ABSTRACT
The history of Western welfare states goes hand in hand with the history of social rights. Aspirations and policies to secure the social welfare of the people were not, of course, unknown to the liberal states of the early 20th century or even to the absolutist states of previous centuries but it was the legal institutionalization of social rights as distributive rights that gave birth to the modern welfare state (Preuss 1986). Welfare states emerged as a result of recognizing citizens’ rights to social security and health in national legislation. This took place in Europe after World War II – although at a different pace in different countries. According to T. H. Marshall’s (1964, pp71-83) renowned analysis, the recognition of social rights also gave birth to a whole new dimension of citizenship – that is, social citizenship. Gøsta Esping-Andersen took Marshall’s observation as one of the starting
points of his seminal work, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Social citizenship was indeed a result of the recognition of people’s social rights. However, EspingAndersen elaborated Marshall’s analysis further. According to Esping-Andersen (1990, pp21-9) the scope and level of social rights, and thus also the nature and extent of social citizenship, varied in different welfare regimes. Citizens were least dependent on the market in the Nordic social democratic welfare regime where social entitlements were universal and their level high. The de-commodifying effect has traditionally been strongest in the Nordic welfare states. The construction of welfare states with universal social security schemes was
“completed” in the Nordic countries by the 1980s. Entitlements to a variety of rather generous income security benefits as well as to social care and healthcare services – that is, extensive social rights – became recognized in social security legislation in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. One would assume, especially with reference to Marshall’s and Esping-Andersen’s renowned narratives about the recognition of social rights and the emergence of welfare states in post-war Europe, that these reforms and hence the creation of Nordic welfare states would have been legitimized by an explicit social rights discourse. But was this really the case? This question has not been posed before.
