ABSTRACT
This chapter purposes to compare the responses of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to the challenge of the new ideas about the role of the state in the protection and development of the social rights of citizens in the early phase of the creation of the modern welfare state. Social insurance legislation tended to develop earlier and with a larger degree of public investment in countries that had attained relatively higher levels of socioeconomic development and political mobilization at the time of the breakthrough of the idea of state-organized social insurance. The chapter discusses the impact of diffusion on early social insurance legislation in Scandinavia. It provides only a limited explanation of the timing and actual contents of the first laws passed. The chapter also discusses the effect certain differences in macrocharacteristics may have had on the timing of first laws as well as the effect on the likelihood of the introduction of compulsory insurance.
