No abstract

Since Esping-Andersen'sThree Worlds, it has become a truism of welfare state research that welfare states do not vary linearly along a single dimension but have to be conceptualized as multidimensional phenomena that cluster into types caused by the political economy of class coalitions. However, when moving beyond the 18 original countries of Esping-Andersen's analysis, the situation is less clear. Although additional worlds have been identified in the Global North and the Global South, these are usually not conceptualized along the same dimensions as the original three worlds and are rarely empirically compared with them. This paper tackles these omissions by explicitly comparing Northern and Southern countries within Esping-Andersen's framework. It poses the question whether the central insight of welfare state research, namely, that there are not just gradual differences between welfare states, but different types with qualitative differences, expands beyond classic welfare states. Based on newly generated data on social rights and social stratification, we employ cluster analysis with 45 Northern and Southern countries. This analysis produces mixed results. We do find different types of welfare states with qualitative differences, but these do not fully correspond to Esping-Andersen's Three Worlds. Moreover, our findings also point to a conceptual issue in welfare regime research: regimes are not just defined and measured in terms of different logics of welfare provision but also take into account degrees of welfare stateism. We argue that this issue is poised to become ever more pressing with the geographical expansion of welfare state research.

Even though paid maternity leave was the earliest form of social protection specifically aimed at women workers and is fundamental in securing their economic independence vis-à-vis employers and spouses, it has received scant scholarly attention. Neither the traditional historical accounts of welfare state emergence nor the more recent gendered analyses of developed welfare states have provided comparative accounts of its beginnings and trajectories. Employing the newly created historical database of maternity leave, we provide the first global and historical perspective on paid maternity leave policies covering 157 countries from the 1880s to 2018. Focusing on eligibility rather than generosity, we construct a measure of inclusiveness of paid maternity leaves to highlight how paid maternity leave has shaped not only gender but also social inequality, which has, until recently, largely been ignored by the literature on leave policies. The analyses of coverage expansion by sector and the development of eligibility rules reveal how paid maternity leave has historically stratified women workers by occupation and labor market position but is slowly evolving into a more universal social right across a broad range of countries. Potential drivers for this development are identified using multivariate analysis, suggesting a pivotal role for the political empowerment of women in the struggle for gender and social equality. However, the prevalence of informal labor combined with insufficient or non-existing maternity benefits outside the systems of social insurance still poses significant obstacles to the protection of women workers in some countries.

Social pensions-non-contributory provisions for old age, mostly means-tested-have mushroomed in the global South since the 1990s, and have also been advocated by international organizations. Using the data base FLOORCASH constructed by the authors and their research team, we cover all countries of the global South, to go beyond existing case studies and selective comparisons. We investigate the contribution of social pensions to rights-based social protection and seek to explain their spread across the global South. While in Northern welfare states universal social services and social insurance are seen as the hallmarks of social citizenship as conceived by T.H. Marshall, measured by indices such as Esping-Andersen's decommodification index, this paper advances a conceptualization of social rights that includes means-tested benefits, in order to recognize the bigger role of non-contributory transfers in developing countries. Applying a new measure of the social quality of social pensions, we detect considerable differences between countries, which are not reducible to the common distinction universal vs. means-tested benefits. Combing the social quality measure with the dimension of scale (population covered), we identify four normative models of old-age security. One of these models might herald a new social model for the South. Finally the paper applies event history analysis to explain the spread of social pensions across the global South, finding that standard domestic variables, subscription to international norms, and pension reform events were central drivers of social pension expansion.

Various instruments to protect families with children from the consequences of industrialization have been introduced in modernizing nation-states at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The global adoption of family policies, such as maternity leave, family allowances, and childcare facilities, followed a wide array of patterns. After being introduced by pioneering countries, some programs spread rapidly throughout Europe, some reached the peripheries of colonial empires and others were only introduced by the newly established nation-states populating world society after decolonization. We provide the first analysis of the disparate origins and spread of family policies, identifying the networks that facilitate their diffusion.

The size, structure, and productivity of populations have been major issues in politics since the emergence of the state in history. When the now-developed countries experienced the first wave of fertility decline, they reacted with population policy, including family policy, to counteract the looming reduction of national populations. After World War II, the opposite fear of global overpopulation started to dominate international discourse and population control became a model for national development. In our chapter, we ask whether this paradigm left room for a family policy. We analyse three major UN population conferences as platforms of interdependence and sketch how the two contrasting cases of China and Kenya have signalled commitment, criticism, or distance from global norms and whether their national policies mimicked global models.