ABSTRACT
Much political behavior can be interpreted as the pursuit of more or less naked self-interest. This chapter focuses on the growth of social security programmes, not on the growth of public expenditures in general or even on the growth of social spending broadly conceived. In so far as it is seen to be anything other than a mere social-structural epiphenomenon, welfare-state benevolence is ordinarily explained in terms of 'altruism' and 'sympathy'. There is of course a long history of explanations of the welfare state along the lines of principled behavior. An analysis couched in terms of principled behavior might be useful for explaining certain marginal details of welfare-state provision. Security is the chief end of civilization, and as it progresses, the fortunes of individuals are upon the whole made less liable to derangement. The British case has, deservedly, received a good deal of attention from those concerned with both empirical and normative aspects of modern welfare states.
