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Industrial welfare and the state: nation and city reconsidered

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Abstract

Industrial welfare history presents important challenges to developmental state theories in “late” industrialization. This article expands the debate by examining how nation-states create statutory welfare by addressing institutional variety beyond markets. It is simplistic to argue linear growth of national welfare or of states autonomously regulating markets to achieve risk-mitigation. I contend that welfare institutions emerge from the state’s essential conflict and collaboration with various alternate institutions in cities and regions. Using histories of Europe, India, and Karnataka, I propose a place-based, work-based, and work-place based welfare typology evolving at differential rates. Although economic imperatives exist to expand local risk-pools, it is precisely the alternate institutional diversity that makes late industrial nation-states unable or unwilling to do so. This results in institutionally “thin,” top-down industrial welfare. Ultimately, theories that overly depend on histories of small nations, homogenous nations, or city-states, provide weak tests of the economics of industrial welfare.

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Notes

  1. Governments pay for this “informal” social protection in early industrializers as well. Aging, childcare, women’s labor market entry, and the collapse of extended family systems all affect care’s costs.

  2. Variants extend from “catch-up” schools (Abramovitz 1986; Baumol 1986; Gerschenkron 1962), to modernization in social policy (e.g., Wilensky 1975; Flora and Alber 1981).

  3. Nations can be economically draining, even parasitic; an “economics of secession” might capture this.

  4. Single measures are misleading. Countries with almost 100% healthcare coverage may still reimburse hospital costs to only 50 percent (Beattie 2000).

  5. As Wollmann (2006) emphasizes, English “government” alludes to parliamentary and policy-making bodies and at the same time to executive and implementation. Since the nineteenth century, government refers to central and local authority. However, German Regierung, and French gouvernement, refer to central sovereign power, not local exercise of authority, and local government is primarily administrative, not political.

  6. E.g., the diamond sector with the Jains has extended family systems of welfare, skills transmission, specialized global business practice, and gender roles.

  7. The earlier Bhakti-movement’s religious figures similarly urged against caste distinctions. Musicians and saints preached love and devotion and dramatically different discourses of universalism and service.

  8. Greif (2005) defines corporations as “intentionally created, voluntary, interest-based, and self-governed permanent associations. Guilds, fraternities, universities, communes and city-states are some of the corporations that dominated Europe. Businesses and professional associations, business corporations, universities, consumer groups, republics and democracies are some of the corporations in modern economies” (2005, p. 1).

  9. The southern anti-Brahmin movement was especially intense, aggravated by British divide-and-rule strategies.

  10. Arguably, the Mysore national movement comprised three periods: 1885–1920 (mobilization without organization), 1920–1937 (elite mobilization), and 1937–1947 (mass mobilization) (Björn 1979, p. 179).

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Acknowledgments

Chris Tilly was a marvelous editor and I thank him and Mike Hanagan for their invitation. I’m delighted to participate in this volume that emphasizes Charles Tilly’s inspiring intellectual legacy. This article represents my ongoing research and two broader projects on comparative social protections and industrial governance at the Technological Change Lab (TCLab) at Columbia University. It is funded from Columbia’s Graduate School for Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), and has been recently awarded a grant from the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) at Columbia University. Both sources are very gratefully acknowledged. Some materials here are from the ISERP proposal. Several sub-themes were earlier presented at the following conferences and workshops: Universalizing Social Protection in Asia, New Delhi, Feb. 2007, Association for Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), Fort Worth, Oct. 2007, ILO Global Production Networks and Decent Work workshop, Bangalore, Nov. 2007, Sloan Industry Studies conference, Boston, April 2008. I have benefited from questions and discussions at these venues and, in India, from scholars, managers, government officials, union members, and other workers. I thank Dr. Krishnamurthy, chief librarian, University of Mysore, Dr. Frederick Weber for his comments, and Matthew Crosby, Kyle Gerry, Mike Kolber, and Sonal Shah for compiling data for TCLab.

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  1. Urban Planning Program and Technological Change Lab (TCLab), Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Smita Srinivas

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Srinivas, S. Industrial welfare and the state: nation and city reconsidered. Theor Soc 39, 451–470 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9116-2

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