However, Bush was unenthusiastic about a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a key evangelical issue, and the Christian Coalition threatened to withhold support for his Social Security plan unless he rejected gay marriage. As a commentator for CWA’s monthly magazine, Family Voice, Robert Regier (2002:1), explained (Homosexual marriage) would also put a strain on a Social Security System that is already struggling to stay afloat. As it stands now, we barely have enough workers to support those collecting benefits. Adding more beneficiaries would help drive the last nail in the coffin on any chance that people under 40 will ever see a dime of Social Security when they retire.

Once Bush endorsed the amendment, the Christian Coalition made Social Security privatization its second highest priority (Phillips 2006). ‘President Bush wants Social Security reform to include turning President Roosevelt’s New Deal-era retirement program into a self-financing private investment accounts system which workers could own and control’ (Christian Coalition 2005:2). A feature article by Jessica Wadkins (1998:1) in Family Voice noted The Bible says we must be wise in our dealings – as shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves (Matt 10:16, NIV). God calls us to be good stewards of our resources. Therefore, we should encourage our legislators to privatize Social Security. We must ensure that our nation’s retirees will receive what has been promised to them. We must defuse this fiscal time bomb NOW!

In this case, however, moral issues did not mix readily with fiscal concerns. Polls showed that most Americans feared that privatization would destroy the safety net for the elderly poor and reduce income security for the middle class. A public opinion survey conducted after the 2000 election revealed that one of the main reasons Democratic presidential nominee, Al Gore, won 42 per cent of the evangelical Christian vote was his support for Social Security. The Social Security debate demonstrated the limitations of religious doctrine. Religion can ignite passions and move people to action, but it cannot provide an all-encompassing political framework. When universalistic welfare programs such as Social Security are attacked in the name of religion, religious support for an antiwelfare state agenda dwindles.

262


9.5 conclusion The United States was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state. The lack of a religious cleavage formalized in frozen party systems, coupled with an antipathy to a strong state, has allowed religious pluralism to flourish. As a result, the welfare state does not reflect a single religious tradition, but rather includes elements of both the Catholic concern with social justice and the Calvinist doctrine that the slothful poor should be forced to work. Over the past quarter-century, a social movement of Christian conservatives has helped frame welfare policy debates and reshape the political landscape more generally. Religious conservatives have influenced welfare state politics in the United States by defining policy debates in moral terms; penetrating deeply into the Republican Party machinery at the local, state, and national level; and forcing the Democratic Party to move in a conservative direction on social welfare issues. This does not mean, of course, that other factors, such as growing income inequality or rising antiimmigrant sentiment, have not also influenced welfare state debates, but only that religious beliefs have become a polarizing force. What most motivates conservative Christians of varying denominations are perceived threats to fundamental values, especially around issues concerning sex, child rearing, abortion, and the position of women. Wooed by the GOP, they have formed a sometimes uneasy coalition with traditional Republicans concerned about fiscal responsibility and national defense. The two-party system, which allows voters to either support the opposing party or drop out of politics altogether, has given Christian conservatives leverage within the Republican Party. If Republicans fail to take positions that mobilize conservative Christians, they risk losing important organizational resources. Church and ministry networks will not be mobilized, voter registration drives will not take place, and a valuable pool of volunteers for party work will not be available (Oldfield 1996). State variations in delegate selection processes have also given Christian conservatives the ability to insinuate themselves deeply into local and state party organizations and propel their candidates to victory and leadership positions within the Republican Party, often at the expense of traditional Republicans. Yet, despite their apparent influence and sometimes raucous presence, the Christian conservative movement has not fundamentally reshaped the welfare state. The deep structure of work-related social insurance programs and means-tested benefits for the poor remains firmly entrenched.


263

In the latter case, a resurgence of the Calvinist ethic associated particularly with evangelicals has resulted in more rigid eligibility requirements in TANF, but Social Security maintains strong popular support, and the alliance with Catholics is frayed, if not broken entirely. What this suggests is that welfare states have enduring characteristics, rooted in deeper values, which are not readily changed by short-lived movements of either the Right or the Left. References Appleby, Scott (1997), Catholics and the Christian Right: An Uneasy Alliance, in Corwin Smidt and James Penning (eds), Soujourners in the Wilderness: The Christian Right in Comparative Perspective, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 93–114. Bednar, Nancy, and Allen Hertzke (1995), The Christian Right and Republican Realignment in Oklahoma, PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (1): 11–15. Black, Amy, Douglas Koopman, and David Ryden (2004), Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Blanchard, Dallas (1995), The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Rise of the Religious Right, New York: Twayne. Bruce, Steve (1990), Modernity and Fundamentalism: The New Christian Right in America, British Journal of Sociology 41 (4): 477–496. Burke, W.M. (1908), The Anti-Saloon League as a Political Force, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science November: 27–37. Burns, Gene (1992), The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bush, George W. (2001, January), Rallying the Armies of Compassion, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC: The White House, 1–26. Calhoun-Brown, Allison (2000), Upon This Rock: The Black Church, Nonviolence, and the Civil Rights Movement, PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (2): 168–174. Chalfant, Harry (1923), The Anti-Saloon League – Why and What?, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science September: 279–283. Christian Coalition (2005), Christian Coalition of America’s Agenda for the 109th Congress, June 19, 2005. Available at: www.cc.org/issues.cfm. Crawford, Alan (1980), Thunder on the Right: The ‘New Right’ and the Politics of Resentment, New York: Pantheon. DeParle, Jason (2004), American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. New York: Viking. Derickson, Alan (2005), Health Security for All, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Diamond, Sara (1995), Roads to Dominion: Right Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States, New York: Guilford Press. Durham, Martin (2000), The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservativism, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

264


Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth (1994), Selling Free Enterprise, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Franz, Wanda (1994a), The REAL Health Care Crisis Created by the Clinton Health Proposal, National Right to Life News February 3: 3. Franz, Wanda (1994b), Reflections on a Political Earthquake, National Right to Life News December 13: 3. Franz, Wanda (1995a), The State of the Union: The Pro-Life View, National Right to Life News February 3: 3. Franz, Wanda (1995b), Welfare Reforms Must Not Increase Abortion Rates, National Right to Life News March 16: 3. Gilbert, Neil (2002), Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility, New York: Oxford University Press. Guth, James L. (1995), South Carolina: The Christian Right Wins One, PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (1): 8–11. Hacker, Jacob, and Paul Pierson (2005), Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hardisty, Jean (1999), Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers, Boston: Beacon Press. Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris (2004), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Layman, Geoffrey (1997), Religion and Political Behavior in the United States: The Impact of Beliefs, Commitment and Affiliation from 1980 to 1994, Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (2): 288–316. Leege, David C. (1992), Coalitions, Cues, Strategic Politics and the Staying Power of the Religious Right, or Why Political Scientists Ought to Pay Attention to Cultural Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics June: 198–204. Lienesch, Michael (1982), Right-Wing Religion: Christian Conservativism as a Political Movement, Political Science Quarterly 97 (3): 403–425. Lipset, Seymour Martin (1996), American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, New York: Norton. Maclean, Nancy (1994), Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manza, Jeff, and Clem Brooks (1997), The Religious Factor in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1960–1992, American Journal of Sociology 103 (1): 38– 81. Maxwell, Carol (2002), Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning, Motivation, and Direct Action, New York: Cambridge University Press. McAdam, Doug (1996), The Framing Function of Movement Tactics: Strategic Dramaturgy in the American Civil Rights Movement, in Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives of Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 338–355. McAdam, Doug (1999), Political Process and Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morgan, Kimberly (2006), Working Mothers and the Welfare State, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.


265

Morone, James (2003), Hellfire Nation: Morality in American Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morris, Aldon D. (1999), A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks, Annual Review of Sociology 25: 517–539. O’Connor, Julia, Ann Orloff, and Sheila Shaver (1999), States, Markets and Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oldfield, Duane (1996), The Right and the Righteous: The Christian Right Confronts the Republican Party, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Phillips, Kevin (2006), American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, London: Viking. Quadagno, Jill (1988), The Transformation of Old Age Security, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Quadagno, Jill (1994), The Color of Welfare, New York: Oxford University Press. Quadagno, Jill (2004), Why the US Has No National Health Insurance: Stakeholder Mobilization against the Welfare State, 1945–1996, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 45 (Extra Issue): 25–44. Quadagno, Jill (2005), One Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance, New York: Oxford University Press. Reed, Ralph (1994), What Do Religious Conservatives Really Want?, in Michael Cromartie (ed), Disciples and Democracy: Religious Conservatives and the Future of American Politics, Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1–31. Reese, Ellen (2005), Backlash against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present, Berkeley: University of California Press. Regier, Robert (2002, February 27), The Siren Song of Going Along: Sen. Johnson Examines Special Rights for Homosexuals. in Family Voice. Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America. Available at: www.cultureandfamily.org/ articledisplay.asp?id=461&department=CFI&categoryid=cfreport. Regnerus, Mark, David Sikkink, and Christian Smith (1999), Voting with the Christian Right: Contextual and Individual Patterns of Electoral Influence, Social Forces 77 (4): 1375–1401. Reichley, A. James (1981–1982), The Conservative Roots of the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan Administrations, Political Science Quarterly 96 (4): 537–550. Reichley, A. James (1986), Religion and the Future of American Politics, Political Science Quarterly 101 (1): 23–47. Rohlinger, Deana (2002), Framing the Abortion Debate: Organizational Resources, Media Strategies, and Movement–Countermovement Dynamics, The Sociological Quarterly 43 (4): 479–507. Rohlinger, Deana (2004), Getting into Mass Media: A Comparative Analysis of Social Movement Organizations and Mass Media Outlets in the Abortion Debate, Dissertation thesis, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine. Rohlinger, Deana (2006), Friends and Foes: Media, Politics and Tactics in the Abortion War, Social Problems 53 (4): 537–561. Rohlinger, Deana, and David Meyer (2005), Framing Abortion Globally: Transnational Framing of Access to Abortion in the United States, England,

266


and Ireland, in Lee Ann Banaszak (ed), U.S. Women’s Movement in a Dynamic and Global Perspective, New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 197–214. Rozell, Mark J., and Clyde Wilcox (1996), Second Coming: The Strategies of the New Christian Right, Political Science Quarterly 111 (2): 271–294. Schafly, Phyllis (1996), Welfare: Fraud and Failure, The Phyllis Schafly Report, February: 1–2. Shibley, Mark A. (1998), Contemporary Evangelicals: Born-Again and World Affirming, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 558: 67–87. Skocpol. Theda (1996), Boomerang, New York: W.W. Norton. Sombart, Werner (1906 [1976]), Why Is There No Socialism in America?, White Plains, NY: Sharpe. Stevens, Beth (1988), Blurring the Boundaries: How the Federal Government Has Influenced Welfare Benefits in the Private Sector, in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol (eds), The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 52–77. Szymanski, Ann-Marie (2003), Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tocqueville, Alexis (1945), Democracy in America, New York: A. A. Knopf. Tribe, Laurence H. (1990), Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, New York: W.W. Norton. Usher, Douglas (2000), Strategy, Rules and Participation: Issue Activists in Republican National Convention Delegations, 1976–1996, Political Research Quarterly 53: 887–903. Wadkins, Jessica (1998, April), Social Security: Limping into the 21st Century, in Family Voice, Washington, DC: Concerned Women for America. Available at: www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1620&department=CWA&categoryid= misc. Wald, Kenneth D., and Allison Calhoun-Brown (2007), Religion and Politics in the United States, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Wald, Kenneth D., Dennis Owen, and Samuel S. Hill, Jr. (1988), Churches as Political Communities, American Political Science Review 82 (2): 531–548. Walker, Martin (1996), The US Presidential Election, 1996, International Affairs 72 (4): 657–674. West, Darrell M., and Burdette Loomis (1999), The Sound of Money: How Political Interests Get What They Want, New York: W.W. Norton. Wilcox, Clyde (2000), Onward Christian Soldiers: The Religious Right in American Politics, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Yamane, David (2005), The Catholic Church in State Politics, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Young, Michael P. (2002), Confessional Protest: The Religious Birth of U.S. National Social Movements, American Sociological Review 67 (5): 660–688.

10 Religious Doctrines and Poor Relief: A Different Causal Pathway Sigrun Kahl

The contributions to this volume make a comprehensive argument about how religion has helped shape the Western welfare state, aiming to supersede an older, fragmentary line of reasoning that focused on the effects of Catholic doctrine on social policy via the influence of Christian Democratic parties. This chapter adds to Manow’s and van Kersbergen’s (Chapter 1, this volume) account of welfare state regimes as formulas of political compromise between different electoral and societal groups by presenting evidence for a different pathway of how religion may have generated political consensus and affected the emergence of different welfare states – through the institutionalization of religious doctrines into countries’ poor relief systems, and the secularization of these institutions. Comparing how Christian social doctrines shaped poor relief in Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist/Reformed Protestant countries, this chapter looks at how early modern religious ideas affected the institutions of poverty policy in Europe. This perspective is compatible with, and complements, the actor- and cleavage-centered perspective advanced in the other contributions to this volume. Religion also works its way into politics by shaping a country’s political tradition, and religiously rooted ideas become part of the accepted spectrum of plausible policy options. As a result, this ‘indirect’ influence channel of the religious factor may remain virtually unnoticed, and the impact of religion may be hard to detect. Still, in this chapter, I show that in the domain of poor relief there exist important institutional continuities and systematic differences between countries that are driven by the institutionalized (and secularized) principles of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist social doctrines.

267

268

Kahl

My argument is twofold: 1) Christian social doctrines are embedded in the secular institutions of poor relief (which are today called ‘welfare’ or ‘social assistance’), reflecting and reinforcing particular values and norms regarding poverty, work, and charity; and 2) social doctrines also affect the churches’ preference formation and political strategies, which can be seen in the churches’ stances toward state involvement in poor relief. In the first part of the chapter, I show that religious norms shaped early modern poor relief. I argue that medieval charity was uniform across Europe, and that the Reformation was the ‘critical juncture’ in how welfare states addressed poverty as it differentiated the general Christian postulate that it is a duty of society to support those members who are in need. Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist social reformers each designed different solutions to the underlying tension between the principles of ‘feeding one’s poor brothers’ and ‘requiring the paupers to work for their own bread.’ Although no country fully resolved this tension, they all narrowed down the trade-off between welfare and work. Catholic countries, such as France, Italy, and Spain, have been closest to the ‘feed the poor’ postulate. Countries where Calvinism and the Reformed Protestant denominations that developed from Calvinism were historically politically dominant, such as the Netherlands, England, and the United States, have been closest to the work postulate. Lutheran countries, such as Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, have sought to balance feeding the poor with a strong socialized obligation to work. These institutionalized social doctrines have also affected the organizing principles of modern social assistance and the timing of its introduction. Poor relief was originally organized according to religious norms. When societies became more secularized and the need for rulers to rely on church legitimization subsided, countries had already organized poor relief according to these principles for hundreds of years, jointly enforced by religious and secular authorities. Kings and democratic governments alike seek to minimize the cost of ruling, which is why they hold on to institutions that are legitimate, reasonably successful at addressing a policy problem, and flexible enough to respond to new challenges. Thus, successful reforms must be consistent with a country’s policy tradition. This is an important part of the explanation for why the institutions of poverty policy have evolved without departing dramatically from patterns established centuries earlier. The second part of my argument seeks to spell out some potential implications of my findings about the role of religious doctrines for the actorcentered approach in this volume. As the preceding chapters convincingly

Religious Doctrines and Poor Relief

269

argue, the church adjusts its political strategy to the challenges and opportunities created by an expanding state. Why particular state–church balances emerge and how they change the political opportunity structure can well be explained within the Rokkanian theoretical framework adopted in this volume. What a focus on social doctrines can add to such accounts is to examine and differentiate the churches as political actors in that it can help understand preference formation and thus account for observable differences in churches’ political strategies. Looking at churches’ stances toward state involvement and engaging with a rational choice explanation of church provision for the poor (Gill 1998), I suggest that the interests and preferences of religious actors are not identical across different denominations, and that they change over time as churches adapt to the increasing state regulation of social welfare.

10.1 lutheran, calvinist, and catholic poor relief Ensuring that no citizen lacks the basic means of subsistence is the most basic concern, and it is the historical core of the welfare state. But what exactly should be done with the poor? Should they be fed, clothed, and healed (i.e., should society ensure their welfare?). Or should they be forced to work for their own welfare? This is an old question that remains painfully unsolved across the mature welfare states of the west, as evidenced today in the periodically resurfacing debates about poverty, laziness, work, and the duty of society to provide versus the duty of the individual to support him- or herself. The medieval unity of poverty and work alleviated this tension; however, it was the glorification of the poor as ‘God’s best friends’ that rendered this tension entirely insignificant. ‘Work’ was considered a fatiguing and painful effort required of the poor and powerless in exchange for their subsistence.1 Those who had to work to survive were by definition poor. Being able to support oneself without working was a good thing. Thus, although the sloth was not socially desired, and poverty was associated

1

The Latin laborare denoted ‘to strain oneself, to suffer, to be poor, to work.’ In 12thcentury French, travail meant the ‘état d’une personne qui souffre, qui est tourmentée; activité pénible.’ A French word for both poverty and work is besoin, and its female form is besogne (Petit Robert; Dictionnaire de l’académie française 1877). In German (arabeit, arebeit), work meant pain, toil, effort, punishment, and affliction (Ethymolo¨ gisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache). The English labour was the ‘exertion of the faculties of the body or mind, especially when painful or compulsory; bodily or mental toil’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

270

Kahl

with powerlessness, manual labor, and social problems, the dominant societal program was not to bring the poor to work. However, it was the glorification of the poor as images of Christ that ultimately determined the central position of the poor in medieval society. The most telling effect of this view of poverty was a large share of ‘voluntary poverty’ – orders and individuals who gave up all their possessions to be closer to Christ (Geremek 1991). Escaping purgatory and achieving grace in the afterlife were the central concerns of the medieval Christian. The indulgences were not just a common institution of the Middle Ages; their organizing principles were also characteristic of the institutions of poor relief in that both counted as good works and enabled the donors to make up for their sins, thus buying off time from purgatory. Because of their closeness to Christ, prayers from the poor were the most effective way to ensure entrance to heaven in a world oriented toward the afterlife. There was a sense of urgency – before one’s death (and who knew that date?!), one had to accumulate enough good works that would weigh heavier than one’s sins so one could gain entrance into heaven and escape fire and brimstone. The medieval church’s task, then, was to mediate between the rich and the poor. The rich were to donate to the church and give alms in person; the poor were to pray for the donors’ souls. As a result, a sinner could be ‘saved from hell by throwing a loaf of bread to a beggar’ as ‘the alms bestowed today would be repaid a thousand-fould, when the soul took its dreadful journey amid rending briars and scourching flames’ (Tawney 1990 [1922]: 259). Between one-third and one-fourth of church income went to support for the poor, who were to accept their destitute situation.2 Municipalities started to regulate begging well before the Reformation, both as a reaction to the social problem and to the public nuisance, and out of the Christian duty to care for the ‘truly’ poor. For instance, societal attitudes toward giving to the wandering beggars were ambiguous. Beyond fears that they might spread disease and difficulties in verifying who was truly poor, people wanted assurance that the poor would actually pray in return for the alms. Thus, municipalities often required a ‘beggars’ exam’ to ensure that beggars were at least competent to pray by asking them to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostle’s Creed, and the Ten Commandments (e.g., Ruger 1932; Waldau 1789). ¨ 2

See Geremek (1991). The activities of the medieval church seem to contradict Gill’s (1998) argument that the church neglects the poor when it has a religious monopoly.


271

10.1.1 Lutheranism: All Should Eat, All Should Work The Reformation profoundly changed Christian charity. Luther rejected the existing moral economy of charity because of his view of charity and the poor, and his concept of work as a calling. Indulgences and almsgiving were one and the same problem for Luther, because both enabled people to buy themselves off from their sins through ‘investing’ in good works. Christian truth was to be found only in Scripture (sola scriptura). Only by faith could humans be justified (sola fide), and God’s gratia amissibilis could always be regained by true faith. All human works were sins, as long as the person performing them was a sinner. According to Luther, generous donations could not prevent sinners from eternal damnation, and the poor were not justified simply by living in poverty. Luther thus denounced central principles of medieval social life and fundamentally altered the position of the poor in society. In his preface to the Liber Vagatorum, a famous 16th-century guidebook about fraudulent begging techniques, he takes great pains to convince the reader that ‘investing’ in indulgences and in the poor does not spare the donor from the purgatory. Rather, these practices reflect just ‘how mightily the Devil rules the world.’ Thus, the poor beggar is no longer an image of Christ. To the very contrary – the beggar is an image of the devil, and Luther’s mission is to ‘help mankind to be wise, and on the look out for him, viz. the Devil’ (Luther 1529 [1932]: 63). The concept of work changed in two respects. First, Luther raised the status of work immensely by construing it as an intrinsically positive activity that was pleasing to God. The Lutheran approach promoted a culture in which ‘daily work had its own value and gave social status’ independently of its material rewards (Thorkildsen 1997: 140). Second, work no longer equaled poverty, but instead was seen as a way to overcome poverty, which, in turn, became associated with nonwork and laziness. Salvation did not depend on the kind of work a person was doing. The poor peasant’s work was worth as much as that of the wealthy artisan. The pursuit of material gain beyond individual needs, however, was reprehensible. Finally, the idea of universal entitlement to God’s grace has egalitarian consequences as the ideal of ‘“a priesthood of all believers” promoted a culture of equality, where obvious wealth and large social differences were not acceptable because fundamentally all individuals are equal and have the same worth’ (Thorkildsen 1997:159). Thus, to be included in society, the poor have to work. Once they do, they have a

272

Kahl

right to a minimum standard of living; if they cannot work or if there is no work, they should still be supported. Together with Karlstadt, Luther wrote the first Protestant poor law for the city of Wittenberg (1520/1521), which became the blueprint for poor laws in the Lutheran world. This law established a common chest where donations were collected, to be distributed by the municipality, as ‘every town and village should know their own paupers, as written down in the Register, and assist them’ (Luther 1529 [1932]: 65). The principles of this legislation, including the common chest (later, a poor tax), secular regulation and localized administration in which the priests were involved, and outdoor relief became typical for Lutheran systems. ‘Outdoor relief’ means that the registered poor received monetary allowances without having to enter an institution, such as the workhouse or the hospital, where they would be supported in kind (‘indoor relief’). This system institutionalized a public responsibility for supporting the poor and, compared to the Catholic and Calvinist cases, came closest to formalized eligibility determination. By the early 17th century, most Lutheran cities had transformed reactive medieval begging edicts that had negatively regulated begging into active poor laws that formulated a positive responsibility of the secular authorities to care for the poor. Relief rigorously enforced the distinction between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ and tended to be restricted to the residential, authentic, and morally upright poor, whereas the able bodied were to work. In Luther’s famous words, ‘[i]t is not seemly that one man should live in idleness on the labours of his fellows’ (Luther 1520 [1962]: 461). As a complement to outdoor relief, Lutheran cities adopted the workhouse from Calvinist cities. The workhouse was to deter the ablebodied poor from claiming relief and to remind them demonstratively of their duty to support themselves. At the same time, it was an institution of punishment and correction for those who were socially deviant, often also serving as an ordinary jail. However, nowhere was the workhouse so widespread as in England, the Netherlands, and the United States. Lutheran poor relief was secularized and la¨ıcized, but this system was built with the collaboration and within the framework of existing church institutions. The churches remained the smallest administrative unit in poor relief. In the course of the evolution of the Lutheran state churches, the parish priests became local representatives of the rulers, enabling rulers to use an already existing local infrastructure. For example, the 1522 Nuremberg poor law was read from the pulpit, and the chest was set up inside the church and supervised by the priest. Along these lines,


273

Lutheran clergy preached loyalty to the king, treated tax evasion as a sin, and supervised the collection of poor taxes (Gustafsson 2000; Knudsen 2000). Public responsibility for poor relief was unquestioned, and the secularization of social welfare was a smooth – and slow – process. In Sweden and Denmark, the kings sought to regulate nationally local practice without establishing a national system, ordering municipalities to look after their own poor, but they made contributions to the hospitals and outdoor relief. In 1522, Christian II of Denmark required that the worthy poor be separated from the unworthy. In 1539, Christian III (who had attended the Diet of Worms in 1521) followed German precedent by establishing common chests in every diocese (Brinker 1994). In 1630, poor relief was reorganized in Copenhagen, begging was forbidden, and the deserving poor were to receive quarterly alms from the overseers (Riis 1997). Stockholm introduced poor rates in 1663 (Grell and Cunningham 1997: 23–26). The Danish Poor Law of 1708 increased the state’s involvement by cofinancing poor relief through taxation of the local peasantry. The law also stipulated that the poor be classified into three classes – those who were unable to sustain themselves at all, orphans, and those who were able to work. Indoor relief was to be given to the sick and the weak. An 1803 law deemed poor relief the local responsibility of the parishes, and the priests became the chairmen of the poor relief commissions (Bonderup 2002: 173–176; Knudsen 2003). In 1849, the right to poor relief was written into the Danish constitution, stipulating that ‘he who cannot provide for himself or his own, and whose care is not the responsibility of anyone else, is entitled to receive aid from the state.’3 Germany is an interesting case because the process of religious differentiation in the course of the Reformation comes quite close to a natural experiment. Beginning in the late 1520s, the process of reform moved from the local to the regional level. By the mid-16th century, the three leading states of the Reformation (Saxony, Hesse, and Wurttemberg) ¨ had already implemented statewide reforms. By the late 16th century, Lutheran princes across Germany asserted control over poor relief as part of their general police powers (Gorski 2003: 128–129), and in 1794, poor relief became the responsibility of the Prussian state (Allgemeines Landrecht). With this law, the state committed itself ‘to provide for the nutrition and feeding of those citizens who are unable to provide for 3

See Lutzen (2003). Translated from Danish by Mikkel Krenchel. ¨

274

Kahl

themselves, and who are unable to receive provisions from others who are bound to provide care in accordance with other special laws’ (quoted from Dross 2002: 72). Like their Scandinavian counterparts, in the 1808 ¨ Stadteordnung, Prussian municipalities were compelled to establish communal authorities on a uniform basis. As a result, relief efforts increased dramatically. For instance, although in 1750, one in eighty-two Berlin residents got poor relief, in 1801, the ratio was one to fourteen (74). Territorial differences in poor relief practices were still significant as late as the end of the 19th century, 20 years after unification under Prussian rule. The share of the population in Lutheran cities that received public relief was much higher than in the Catholic and mixed-denominational cities. In 1892, in Lutheran Berlin, 6.7 per cent of the population received outdoor relief. In the Lutheran cities of Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart, the percentage was similar, 6 per cent and 6.5 per cent, respectively. In contrast, in Catholic Cologne, 3.8 per cent received outdoor relief, and in Catholic Munich, the share was only 1.2 per cent (Levine 1988: 45). 10.1.2 Calvinism: Work for Your Own Bread Right from the onset and in contrast to Luther, ‘Calvin found capitalism acceptable, as a calling’ (Troeltsch 1981 [1911]: 643), but Calvinism’s view of poverty took longer to manifest itself. Following in Luther’s footsteps, Calvin excoriated begging and instead insisted that beggars should work, and that indulgences and almsgiving were emblematic of the corruption of the Church. He condemned those who ‘live by others’ instead of ‘labouring with their own hands’ as ‘no better than a violent man and a robber’ (Calvin 1989 [1536]: 11). Like Luther, Calvin stressed that people should give alms, ‘but not because charity is more meritorious’ than faith (Calvin 1989 [1559]: 126). Calvinism differed from Lutheranism in that both predestination and its marks – the ethics of worldly life – could be taken as an indication that the poor are damned and the rich are saved. Predestination states that God’s ‘unconditional election’ creates every human as either damned or saved prior to birth. The condemnation of the poor did not necessarily follow from this, and it was not explicit in Calvin’s writings. Calvinists, however, were searching for signs of damnation or salvation. The principle of understanding a morally rigorous worldly life and economic success as signs of election marks the last step in the emergence of a Calvinist moral in 17th-century England, Holland, and the United States (Borkenau 1980 [1934]: 154–161). To be sure, the rich could (only God knew)


275

still be damned, but wealth was a possible indicator of grace. Whereas in Lutheranism sinners could always regain God’s mercy if they were humble and believing, in Calvinism sins were black marks never to be erased. In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves. Thus the Calvinist, as it is sometimes put, himself creates his own salvation, or, as would be more correct, the conviction of it. But this creation cannot, as in Catholicism, consist in a gradual accumulation of individual good works to one’s credit, but rather in a systematic self-control which at every moment stands before the inexorable alternative, chosen or damned (Weber 1958 [1904/1905]: 115).

The Calvinist solution to the tension between the objectives of feeding one’s poor brother and forcing him to work for his food was to stress the latter. The exalted position of work, if ambiguous for Luther, was clear for Calvin. Work is an absolute duty, a spiritual end in itself, and the best way to please the Lord. God sought ‘to arouse us from sloth’ and ‘assures us that every labour which we undertake for the glory of his name shall not be in vain’ (Calvin 1989 [1559]: part ii, 126). Indeed, the laborer ‘is most like to God’ (quoted in Tawney 1990 [1922]: 23). Calvin also fundamentally changed the requirements on how people should work. Only systematic and constant self-control provided a feeling of security about one’s state of grace, in particular working in a disciplined and rational manner (Weber 1958 [1904/1905]: 70–88). Although the intent to bring the poor to work existed everywhere, the workhouse became programmatic only in the Calvinist/Puritan tradition because of the ‘elective affinity’ between the Calvinist view of poverty and the workhouse. The dominance of the workhouse is reflected in its early introduction and high numbers. It was the invention of Calvinist social reformers, with the first workhouse, the London Bridewell (1555), inspired by the Dutch Reformed Protestant communities in London. The first Continental workhouse was the Amsterdam Tuchthuis (1595). The German case is again instructive because of the differences between Catholic and Protestant territories. The first German workhouse was in Bremen (1609), where, from the 1540s on, the Reformation had assumed a distinctively Calvinist character. Catholic workhouses were founded late, remained few, and met considerable opposition, so that many of them had to soon be shut down again. In England, there were 200 workhouses in the 18th century, whereas there were just 63 workhouses in the German Lutheran territories (which includes cities and territories where Reformed Protestantism was influential), even though they had a

276

Kahl

considerably larger population. The Catholic regions of Germany had only five workhouses by the 18th century (Koln, Munster, Paderborn, ¨ ¨ Wurzburg, Passau) (Geremek 1991: 260; Ayaß 1992: 16–21, 25–31; ¨ Gorski 2003: 135). Settlers brought to the New World these Calvinist conceptions of poverty and work (Feagin 1975). The colonial population was overwhelmingly British and Calvinist/Reformed Protestant (Puritan, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican). The history of poor relief in the United States thus largely followed the English and Dutch precedents (Lacey 1953). The Dutch established the first workhouses in the 1650s in what is today New York City and Albany, to be followed by the English colonies (Huey 2001: 140). London’s Bridewell inspired the founding of a Bridewell in New York City in 1776 (Baugher 2001). All in all, there were about 2300 workhouses/poorhouses in the United States, some of which operated well into the second half of the 20th century. The able-bodied poor in these facilities were generally expected to work, and ‘inmates’ were under constant supervision and could not leave without permission (Wagner 2005). Catholic reformers rejected Lutheran outdoor relief because it rendered the giver–receiver relationship anonymous and did not guarantee that the needy actually received the alms. Calvinist reformers also rejected outdoor relief, but for a different reason: they argued that it pauperized recipients. Outdoor relief was considered a disincentive to the poor to develop work habits and improve themselves, and a system in which controlling, punishing and improving the behavior of the poor would be impossible. Because poverty was considered to be associated with sin, and poor relief was considered to cause laziness, true generosity required that the poor be set to work. The workhouse (‘indoor relief’) was so popular because, as Superintendent Trottier of the Rockingham County Farm in the United States said, ‘indoor relief’ ensured that only the deserving poor were supported and those ‘too lazy to care for themselves’ were not admitted so as to ‘in no way encourage indolence and pauperism’ (quoted from Wagner 2005: 39). In Catholic systems, the community had to support the poor, but it was a charity and not an entitlement. The Lutheran systems came closest to a right to relief (but denied recipients full citizenship). In the Calvinist systems, the poor had to enter the workhouse. In England, a 1572 act, the 1723 Work House Test Act, and the 1834 Poor Law Report allowed support for ‘paupers’ only in the workhouse. As of 1820, Scottish


277

poor relief did not support anybody who was not disabled (Mitchinson 2002: 248f). Municipal outdoor relief was never a stable institution; was never endorsed as a societal responsibility; and was heavily attacked, sometimes completely abolished, and then occasionally reintroduced. For instance, following the Yates and Quincey reports, New York State and Massachusetts completely replaced outdoor relief with poorhouses in the 1820s. The reasoning was that the present poor laws ‘tend to encourage the sturdy beggar and profligate vagrant to become pensioners upon public funds.’ According to these reports, the poor law provisions ‘operate as so many invitations to become beggars’ and weaken the ‘desire of honest independence’ (Yates report; quoted in Wagner 2005: 9). By 1903, only 0.1 per cent of the population of New York City received outdoor relief (Munsterberg 1906: 26). ¨ Reality, however, differed somewhat from statute, both in England and the United States. Outdoor relief was, in fact, always important for those who could not work because it was much cheaper to administer for the parishes than the workhouse. In addition, there were never enough workhouses to accommodate all the able bodied, and the original intention of the poor law, that the different classes of the poor (sick, elderly, able bodied, children) be housed in separate buildings, was abandoned, and the ‘general mixed workhouse’ became more common. As a result of these developments, the ‘workhouse’ increasingly turned into a place for the sick, elderly, and infirm. The able-bodied poor only entered in times of economic depression (Crowther 2002: 213; Mitchinson 2002). Thus, the system de facto excluded able-bodied men from permanent relief (and this is still today the case in the United States). The workhouse was the ideal institutionalization of Calvinist doctrine that postulates the glorification of God not by prayer only, but by striving and laboring – ‘labore est orare.’ Only in the workhouse could the duty of industry be enforced and the danger of relaxing the incentive to work be avoided. Relief was to be so low and conditions so harsh that any work was more desirable and only the most destitute would ask for relief (less eligibility principle). Public assistance was to be restricted to the absolute minimum to keep wages low, a principle well captured in Young’s famous 1771 quote: ‘Every one but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious’ (quoted from Englander 1998: 1). There are numerous 17th- and 18th-century pamphlets that advance schemes for further developing the workhouse, often referring to the famous Thessalonians quote. Hartlib, for instance, wrote in 1650

278

Kahl

that ‘the law of God saith, “he that will not work, let him not eat.” This would be a sore scourge and smart whip for idle persons if . . . none should be suffered to eat till they had wrought for it’ (Tawney 1990 [1922]: 262). Calvinism thus created two classes of work – work as a calling for the elect, and work as punishment for the poor. Whereas Luther had said that any work is of equal value for God, Calvinism held that only disciplined and rational work (e.g., striving for profits) counted. Whereas in Lutheranism the state of grace was determined by faith, and in Catholicism good works counted toward a good afterlife, Calvinist predestination implied that salvation could not be achieved. Therefore, the signs of grace, such as the work ethic and wealth, assumed an important place in solving the resulting salvation panic of the Calvinist believer. According to Calvin, poor relief was to be part of the church’s ministry. In addition, covenant theology’s emphasis on independence and localism implied that relief should be funded by voluntary donations rather than the government. The antistatist position of Reformed Protestantism resembled Catholicism. Both viewed poor relief as a private and a church responsibility, but the defining principles behind this postulate differed. In late 19th-century terminology, Catholics stressed subsidiarity, and Calvinists stressed sovereignty in one’s own circles (Cox 1993: 66). The Calvinist/Puritan poor relief systems were ‘less centralized and definitely less laicized than their Lutheran analogues’ (Gorski 2003: 130). Church and private charities retained a key role in the administration of poor relief. The Dutch Poor Law of 1854, for example, ruled that poor relief was the responsibility of the churches. Only if the churches did not have sufficient funds was the municipal poor administration to step in (Gijswijt-Hofstra 2002: 269). Private charity was also an important way to prove and display election. In this sense, and in line with the importance of visible signs of grace, Calvinism kept the traditional ostentation of public giving. Whereas in the Netherlands only few city councils controlled relief administration and poor relief was largely in the hands of various private and church institutions, England developed a more secularized and centralized system with national poor relief legislation and local poor rates. As early as 1572, municipalities were required to establish a compulsory poor rate, and by the 17th century, poor rates were successfully introduced. However, the English state church was very different from the Lutheran state church in that its doctrine can (roughly speaking) be characterized as a blend of Catholic ritual in worship and church governance and Puritan Calvinist doctrine, under the political dominance of


279

Puritan Calvinism (as of the 1701 Act of Settlement, all kings were Protestant) (Gonzalez 1996: 72). Furthermore, the Anglican Church developed ´ later than the Lutheran churches and was soon challenged and partially dislodged by nonconformist sects also rooted in Calvinism (Grell and Cunningham 1997). Thus, the English system was relatively secularized but it reflected and reproduced Calvinist ideas about poverty and its relief. The English system also remained localized, with church and private charities retaining considerable influence over the collection and distribution of funds. Moreover, legislation tended to regulate poor relief negatively (e.g., by prohibiting outdoor relief and restricting poor relief to the poorhouses and the workhouses) and to provide a framework for local action (e.g., blueprints for the classification and institutionalization of the poor). As a result, the British Poor Law was ‘a tool of social policy of infinite variety and unlimited versatility’ (Fraser 1976: 32) that gave space to experiments such as the famous Speenhamland system (Polanyi 1957 [1944]). The content of English poor relief policies was not affected by the early introduction (at least on paper) of poor taxes. Contrary to the Lutheran countries, the poor laws did not positively formulate an ultimate state responsibility for the poor. Private Christian charity and voluntary organizations remained central actors (Lewis 1999: 13). Likewise, in the United States, the (national) state played only a small role, stepping in only rarely and with strictly limited powers (Levine 1988: 265). 10.1.3 Catholicism: Feed the Poor The Catholic Church rejected the Protestant view of poverty and in the course of the Counter-Reformation, Christian benevolence became an important part of Catholic renewal. The Council of Trent confirmed the traditional principles of poor relief and disapproved of the repression of begging. Because people were justified by faith in Christ and by a life of good works, almsgiving remained an individual act and begging was not forbidden (Battenberg 1991: 68f; Fairchilds 1976: 27; Pullan 1988: 200). Both Catholic rulers and church officials and the population opposed the secularization of poor relief. The fear was that a secular system would erase the divine benevolence of the giver. The differences between Catholic and Lutheran approaches were reflected in the heated controversies theologians fought from the 16th century onward about Catholic almsgiving, how to deal with beggars, the

280

Kahl

role of the Reformation, and whose system was more in line with the Gospel (Davis 1968: 217ff; Geremek 1991: 91, 147). In 19th-century Germany, Lutheran historians criticized the Catholic Church for not countering ‘undeserving’ poverty, particularly the ‘strong beggars,’ and for failing to develop criteria for the proper distribution of the alms, leaving troops of wandering beggars to grow into a ‘beggars plague’ (e.g., Uhlhorn and Aschrott 1859: 828). That is why Protestant poor relief was argued to have been mere ‘self-defense’ by the police against the dangerous nuisance of begging (919). Building on that critique, Lutheran social reformers developed their own version of poverty policy. The state was to protect the community from the ‘undeserving’ poor and to ensure all the help possible for the ‘truly needy’ (e.g., Aschrott et al. 1909). The Catholic side in turn chastised the Protestant approach, criticizing that ‘the feelings of voluntarily giving medieval Catholics were different from the feelings of today’s Protestants who must be forced to pay their taxes’ (my translation of Fosser 1889: 490). ¨ Catholic poor relief continued the relatively indiscriminate passing out of alms, stressing that ‘giving to the poor from one’s affluence is a moral duty, which, however, cannot be called for by the poor as a right’ (Fosser ¨ 1889: 567). The hospital was the major institutionalization of that principle, and it remained firmly in the hands of the church, monastic orders, lay confraternities, and pious foundations. Through personal alms giving, it guaranteed that the alms reached the recipient, ensuring the donors’ salvation. At the same time, it enabled the church and municipality to confine and control the poor, to separate men from women, and to teach them religion. When secular authorities did try to regulate begging in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, their declarations and edicts were similar to Protestant legislation in that they sought to force the able-bodied poor to work and to deport vagrants. Yet, whereas secular authorities in Protestant countries enforced these rules, the Catholic institutions of poor relief were not secularized, and there was thus little authority to enforce the legislation. Furthermore, attempts to force the poor to work were often met with plain resistance (e.g., Gutton 1971, 1974; Stolberg 2002). In Rome, Genoa, and Turin, for instance, the opposition to the workhouse was so great that the newly established workhouses had to be shut down. In Lucca and Siena, similar plans were not even realized (Gorski 2003: 135). Moreover, legislation usually did not go as far as in Protestant countries. For instance, begging was often only forbidden for wandering beggars but not the resident poor. Finally, much of the legislation was


281

not systematic but situational, reacting for instance to a strong increase in the number of beggars or to an epidemic. In Spain and Italy, the traditional institutions of charity were largely unaffected by the Reformation (Geremek 1991; Pullan 1988). Protestant ideas informed some reform proposals, but these never made it into legislation. In the tradition of Catholic caritas, helping the poor was a responsibility of the local congregation and should arise from compassion rather than legal force by the state. Relatives, friends, employers, and the church all felt individually responsible for the poor. France differed from its Catholic neighbors in making some attempt to forbid begging and to make the poor work or to even establish a ˆ Générale in Lyon (Davis public poor relief system, such as the Aumone 1968). However, these efforts were not consistent, and Catholic charity persisted (Metz 1985: 2). There was no coordinated supervisory system but a hodgepodge of local institutions. By the end of the ancien régime, Paris alone had about fifty hospitals for various groups of the poor, complemented by a large number of private institutions (Ramsey 2002: 282). ˆ The two most important institutions were the Hopitaux généraux and the ˆ de mendicité, royal workhouses that were introduced in the 18th Dépots ˆ were century to force able-bodied beggars to work. Although the Dépots a punitive policy on paper, there were simply no functioning institutions to enforce it. Catholic hospitals were not to pay off economically, nor were they simply places of punishment; instead, they were places of support, shelter, and medical care. The majority of the clientele were elderly, children, sick, disabled, and mentally ill (Metz 1985: 3, 7; Gorski 2003: 135). Further complicating the French case, many cities introduced centralized and partially secular poor relief systems. France also saw violent church–state conflicts during and after the French Revolution. The National Convention wanted a national poor relief system and introduced the principle of obligatory public assistance. The right to subsistence was written into the declaration of rights of the Jacobin Constitution in 1793 (Ramsey 2002: 288). However, although the state seized church property, it did not replace the hospitals and continued to pay the clergy to do the work. Thus, the institutions of poor relief changed ownership but were not in substance changed. Following the fall of Robespierre, the National Convention embraced a less e´ tatist model. The unsold property of the hospitals was returned to the church as early as 1796, and the church was compensated for the property already sold. Poor relief became a municipal and voluntary matter that was entrusted to renowned citizens

282

Kahl

(Metz 1985: 10f). The Committee on Poverty increasingly focused on specific groups, such as the sick and disabled, and stressed the role of voluntary charity. Poor relief was to rely on private contributions for its finances (Ramsey 2002: 287). There was also a broad political consensus between French liberals and Catholic conservatives who mostly agreed on the key principles of poor relief. Both considered assistance a social necessity and believed that the state could play a useful role in the coordination of various governmental and voluntary efforts, but they opposed a state guarantee. In the course of the religious revival in the early 19th century, the old system was strengthened. No less than 300 orders were created in France between 1810 and the Second Empire, and during the 1850s, no fewer than 100,000 women worked in such orders (Faure 2002: 312). France was thus characterized by the public regulation and religious implementation of assistance (Gouda 1995), a ‘surprisingly limited direct involvement by the state in poor relief,’ and an ‘explosive growth of charity and mutualism’ (Ramsey 2002: 303). As a result of these developments, France retained the core principles of Catholic social thought until the late 19th century, and charity became the individual duty of both the good Citizen and the good Christian. By the late 19th century, the Enlightenment terms bienfaisance and philantrophie enjoyed less currency than Christian charité (Kesselman 2002; Ramsey 2002: 302). The French case is thus somewhat less state driven than one might have expected. Public relief was less well developed and far less centralized than in other European countries. The system relied primarily on local institutions, private charity, and mutual aid. Even when the state expanded at the end of the 19th century and established various regulations, transfers, and services of assistance sociale for children, the elderly, and the disabled (see Manow and Palier, Chapter 6, this volume), a national poor relief system did not emerge.

10.2 timing and principles of social assistance It is commonly held that there was a ‘pattern of development’ from outdated, insufficient poor laws toward ‘comprehensive, universal programs’ (Quadagno 1988: 2) in which the welfare state constitutes a break with poor law principles, which are prior, but not antecedent, to the welfare state (see also Rimlinger 1971; Flora 1986: XV; Levine 1988; Geremek 1991; Ritter 1991; Skocpol 1992). This view is simplistic at best. Rather, poor relief was historically foundational for the welfare state because it


283

was the first realm of public redistribution toward the needy and constituted a central part of early modern state capacity. The design of poor relief also conditioned to which extent state involvement in social assistance was morally acceptable and institutionally feasible. The extent to which the state was already involved in poor relief contributed to the scope of wider welfare state activity. Social insurance was historically built on top of an already existing poor relief system. The latter system continued to exist and developed into a social support of last resort for those who were not covered by social insurance. Those countries that by the late 19th century had centrally regulated, tax-financed poor relief systems that were administered by state-appointed officials were also the first to introduce social insurance. Social insurance was to supersede the existing system of poor relief, which was deemed insufficient and unable to deal with the extent and variation of needs and risks brought about by industrialization. These countries were Lutheran. The historically dominant denomination is correlated to the timing of mainstream welfare state benefits. Lutheran countries started early, whereas those with a Catholic and Reformed Protestant heritage began late (Manow 2004). The timing of a national last resort safety net (social assistance) followed a different, complementary pattern. Calvinist/Reformed Protestant countries introduced social assistance before Lutheran countries; Catholic countries launched it very late or not at all. As to benefit structure and generosity, social assistance in countries with Catholic and Calvinist heritages is fragmented and ungenerous, with different benefits for different groups of the poor, whereas it is generous and unitary in countries with a Lutheran heritage (Kahl 2005). It appears that the supreme role of the church as a provider in the Catholic countries contributed to the late start of the welfare state in these countries and the lack of state provision for the neediest. Issues of social assistance remain a core domain of local and church charity in the Catholic world, which is characterized by ‘rudimentary’ welfare states that lack a provider of last resort. If public assistance programs exist, they are ungenerous. Indeed, Italy, Spain, and Greece do not have national social assistance even to this day. France and Portugal introduced social assistance as late as the 1990s. Compared to the Calvinist and the Catholic developments, the Lutheran state churches were supportive of secular social welfare, thus contributing to the early introduction of national social insurance. Germany and the Scandinavian countries launched such programs already in the late 19th century, and they adopted the social insurance principle to cover

284

Kahl

major social risks. In the course of social insurance expansion, poor relief became residual, although it continued to exist as a last resort supplement for the ‘left-over’ exigencies that fell through the cracks of social insurance. Thus, national assistance was introduced at a late stage in the process of welfare state building and, like poor relief, it was a residual program. Important differences between Germany and Scandinavia relate to the influence of a strong Catholic minority in Germany, which can be seen in the means test, which requires the immediate family to provide support before the state steps in, and in the importance of charities in the delivery of social services. In Calvinism, state involvement is undesirable, which is part of the reason that the welfare state neither started as early nor became as comprehensive as in the countries with a Lutheran tradition. These countries did not introduce a national social insurance system. Countries where Calvinism/Puritanism was historically dominant were the first to adopt national social assistance schemes though, and to provide a modest level of relief to most urgent cases of need where self-help failed, without restricting private insurance and nonstatist welfare provision. The United States still lacks a comprehensive social assistance network, a national health care system, and comprehensive insurance against unemployment. Indeed, there is a trend toward even less state responsibility in welfare reform. Many policy makers consider the church and charities to be better able than the state to design and deliver such policies, as evidenced in the ‘charitable choice’ provision in the 1996 reform.

10.3 the churches as political actors Differences in the doctrinal conceptions of the state’s role influenced the evolution of public provision for the poor, but the degree of state involvement in these three traditions was certainly not only a result of church doctrine. In line with the general thrust of the argument in this volume, the state–church cleavage considerably influenced patterns of state responsibility for the poor (e.g., Fix and Fix 2002; Schmid 1995). What a focus on social doctrines can add to this perspective is a better understanding of the churches as political actors, in particular, their preference formation and adaptation. Their doctrines influenced how the churches conceptualized their interests (e.g., whether they sought to maximize political power, or whether they conceded power to the state) and how they adjusted their political preferences (e.g., how they reacted as the state expanded its reach over


285

efforts in aid of the poor).4 As Gill’s (1998, 2008) work shows, when the political and religious opportunity structure changes, once the church accepts that a new constellation is there to stay, it adapts its political strategy. For example, depending on their religious ‘market position,’ churches develop different ideas about religious freedom (Gill 2008). ` Likewise, depending on their power position vis-a-vis the state, churches advocate different views of public provision. How the church reacted to the emerging state and its attempts to destroy the church’s monopoly over charity and to secularize poor relief initially depended on how church doctrine viewed worldly involvement. That is why the evolution of poor relief was a relatively smooth process in the Lutheran countries. In line with Luther’s doctrine of two estates, these countries secularized church property in the course of the Reformation and assigned a positive role to the state, and the church withdrew from poor relief even as it implemented the poor law for the state. The Catholic and Calvinist reaction to a nascent and expanding welfare state, in contrast, was opposition, even in economic crises, because Catholic subsidiarity and Calvinist individualism and voluntarism both see the state as an unwelcome interloper. For instance, in the middle of the New Deal debates, Bishop Aloisius Muench argued that ‘the poor belong to us’ and ‘we will not let them be taken from us’ (Brown and McKeown 1998). Likewise, the Calvinist/Reformed Protestant idea of mutual and self-help opposed state involvement, which delayed the welfare state (Manow 2004). However, the fact that Catholics and Calvinists were wary of state involvement is but one part of the story. The other part is how they adjusted their ideas and shaped welfare state provision. The welfare state literature has shown that key actors, such as employers and unions, seek to remain in a key position so that they can shape policy after the introduction of major social protection programs (e.g., Swenson 2002). So it is with religious actors. There are two scenarios in which the church rearticulates its view of state involvement. These often overlap. First, the church reacts to a welfare state that expands despite church opposition. In this case, once it accepts that the welfare state is there to stay, the church seeks to use 4

I use the term ‘preferences’ to denote the concrete strategies and goals of political actors, whereas ‘interests’ refers to the underlying objectives, which are relatively stable. This terminology differs from rational choice theory where ‘preferences’ are relatively stable, denoting the underlying ends, which in turn stem from actors’ interests (which are stable), whereas their ‘strategies’ and ‘goals’ change.

286

Kahl

the welfare state and to maximize its interests. Second, the church calls for more state involvement in a situation where traditional church institutions are unable to cope with rising and changing needs. Opposition could transform into support when private charity and self-help failed, and/or when Catholics or Calvinists reasoned that they could better achieve their ends by using the state as an instrument to realize the desired social order. Calvinist/Puritan reformers in particular had a rather utilitarian idea of the state and became heavily involved in poor relief early on. For instance, most of the leading figures in English poor law reforms were Puritans (Grell and Cunningham 1997: 31); at least eight out of a group of fifteen ‘founders of the welfare state’ in Britain had a Reformed Protestant (Calvinist/Puritan/nonconformist) background (Barker 1984); and a coalition of nonconformists and Liberals made possible the victory of the Liberals in 1906, which paved the way for Lloyd George – who was himself nonconformist – to pass his reforms (Koss 1975). In situations of crisis characterized by myriad failures of self-help institutions, even Calvinists called for state involvement, but they also stipulated the principles of that involvement, stressing, for instance, individual fault and responsibility. Another example is the family benefit system implemented by an incipient French welfare state. The majority of these policies were initiated by a coalition of representatives of French social Catholicism and secular, republican pronatalists as ‘part of a broader attempt to make capitalism conform to Christian teachings.’ This ultimately opened cleavages between Catholic doctrine and employer interests (Pedersen 1993: 227, 231; see also Morgan 2006). In the 1920s, when social Catholics realized that they lacked the capacity to control family allowances, their opposition to state involvement waned, and they mobilized to shape state provision according to the Catholic concepts of the dignity of labor and the just wage. When the Catholic Church became marginalized in the provision of welfare and education, it did not continue preaching the original antiétatist position forever, but worked its way into arrangements that ensured its involvement. Although the French church opposed the early welfare state, today it maintains that there is not enough welfare state provision. Charities and the church not only initiated the debate that led to the introduction of the Revenu Minimum d’Insertion (RMI) in 1989, they also pushed for further reforms, such as the 1998 Loi de lutte contre les exclusions. Service provision within the RMI depends heavily on charities. In addition, Secours Catholique helps the poor apply for public benefits and provides services that the state fails to provide, in particular, to


287

those at the margins – such as the homeless, alcoholics, and immigrants. The church is politically influential within the welfare state, both at the national level (in the evaluation committees and as a lobby for reform) and at the local level (in the insertion committees and as providers). It has come a long way from refusing public involvement in its core domains in the 19th century. In contrast to France, Italy still has no social assistance despite efforts to introduce it. The major reason is that the church and Christian Democracy opposed the national Reddito Minimo di Inserimento when it was introduced on an experimental basis in 1998. Today, however, the church supports a national measure because it is unable to provide for the poor, but it insists on a strong voice in designing that program.5 These observations have implications for understanding the churches as political actors. This can well be seen in comparison to a rational choice approach. A rational choice perspective does not fully explain the churches’ actions and the specific content of religious and secular policies in aid of the poor, as well as the variation between countries. For example, in a fascinating study of church–state relations in Latin America, Gill (1998) argues that the more competition for the souls of the lower classes the dominant church faces in the ‘religious/ideological marketplace,’ the more likely it is to provide services to the poor. This strategy conflicts with the interests of authoritarian regimes that pursue policies inimical to the poor. Thus, church leaders broke their traditional alliance with the political elite and opposed authoritarianism in countries with growing competition from evangelical Protestant, Spiritist, and Marxist organizations (Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua). Where competition was absent, the church maintained a close association with the state and did not support the poor (Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Uruguay). The implication of the argument advanced here is that this model of state–church relations applies best to the Catholic case, and only to those countries with rudimentary or nonexistent welfare states that leave the poor uncovered. Although it is impossible to be sure how Gill’s scenario would have played out had Latin America not been dominated by Catholicism, we can be reasonably certain that the outcomes in state– church relations and church advocacy for the poor would have been different. There would be similarities – no Christian church welcomes competition from other denominations – but even if we assume that any 5

This pattern also seems to hold for the Lutheran case; for example, in 1866, Copenhagen priests organized a poor relief fund in response to the government’s failure to support ‘good Christian workers’ (Lutzen 2003). ¨

288

Kahl

church would respond to religious competition by focusing on the poor, the particular content of these efforts would likely have differed across denominations. The church’s response to religious competition is specifically Catholic in at least two ways: 1) in contrast to Lutheranism and Calvinism, a special sensibility for the poor has been a core component of Catholic doctrine since the early church, and activating this idea as a ‘preferential option for the poor’ is easy and resonates well in a Catholic context; and 2) the ecclesiastical base communities that the church created in Latin America resonate well with Catholic doctrine, which postulates that charity is a responsibility of the local church. Indeed, it seems that the vast majority of their activities were actually modern versions of Catholic charity (feeding centers, legal services, health services), although complemented by progressive calls for land reform and rural cooperatives. It seems that the church rediscovers and somewhat modernizes its traditional mission for the poor, and like other national Catholic churches before, this implies turning against the state. Had colonizers been Lutheran, the evolution of state–church relations would have differed because where the Lutheran church was dominant, it was a state church. Church–state fusion would likely have been tight until the late 20th century, whereas the Catholic churches were practically disestablished in Latin America by the early 20th century. Helping the poor would have been more of a public responsibility, and it is probable that some version of public poor relief would have been introduced in the early modern period. In the Lutheran tradition, the state is to be responsible for welfare, thus making a localized poverty initiative outside and against the state less likely. Furthermore, the ‘preferential option for the poor’ is a Catholic concept that does not travel to Lutheranism. Had the dominant churches been Calvinist, there would not have been a single dominant church because the Reformed Protestant tradition is more competitive to begin with, producing a continuous outflow of dissenting sects. It seems that covenant theology has a tendency to produce exit instead of voice (i.e., dissenters simply found a new sect and then try to attract believers, rather than trying to reform the church from within, or founding orders within the church). This tendency is further enhanced by 1) the lack of a central authority, 2) lay priesthood (anybody can found a church), and 3) a personal relation to God that is not mediated by an institution (anybody can claim to have found the best road to salvation). Thus, church–state relations would probably have evolved differently. The Reformed Protestant tradition is similar to Catholicism in its focus


289

on local efforts and church charity. However, as argued previously, a ‘preferential option’ that puts the (plight of the) poor first rather than viewing them as sinners is counterintuitive for Calvinists.

10.4 conclusion In this chapter, I investigate the historical evolution of different denominational solutions to the trade-off between supporting the poor and ensuring that everybody who can work does in fact do so. In short, the Catholic Christian has a religious obligation to give to the poor. The Calvinist Christian has a religious obligation to work. The Lutheran Christian must rely on faith alone because charity and work become detached from individual salvation. The Lutheran approach establishes a societal responsibility to provide for the poor, and it requires everybody who can work to contribute to societal welfare. The Catholic tradition systematized traditional caritas, which embraced a variety of needs, thus showing a relatively high level of social tolerance, even though it precluded a right to relief. Countries with a Catholic legacy have stressed ‘welfare’ in the sense of delivering money and services to the poorest of the poor, and compared to the other two traditions, the work objective is absent or weak. Lutheran outdoor relief institutionalized a societal responsibility for supporting the poor, coupled with a strong work requirement for the able bodied. The Calvinist/Puritan system did not institutionalize responsibility for but of the poor, enforcing work discipline and providing only meagre relief. The relationship between confessional divisions and differences in poor relief is systematic, despite considerable variety over time and within each of these traditions, with, for example, the Dutch system characterized by a much lower degree of centralization and la¨ıcization than the English system. However, as Gorski (2003: 134) notes, such differences in degree do not disprove the overall pattern. In addition, as I argued in the second part of the chapter, and as Anderson (Chapter 8, this volume) convincingly shows for Sweden, power constellations between the state and the church need to be taken into account in order to explain variations in the degrees of state involvement in poor relief as well as cross-national differences in the church’s political preferences. In the Protestant Ethic, Weber described a transformation of Calvinist norms in terms of several stages over which ‘asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality.’ Thus, ‘the capitalistic system . . . no longer needs the support

290

Kahl

of any religious forces’ (Weber 1958 [1904/1905]: 72, 181). Likewise, religion has worked its way into the welfare state via a process of early institutionalization of religious doctrines, and the secularization of these institutions and the norms and values they represent. Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Protestant poor relief reflected particular values regarding work, poverty, and charity. As I demonstrate in the first part of this chapter, these values were originally powerful because they were connected to ideas of salvation. For example, the medieval Catholic gave to the poor because almsgiving was considered a ticket to heaven. Once institutionalized in poor relief systems, the mechanism of influence became less instrumental. The church continued to legitimize these different approaches, because churches kept their moral monopoly way beyond the secularization of church property and responsibilities, but the institutions of poor relief unfolded their own socialization potential and reinforced those values in society. For example, the workhouse reproduced the individualistic work ethic, Catholic almsgiving the idea that poverty is God’s ordeal rather than a result of individual failure, and Lutheran outdoor relief and poor taxes stressed society’s duty to provide. Thus, the religious influence may last even as the churches no longer hold the power to define how to address the poor. As a result, ‘Protestant or Catholic societies display distinctive values today mainly because of the historical impact their respective churches had on their societies, rather than through their contemporary influence’ (Inglehart and Baker 2000: 31). The institutional perspective adopted here reveals important continuities and complements the cleavage/coalition-centered perspective presented in the preceding chapters. These findings are counterintuitive because the story of secularization – of what happened in Europe in the postEnlightenment period – would lead one to think that religion ceased to be a factor in the shaping of the fundamental political and social institutional structure of Europe. This is why the welfare state is generally considered to be quintessentially modern and secular. This chapter does not overthrow this conventional wisdom, but it puts some fascinating qualification on it by suggesting that institutions and political traditions are an important pathway through which religion became embedded in the modern state. References Aschrott, Paul Felix, Gerhard Uhlhorn, and Emil Munsterberg (1909), Artikel ¨ ¨ Armenwesen, Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3. Aufl., Bd. 2, Berlin: Erich Weber Verlag, 1–196.


291

Ayaß, Wolfgang (1992), Das Arbeitshaus Breitenau. Bettler, Landstreicher, Pros¨ ¨ ¨ titutierte, Zuhalter und Fursorgeempf anger in der Korrektions- und Landarmenanstalt Breitenau (1874–1949), Kassel: Gesamthochschule Kassel/Verein fur ¨ hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde e.V. Barker, Paul (1984), Founders of the Welfare State, London: Heinemann. Battenberg, J. Friedrich (1991), Obrigkeitliche Sozialpolitik und Gesetzgebung. Einige Gedanken zu mittelrheinischen Bettel- und Almosenordnungen des 16. ¨ historische Forschung 18 (1): 33–70. Jahrhunderts, Zeitschrift fur Baugher, Sherene (2001), Visible Charity: The Archeology, Material Culture, and Landscape Design of New York City’s Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797, International Journal of Historical Archeology 5 (2): 175– 202. Bonderup, Gerda (2002), Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in Enlightenment and 19th Century Denmark, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century ¨ Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 172–188. ¨ ¨ Borkenau, Franz (1980 [1934]), Der Ubergang vom feudalen zum burgerlichen Weltbild. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie der Manufakturperiode, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ¨ ¨ Brinker, Anne Kathrin (1994), Armenfursorge als Sozialpolitik im fruhmodernen ¨ danischen Staat, Hamburg: Kraemer. Brown, Dorothy M., and Elizabeth McKeown (1998), The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calvin, John (1989 [1536]), Predatory Address to His Most Christian Majesty, the Most Mighty and Illustrious Monarch, Francis, King of the French, His Sovereign, in John Calvin (ed), Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Henry Beveridge, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 3–20. Calvin, John (1989 [1559]), Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Henry Beveridge, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Cox, Robert Henry (1993), The Development of the Dutch Welfare State: From Worker’s Insurance to Universal Entitlement, Pittsburgh & London: University of Pittsburgh Press. Crowther, Anne (2002), Health Care and Poor Relief in Provincial England, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and ¨ Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 203–219. Davis, Natalie Z. (1968), Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: The Case of Lyon, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (27): 217–275. Dross, Fritz (2002), Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in Enlightenment and 19th Century Prussia, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern ¨ Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 69–111. Englander, David (1998), Poverty and Poor Law Reform in 19th Century Britain, 1834–1914, London: Longman. Fairchilds, Cissie (1976), Poverty and Charity in Aix-en-Provence, 1640–1789, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

292

Kahl

Faure, Olivier (2002), Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in 19th Century Provincial France, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jutte ¨ (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 309–324. Feagin, Joe R. (1975), Subordinating the Poor: Welfare and American Beliefs, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fix, Birgit, and Elisabeth Fix (2002), From Charity to Client-Oriented Social Service Production: A Social Profile of Religious Welfare Associations in Western European Comparison, European Journal of Social Work 5 (1): 55–62. Flora, Peter (ed) (1986), Growth to Limits. The Western European Welfare States since World War II, Vol: 1: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Fosser (1889), Artikel ‘Armenpflege’ und ‘Armenrecht’, Staatslexikon, Freiburg: ¨ Herder, 465–507. Fraser, Derek (1976), The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution, London: Macmillan. Geremek, Bronislaw (1991), Geschichte der Armut: Elend und Barmherzigkeit in Europa, Munchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. ¨ Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke (2002), Dutch Approaches to Problems of Illness and Poverty between the Golden Age and the Fin de Siècle, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in ¨ 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 259–276. Gill, Anthony (1998), Rendering unto César: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Gill, Anthony (2008), The Political Origins of Religious Liberty, New York: Cambridge University Press. Justo L. (1996), Church History: An Essential Guide, Nashville, TN: Gonzalez, ´ Abingdon Press. Gorski, Philip S. (2003), The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gouda, Frances (1995), Poverty and Political Culture: The Rhetoric of Social Welfare in the Netherlands and France, 1815–1854, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Grell, Ole Peter, and Andrew Cunningham (1997), The Reformation and Changes in Welfare Provision in Early Modern Northern Europe, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in ¨ Protestant Europe 1500–1700, London/New York: Routledge, 1–42. Gustafsson, Harald (2000), Prœsten som Velfœrdsforvalter i Tidligt Moderne Tid, in Tim Knudsen (ed), Den Nordiske Protestantisme og Velfærdsstaten, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 124–145. Gutton, Jean-Pierre (1971), La société et les pauvres: L’exemple de la généralité de Lyon 1534–1789, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Gutton, Jean-Pierre (1974), La société et les pauvres en Europe: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Huey, Paul R. (2001), The Almshouse in Dutch and English Colonial North America and Its Precedent in the Old World: Historical and Archeological Evidence, International Journal of Historical Archeology 5 (2): 123–154.


293

Inglehart, Ronald, and Wayne E. Baker (2000), Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values, American Sociological Review 65 (1): 19–51. Kahl, Sigrun (2005), The Religious Roots of Modern Poverty Policy: Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Protestant Traditions Compared, European Journal of Sociology 45 (1): 91–126. Kesselman, Mark (2002), The Triple Exceptionalism of the French Welfare State, in Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg and Marguerite G. Rosenthal (eds), Diminishing Welfare: A Cross-National Study of Social Provision, Westport/London: Auburn House, 181–210. Knudsen, Tim (2000), Tilblivelsen af den Universalistiske Velfœrdsstat, in Tim Knudsen (ed), Den Nordiske Protestantisme og Velfærdsstaten, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 20–64. Knudsen, Tim (2003), De Nordiske Statskirker og Velfœrdsstaten, in Klaus Petersen (ed), 13 Historier om Velfærdsstaten, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 37–47. Koss, Stephen E. (1975), Nonconformity in Modern British Politics, Hamden: Archon Books. Lacey, Forrest W. (1953), Vagrancy and Other Crimes of Personal Condition, Harvard Law Review 66 (7): 1203–1226. Levine, Daniel (1988), Poverty and Society: The Growth of the American Welfare State in International Comparison, New Brunswick/London: Rutgers University Press. Lewis, Jane (1999), The Voluntary Sector in the Mixed Economy of Welfare, in David Gladstone (ed), Before Beverdige: Welfare before the Welfare State, London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 10–17. Luther, Martin (1520 [1962]), An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality as to the Amelioration of the State of Christendom, in John Dillenberger, Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, New York: Anchor Books, 403– 485. Luther, Martin (1529 [1932]), Vorrede, in D.B. Thomas (ed, trans), Liber Vagatorum: Der Betler Orden/Von der falsche Bet, London: Penguin Press, 62–65. (First translated into English by J.C. Hotten.) Lutzen, Karin (2003), Den Borgerlige Filantropi som Forudsœtning for ¨ Velfœrdsstaten, in Klaus Petersen, 13 Historier om Velfærdsstaten, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 47–57. Manow, Philip (2004), ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’: Esping-Andersen’s Regime Typology and the Religious Roots of the Western Welfare State, MaxPlanck Institute for the Study of Societies Working Paper 04/3, Cologne: MPIfG. Metz, Karl H. (1985), Staatsraison und Menschenfreundlichkeit: Formen und Wandlungen der Armenpflege im Ancien Régime Frankreichs, Deutschlands ¨ Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte und Großbritanniens, Vierteljahrschrift fur 72 (1): 1–26. Mitchinson, Rosalind (2002), Poor Relief and Health Care in 19th Century Scotland, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Robert Jutte (eds), Health ¨

294

Kahl

Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 246–255. Morgan, Kimberley J. (2006), Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Munsterberg, Emil (1906), Amerikanisches Armenwesen, Berlin: Duncker & ¨ Humblodt. Pedersen, Susan (1993), Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State. Britain and France, 1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Polanyi, Karl (1957 [1944]), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press. Pullan, Brian (1988), Support and Redeem: Charity and Poor Relief in Italian Cities from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century, Continuity and Change 3 (2): 177–208. Quadagno, Jill (1988), The Transformation of Old Age Security: Class and Politics in the American Welfare State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ramsey, Matthew (2002), Poor Relief and Medical Assistance in 18th and 19th Century Paris, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jutte ¨ (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 280–308. Riis, Thomas (1997), Poor Relief and Health Care Provision in Sixteenth-Century Denmark, in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700, London: Routledgem, 129–146. Rimlinger, Gaston (1971), Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America, and Russia, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Ritter, Gerhard A. (1991), Der Sozialstaat: Entstehung und Entwicklung im internationalen Vergleich, Munchen: Oldenbourg. ¨ Ruger, Willi (ed) (1932), Mittelalterliches Almosenwesen: Die Almosenordnun¨ ¨ gen der Reichsstadt Nurnberg, Nurnberg: Krische. ¨ Schmid, Josef (1995), Verbandewohlfahrt im modernen Wohlfahrtsstaat: Struk¨ turbildende Effekte des Staat-Kirche-Konflikts, Historical Social Research 20 (2): 88–118. Skocpol, Theda (1992), State Formation and Social Policy in the United States. The American Behavioral Scientist 35 (4/5): 559–584. Stolberg, Michael (2002), Health Care Provision and Poor Relief in the Electorate and Kingdom of Bavaria, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Robert Jutte (eds), Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th and 19th Century Northern ¨ Europe, Alsdershot: Ashgate, 112–135. Swenson, Peter (2002), Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden, New York: Oxford University Press. Tawney, Richard Henry (1990 [1922]), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study, Holland Memorial Lectures 1922, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Thorkildsen, Dag (1997), Religious Identity and Nordic Identity, in Øystein SPrensen and Bo Strath ˚ (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 138–160.


295

Troeltsch, Ernst (1981 [1911]), The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Vol. 2, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Uhlhorn, Gerhard, and Paul Felix Aschrott (1859), Artikel ‘Armenwesen,’ ¨ Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 819–924. Wagner, David (2005), The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ¨ zur Geschichte der Stadt Waldau, Georg Ernst (ed) (1789), Vermischte Beitrage ¨ Nurnberg, Bd. IV, Nurnberg. ¨ Weber, Max (1958 [1904/1905]), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Index

abortion ban on Medicaid funding of, 246 accommodation, 97 between secular and clerical parties, 73 Agrarian Liberals, 20, See Venstre Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 255, 258 almsgiving and begging, 279 divine benevolent act, 279 ticket to heaven, 290 Anderson, Karen, 31 anticentralism Switzerland, 191 anticlericalism, 3, 4, 19, 51, 68 Dutch, 130 France, 151 German, 75 Italy, 80, 103 Sweden, 31 Switzerland, 181 toning down of, 26 United States, 236 anti-Communism Dutch, 133 United States, 241 antiétatism, 4 Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (ARP), 122 ARP. See Anti-Revolutionaire Partij assistance publique, 151 Baldwin, Peter, 53 Benoit, Kenneth, 24

big government Switzerland, 191 Bondeforbunet, 19 ¨ Bondepartiet, 19 Bruce, Steve, 11 caisses d’allocations familiales, 155 Calvinism almsgiving, 274 self-help, 285 capitalism industrial, 6 caritas, 289 Catholic Church more open to change in Sweden, 213 social doctrine, 2 Catholic civil society, 70 Catholic People’s Party (Switzerland), 185 Catholic political party (Dutch), 123 Catholicism, 3, 4, 12 almsgiving, 279 Dutch, 121 Dutch political -, as motor of social policy, 128 economic development, 13 political, 21, 32, 34 social, 1, 14 Catholics political mobilization of Swiss, 177 strategy to build counter-culture at cantonal level in Switzerland, 190 Centerpartiet (Swedish), 19 centralization, 45

297

298 Centre Party (Finnish), 19 charities, 64, 71, 74, 102 Italy, 72, 103 religious, 64 replaced with state organizations in France, 152 state, 64 state control in Italy, 102 charity as Christian duty, not as a right, 224 child care, 59, 61 Belgium, 79 Italy, 80 lack of, 59 limited, 77 social-democratic power and, 61 Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP), 21 Christen Democratisch Appèl (CDA), 21, 22 Christian Coalition, 250, 254, 256 Christian Democracy, 1, 2, 3, 13 electoral competition of, 13 not apparent in France, 30 policy performance of, 13 variation on the European continent, 23 Christian Democratic Party in France, 69 nonformation of, in France, 148 Christian Democratic People’s Party (Switzerland), 185 Christian People’s Party (KrF), 66 Christian social doctrine embedded in secular institutions of poor relief, 268 Christian-Social Federation of Unions (Christlich-sozialer Gewerkschaftsbund, CSG), 186 Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU), 21, 22 Christlich-Demokratische Volkspartei, 22 church re-articulating its view of state involvement, 285 church–state relations and religious competition, 287 class, 12, 74 class-coalitional approach, 16, 40 cleavage, see also educational cleavage and religious cleavage agrarian–industrial, 19 capital, 18

Index capital–labor, 23, 148 church–state, 22, 43, 57, 132, 147 class, 64, 124 class, temperance of Dutch, 133 clerical–anticlerical, 43, 45, 64 cross-cutting, 51 economic, 18 labor–capital, 18, 22 lack of a visible state–church, 31 lack of strong religious, 66 left–right, 21, 22 long-term effects of church–state, 24 monarchist–republican, 43 party political translations, 26 Protestant–Catholic, 73, 75 reform–antireform, 50 religious, temperance of Dutch, 133 resistance against, 130 secular–confessional, 148, 149 social, 10 societal, 18, 33, 178 socioeconomic, 30 temperance–antitemperance, 52 urban–rural, 20, 21, 22 varying structures, 24 clientelism, 97, 103, 104, 105, 108, 109, 111, 114 role of Italian Left, 111 coalition of Dutch Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, 133 coherence institutional, 12 compromise, 126 Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), 161 Confédération Française des Travailleurs chrétiens (CFTC), 157, 161 Confédération générale du Travail (CGT), 162 consensus building, 132 Contract with America, 255 convergence theories of, 10 day care American Catholics against, 242 Democrazia Cristiana (DC), 5, 21, 27, 91, 104, 109 clientelism, 92, 111

Index not applying Catholic social doctrine, 93 pension system, 106 depillarization loss of consensus, 139 welfare state expansion, 140 direct democracy, 177 Dutch economy export orientation of, 134 Duverger, Maurice, 18, 23 education, 3, 43, 67, 70, 77, 122 control over, 70 Dutch Protestants, 127 exclusion of church in France, 151 French welfare state building, 148 Germany, 75 religious cleavage, 68, 74 secular–confessional cleavage, 150 secularization of, 67 state responsibility in France, 152 subsidiarity, 76 the Netherlands, 74 education policy causing rift between MRP and church, 163 educational cleavage MRP’s lack of clear position, 171 electoral rules as exogenous, 24 impact on Dutch politics, 141 impact on French politics, 147 impact on Swiss politics, 181 impact on U.S. politics, 238 potential endogeneity of, 24 Ertman, Thomas, 28 Esping-Andersen, GPsta, 12, 15 evangelical Protestantism in United States, 243–245 Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, White House Office of, 259 blurring the separation of church and state, 260 familialism Italy, 114 Familieninitiative (Switzerland), 204 family allowances, 77, 79 Belgium, 71, 79 France, 71 Italy, 72

299 family law equal status for men and women, 67 family policy, 70 against modernization, 137 agrarian parties, 63 caisses d’allocations familiales, 155 Christian Democratic parties, 63 Fascism, 72 in France, 79, 166 institutionalized role of the state, 63 Muslim minority populations, 84 religious cleavage, 68 religious conflict, 64 secular–confessional cleavage, 150 shaped by church in France, 286 single-earner households, 80 social diversity, 84 ¨ Farmer’s Party (Bondeforbundet), 215 Federal Factory Act (1877), 194 federal government weak in Switzerland, 184 federalism Switzerland, 178, 180 Finnish Agrarian Union, 19, See (Malaisliitto) Flora, Peter, 11, 12 franchise uniting Swedish Social Democrats and Liberals, 215 free churches (frikyrkorna) in Sweden, 218 French Revolution, 64 functionalist theory, 7 Ghent system, 199 Gould, Andrew, 43 grassroots evangelical network, Pat Robertson, 249 Great Transformation, 14 health and accident insurance Switzerland, 196 Health Security, 252 religious conservatives campaigning against, 254 Heidenheimer, Arnold J., 12 Hoeyre parties, 52 income loss of security, 6 support to families with dependent children (Switzerland), 204

300 individualization welfare state entitlements, 67 industrialization, 6, 153 in France, 153 late in Sweden, 214 insurance social, 7 Iversen, Torben, 16, 18, 23

Index Loi sur les retraites des ouvriers et paysans (ROP, 1910), 153 Luebbert, Gregory, 40 Lutheran church doctrine (Sweden), 211 Lutheran poor relief, 272 Lutheranism, almsgiving, 271 Lynch, Julia, 29

joint taxation, 59, 61, 77, 79 Kahl, Sigrun, 32 Kalyvas, Stathis, 42 Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP), 21, 22 Korpi, Walter, 12 Kristelig Folkeparti, 23 Kulturkampf, 181 labor, 3, 6 commodification of, 8, 9 decommodification of, 9 labor legislation, 120 labor market, 7 policies, 112, 135 labor question, 156 Landesverband Freier Schweizer Arbeiter (LFSA), 187 Lantmannaparti (Ruralist Party), 214 legitimacy state, 6 Lewis-Beck, Michael, 26 Lex Forrer, 196 Lex Schulthess, 201 Liberal antiinterventionism, 30 Liberal Party Danish, 20 (Folkpartiet), 217 Liberalism, 3 Liberals Dutch, 122, 123, 138 French, 151 Italian, 93 Swedish, 212, 215, 228 Swiss, 177 Local Government Act (1862) Sweden, 211, 221 Loi 1905, 150 Loi Barangé (1951), 164 Loi Debré (1959), 164

majoritarian representation, 25, 52, 53, 69, 177, 178, 180, 238 Malaisliitto, 19 male breadwinner, 112 Mann, Michael, 40 marriage entitlement to benefits through, 61 Mnich, Peter, 26 modernization, 5, 6 theory, 5, 7 Moore, Barrington, 39, 40 Moral Majority, 248 Morgan, Kimberly, 29 Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP), 23, 27, 30, 147, 148, 158 as a pivotal party, 159 Bismarckian outlook of French system of social protection, 166 proportional representation, 160 reasons for decline, 160 reputation as participant in the Résistance, 159 role in development of welfare state, 159 strongest influence on social and family policy, 165 weak implantation within Catholic milieu, 162 mutualism, 98 mutuelles, 154 nation building, 41, 45, 50, 151 National Association of Farmers ¨ (Jordbrukarnas Riksforbundet), 215 National Association of Social Work (CSA), 229 National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), 246, 255, 258 nationalism, 7 Nederlandse Volksbeweging (NVB), 130 conservative element of, 130

Index New Deal influenced by liberal Catholic politicians, 241 Obinger, Herbert, 31 optional referendum, 182 preconfigures coalition building, 183 strategic tool, 192 vehicle to defend particularistic interests, 189 ¨ ¨ Osterreichische Volkspartei (OVP), 21 outdoor relief Calvinist viewpoint of, 276 Catholic viewpoint of, 276 Pappi, Franz Urban, 26 parental leave, 60, 61, 77 Italy, 80 Parti démocratie populaire (PDP, 1924), 157 Parti Social-Chrétien (PSC), 21 Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), 104 Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI), 105, 109 party of religious defense, 39, 41, 42, 44, 53, 64, 147, 148 party system centre of gravity located at cantonal level in Switzerland, 185 European, 39 formation of, 28, 43 multi-, 16 two-, 16 PCI. See Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) Peasant, Trade and Citizen’s Party (Bauern-, Gewerbe- und ¨ Burgerpartei), 183 pension reform cornerstones of Swedish social policy, 228 Italy, 106, 110 Sweden, 212, 227 pension schemes Italy, 97, 108 lack of Christian Democratic influence, 98 occupational, 98 Switzerland, 200, 203 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOA), 258

301 pillarization, 27, 42, 74, 122, 124 Polanyi, Karl, 7, 8, 120 ‘double movement,’ 9 political movements religious-based, 238 political parties and democratization, 47, 50 and patronage, 53 cross-class confessional, 48 religious, 74 politics of mediation, 92 poor laws Sweden (1847), 211, 220 of Wittenberg, 272 poor relief as measure against begging in Sweden, 223 as self-defense, 280 Catholic caritas, 281 Catholic viewpoint of, 279 churches as smallest administrative unit, 272 enforcement of regulation, 280 French system, 281 in Sweden, 219 inadequate for dealing with social problems in Sweden, 224 indoor, 272 outdoor, 272 public regulation and religious implementation in France, 282 roles of state and local authorities in Sweden, 220 shapes extent of state involvement in social assistance, 283 sovereignty in one’s own circles, 278 state church takes active interest in Sweden, 224 subsidiarity, 278 poverty associated with nonwork and laziness, 271 giving alms by the rich, 270 imaging Christ, 270 in Calvinism sign of damnation, 274 undeserving, 280 poverty policy influence of early modern religious ideas on, 267

302 Progressive era in United States, 240 pronatalism, 71 proportional representation, 17, 21, 23, 24, 47, 52, 53, 69, 124, 157, 182 administration of social insurance funds, 167 adoption of, 25 helping political parties to survive, 26 in France, 147 natural choice, 25 Protestant Churches as ‘canton churches’ in Switzerland, 179 mistrust of the state, 30 Protestant parties Dutch, against state intervention, 131 Protestant People’s Party (Evangelische Volkspartei, EVP) (Switzerland), 185 Protestant union (the Swiss Federation of Evangelic Workers, SVEA), 187 Protestantism, 3, 4, 11, 34 irrelevance of, 13 Lutheran, 4 paternalism, and, 12 reformed, 4, 12 Protestants political mobilization of Swiss, 177 PSI. See Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) Quadagno, Jill, 31 redistribution, 126 referendum impact on social policy development, 31 Reformation, 11, 64, 121 régime agricole, 155 régime général, 155 religion, 11 affecting voting behavior and party affiliation in United States, 239 as a cultural force, 32 decline of, 12 influence on the left, 75 role of, 5 surprising stability of, 26 religious cleavage, 14, 19, 22, 30, 39, 53, 57, 64, 65, 68, 73, 74, 92, 121, 124 absence of a strong, 22 absence in Scandinavia, 210

Index based on level of commitment to orthodox beliefs, 239 in United States, 31, 238 Republican delegate selection processes influenced by evangelical grassroots activists, 251 revision of Federal Constitution (Switzerland), 182 ¨ ¨ revival movement (vackelser orelsen) in Sweden, 217 Reweb, Ernst, 12 Righart, Hans, 42 rights Marshallian trias of civil, political, and social, 6 RKSP. See Roomsch Katholieke Staatspartij Rohlinger, Deana, 31 Rokkan, Stein, 3, 23, 40 Roomsch Katholieke Staatspartij (RKSP), 123, 125 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 40 Schmidt, Manfred, 1 Schroeltt, Max, 12 Schweizerische Bauern-, Gewerbe- und ¨ Burgerpartei, 20 Schweizerische Volkspartei, 20 secularization, 10, 24, 26, 65 and women’s position, 58 early fusion of state and church in Nordic countries, 66 the Netherlands, 82 Troeltschian perspective, 13 Weberian perspective, 13 self-administration governing boards of social insurance funds, 163 self-help, 240 Senterpartiet (Norwegian), 19 social assistance, 104, 148 Calvinism, 284 Catholicism, 283 citizen’s right to, 104 Italy, 101, 104 Lutheranism, 283 role of Church as organizer, 105 secular–confessional cleavage, 150 social Catholicism, 80, 92 in France, 156 Social Democracy, 1 Swedish, 15

Index social doctrine affecting churches’ political strategies, 268 Catholic, 32 social insurance, 105, 120, 148 Italy, 104 France, 153 Weberian perspective, 12 social issues conflicts between evangelicals and Catholics in United States, 256 social policy, 125, 133 Catholic, 127 church’s role in France, 153 Dutch Protestants, 127 France, 150 meant to strengthen the traditional family, 137 Sweden, 226 wage moderation in exchange for, 133 weak state control of, 95 social protection, 120 Social Security privatization, 261 social welfare services, 74 societal fragmentation, 24 Sonderbund, 179 Sonderbund war, 31 Sondergesellschaft, 180 Soskice, David, 16, 18, 23 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 239 sovereignty in one’s own circle, 46, 125, 126, 132 state church and state seemed ‘natural’ partners in Sweden, 222 initial relationship with Social Democratic Party in Sweden, 230 orthodox and conservative in 19th-century Sweden, 212 role in shaping social and political agenda of Sweden, 219 state intervention, 6 state involvement in social welfare not opposed by Lutheran Church in Scandinavia, 211 scope of wider welfare activity, 283 social insurance in Sweden, 225

303 stateness, 12 Stephens, Evelyne Huber, 40 Stephens, John D., 1, 2, 40 subsidiarity, 2, 76, 81, 112, 125, 132, 241, 242, 285 absent in French debate, 151 social services, 76 suffrage extension, 23 universal, 26 Swedish agrarian party, 19, See ¨ Bondeforbunet Swiss Association of White Collar Workers (VSA), 187 Swiss Catholic People’s Association (Schweizerische Katholische Volksverein), 186 Swiss Federation of Workers (Arbeiterbund), 186 Swiss Trade Union Confederation (Schweizerische Gewerkschaftsbund, SGB), 186 Switzerland role of referendum in political strategies, 178 tax system Italy, 106, 107 territorial fragmentation and language barriers Switzerland, 188 Troeltsch, Ernst, 12 two-rounds/two-ballots electoral system, 157 unemployment insurance Switzerland, 198 Van Kersbergen, Kees, 13, 29 Venstre parties, 20, 41, 52 Radikale Venstre, 20 Verdandi, 228 ¨ Volkspartei. See Osterreichische ¨ Volkspartei (OVP) Weber, Max, 12 welfare state, 33 Anglo-Saxon countries, in, 15 birth of, 12 Bismarckian traits in France, 30, 146, 149

304 welfare state (cont.) cantonal level in Switzerland, 194 cash transfers, 94 characteristics of southern, 147 child and family policy, 29 Christian Democratic, 91, 94 church influence in Italy, 102 churches adjusting to and shaping, 285 class coalition theory of, 16 clientelistic policy mode, 29 consequences of economic decline, 83 continental, 15, 28 development, 6, 119 Dutch, 129 Dutch, critical conditions of, 139 generosity of Dutch, 133, 135 Dutch, origins of, 129 fiscal strain on, 83 French, characteristics of, 146, 158 impact on religiosity, 33 influence of agrarian or center parties on, 20 influence of religion on, 32 Italy, 91, 92 mode of financing, 28 Nordic, 23 occupational, 113 origin of, 5 passive, 138 passive, through transfer orientation, 139

Index power resources approach of, 14 provision of social services, 28 reflects state–church conflict in France, 169 regimes as formulas of political compromise, 33 role of religion in, 33 structure of benefits, 27 Sweden, 217 Swiss, federalist character of, 31 three regimes approach of, 15 Wilensky, Harold L., 1 women’s rights secularization, 72 women’s workforce participation, 56, 135 work as a positive activity pleasing to God, 271 Calvinism, two classes of, 278 Calvinist absolute duty, 275 worker mobilization, 3 worker question in France, 153 workhouse, 275, 276 working class mobilization of, 15 working mothers, 59, 78, 112 changes in policies, 82 religious parties, 78 sign of government failure, 81 social class, 62

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

A World Survey of Religion and the State (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Religion and social theory

Social Theory and Religion

Politics, Theology and History (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

Politics, Theology and History (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

Religion and Politics in the United States (Religion & Politics in the United States)

Religion and the Making of Society: Essays in Social Theology (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

States, Parties, and Social Movements (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Kant, Religion, and Politics

Religion and Politics

Religion and Politics

Religion and Diversity in Canada (Religion and the Social Order)

Social Movements and Organization Theory (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society

Religion and Society (International Studies in Religion and Society)

Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (Religion and Global Politics)

Religion, Culture, and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States

Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies

Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes

Women, religion, and social change

Capitalism, Democracy, and Welfare (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

Religion, Ethnicity and Social Change

Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol (Studies in Comparative Religion)

Religion, Politics and Historiography in Bulgaria

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

A World Survey of Religion and the State (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Religion and social theory

Social Theory and Religion

Politics, Theology and History (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

Politics, Theology and History (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

Religion and Politics in the United States (Religion & Politics in the United States)

Religion and the Making of Society: Essays in Social Theology (Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)

States, Parties, and Social Movements (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Kant, Religion, and Politics

Religion and Politics

Religion and Politics

Religion and Diversity in Canada (Religion and the Social Order)

Social Movements and Organization Theory (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics)

Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society

Religion and Society (International Studies in Religion and Society)

Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (Religion and Global Politics)

Religion, Culture, and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States

Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies

Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes

Women, religion, and social change

Capitalism, Democracy, and Welfare (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

Religion, Ethnicity and Social Change

Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol (Studies in Comparative Religion)

Religion, Politics and Historiography in Bulgaria

Recommend Documents