The State

Abstract

The main focus of study and debate in social policy has been the welfare state. As we discussed in Chapter 1, the Fabian pioneers of the discipline in the early twentieth century were concerned first and foremost with developing academic research and political argument that would put pressure on the British government to use the power of the state to introduce welfare reforms to respond to the social problems which they had identified. Their expectation was that if evidence was produced to demonstrate that the capitalist economy was operating in ways which were leading to hardship or deprivation, it would be the duty of the state to intervene to alleviate or prevent this hardship. Their intention was that this intervention should take the form of services provided directly by the state, using resources collected from citizens in the form of taxation.