At first glance violence is an unusual suspect when it comes to explaining social policy. Warfare as the most drastic manifestation of violence is rather associated with destruction and human suffering. In fact, more than hundred million people were killed in military conflicts in the course of the twentieth century (Wimmer 2014, 174). However, the very same century witnessed the rise of the welfare state, notably in the northern hemisphere. Whether these developments are causally interrelated was long and with few exceptions (Titmuss 1958; Dryzek and Goodin 1986; Porter 1994) widely neglected in the social sciences. This holds particularly true for comparative research (see the literature reviews by Kasza 1996; Castles 2010 and Wimmer 2014).

Why, when and how does war affect social policy? Disentangling war impacts on welfare state development and the underlying mechanisms is complicated as war affects more or less all the factors driving social policy emphasised in comparative welfare state research. More specifically, wars impinge on economic development and public revenues, create social needs, trigger political regime change and electoral reform, affect state capacities as well as actors’ power resources.

In an effort to disentangle the impacts of interstate wars on social policy more systematically, Obinger et al. (2018) distinguish between indirect effects (e.g. war impacts on political regime transformations, the build-up of state capacities or shifts in power resources and public revenues) and direct impacts of warfare such as war-induced social needs, shifts in risk patterns (Rehm 2016) and coercive social policy transfer related to military occupation. War impacts can also be classified as to whether they affect the supply-side (e.g. state capacities and taxation) or the demand-side (e.g. social needs and risk patterns) of the political system. Finally, it is not sufficient to focus only on the social policy repercussions of war and its aftershocks. Military rivalries and power ambitions of nation states may also trigger welfare reforms ante bellum.

Only recently, scholars started to examine the warfare–welfare nexus more systematically and in comparative perspective. However, the bulk of research focuses on Western countries and the two world wars which were waged as industrialised mass wars between economically developed countries. The overall evidence is clear-cut and suggests that both world wars have accelerated welfare state development in the long run. Specifically, war was a push factor for the rise of the tax state (Scheve and Stasavage 2016), strengthened the planning experience of governments (Klausen 1998), triggered the introduction of new welfare programmes for civilians (Obinger and Schmitt 2020) as well as war victims and veterans (Skocpol 1992) and pushed, in consequence, social spending (Dryzek and Goodin 1986; Obinger and Schmitt 2018). Finally, war was the main impetus for the establishment of welfare ministries in Western countries (Petersen et al. 2021). In addition, there is evidence that concerns about the physical fitness and educational attainment of soldiers or worries about low birth rates informed welfare and educational reforms already in the run-up to war. Specifically, military rivalries and military defeat prompted reforms in primary education (Aghion et al. 2019), (pronatalist) family policies (Dörr 2020), labour protection legislation (Dörr et al. 2020) and public health measures for children (Dwork 1987). Finally, war left a tremendous imprint on the distribution of income and wealth. Scholarly works by Piketty (2014) and Scheidel (2017) have convincingly shown that war led to greater income equality, at least over a longer transitory period.

Despite these improvements there are still many blind spots. Research has mainly concentrated on interstate wars in the Western world. Much less is known about war impacts in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Global South where civil war is the most frequent type of violent conflict. There is evidence that social policy impacts of civil wars differ from interstate warfare. Skocpol (1992), for example, has shown that generous (and expensive) veterans’ pensions have impeded the emergence of old-age pensions in the US. In contrast to interstate war, civil wars destroy state capacities in the long-run, undercut national solidarity and give rise to long-term political instability. A Western bias is also evident with regard to the social policy implications of the Cold War. While there are few studies for the northern hemisphere (e.g. Obinger and Schmitt 2011; Petersen 2013; Inglot 2013), much less is known about the social policy ramifications of the Cold War in the Global South.

Similar to warfare, the impact of colonialism as a further form of violent interdependencies on social policy development was widely neglected for many years. This is astounding when considering the fact that most countries on the globe have a colonial history and social protection programmes in former colonies were often introduced before those countries gained independence (Schmitt 2015). However, the omission of the colonial legacy in the analysis of the determinants and consequences of early and postcolonial social protection precludes a systematic grasp of contemporary social problems in the Global South.

But why, when and how does colonialism affect social policy? Colonial powers did not become engaged into social aspects of the labour question and the provision of social services in their colonies until the first decades of the twentieth century (Midgley and Piachaud 2011). This changed by midway through the twentieth century when pressure on the colonial powers, not only from inside the colonies in the form of rising demands for social protection but also from outside in the form of soft pressure by international organisations, strongly increased. Combined with the increase in their ideological and human rights vulnerability after World War II and their need to maintain regime legitimacy, colonial powers became more and more engaged in social policies in their colonies.

However, the influence of colonialism on social policy was far from homogeneous. Colonial powers had distinct notions and concepts of the state, the labour question and social security (Mahoney 2010). For example, France practised a pro-active colonial policy, emphasising the decisive role of the state in enhancing social and economic prosperity (Cooper 1996; Iliffe 1987), whereas Britain pursued a decentralised and less universal approach.

As in the case of war, we can distinguish direct and indirect effects. Direct impacts comprise the coercive implementation of certain social security schemes in colonies. For example, the French Code du Travail passed in 1952 was the keystone for social protection legislation in the French colonies. Indirect effects include the influence of colonial powers on politics, coalition-building, formal and informal political institution-building, economic affairs, the structure of the labour market and social stratification.

The empirical evidence regarding these direct and indirect impacts of colonialism reveals several short- and long-term effects on social policy. In the short term, colonialism influenced the introduction of specific social security schemes (e.g. Midgley and Piachaud 2011; Cooper 1996; Schmitt 2015, 2020). Colonialism also shaped the economic system (Suret-Canale 1971; Mahoney 2010), the tax state (Frankema 2010, 2011; Frankema and Booth 2019) and political institutions (Mahoney 2010). This in turn affected political, economic and social outcomes in the long run. The literature provides evidence that the colonial legacy, for example, in the form of the institutions, implemented during colonial times, influences contemporary economic growth (Acemoglu et al. 2001; Lange et al. 2006), social outcomes (Lange et al. 2006) or the performance of health and education services (Huillery 2009).

Even though existing research provides empirical evidence that colonialism matters for early and contemporary social policies, we still know little about the concrete underlying causal mechanisms, in other words, under which circumstances colonialism does play a role for social policies, for which aspects of social policy concretely and through which channels. Moreover, most studies focus on the influence of colonialism without elucidating the interplay with national contextual factors and actors. Whether and how colonialism has shaped social protection is conditioned not only by the strength of local political parties and labour unions, but also by domestic financial, administrative and political circumstances.

The following nine chapters study the impact of war and colonialism on social policy in different settings. Herbert Obinger, Carina Schmitt and Laura Seelkopf provide a condensed overview of the multifaceted impacts of the two world wars on welfare state development in the Western world. Andreas Heinrich examines how revolution, war and coercive policy transfer gave rise to the spread of the so-called Semashko healthcare system in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. From a Western perspective, Klaus Petersen, Michele Mioni and Herbert Obinger discuss the nexus between the Cold War and welfare state development. They argue that this latent conflict swayed welfare state development via domestic coalition-building and the necessity to enhance political legitimacy under conditions of fierce bipolar system competition. Delia Gonzalez de Reufels shows for Chile how a coalition between doctors and the military has pushed for reforms related to public health. Amanda Shriwise sheds light on the British Colonial Development Act passed in 1929, which for the first time provided funding for public health in British colonies. Elsada Diana Cassells, Gabriela de Carvalho and Lorraine Frisina Doetter examine the British influence on healthcare policies in Jamaica after independence. Aline Grünewald examines how the French colonial legacy has shaped the coverage of pension schemes in Francophone Africa. Since many colonies emulated principles enshrined in French Labour Code after independence, there is a substantial discrepancy between legal and effective coverage in social protection due to widespread informal labour markets. Anna Wolkenhauer traces the bifurcation of the Zambian social protection system into demand-driven social insurance and top-down social assistance schemes to the colonial era. She argues that the colonial copper-based enclave economy resulted not only in protracted informality and inequality, but also in a long-term bias of political organisation, where only a minority of the workforce are able to politically articulate claims to social security. Finally, Alex Veit sheds light on the postcolonial reforms of school education in South Africa in the 1990s.