War and Welfare

Download or read book War and Welfare written by Jytte Klausen and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1998-08-15 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From belligerent to neutral countries, the civilian war economy that developed from 1939 to 1945 created the foundations for the postwar welfare state. This book examines the legacy of the "warfare state" and reveals how it paved the path for the welfare state in ensuing decades. Jytte Klausen shows how the institutional marks made by World War II were critical to capitalist reform after the war. She argues that the warfare state was a gift to the European Left, and asserts that state-expansion and the changing domestic order during the war, in most countries regardless of their stances, anticipated the welfare state. When the war ended in 1945, the reconstruction process rested on piecemeal decisions to remove or retain war-time controls over the economy, ranging from state cartels to wage fixing. Klausen argues that the welfare state ratified prior changes in state-society relations and represented a continuation of institutional development undertaken during the war years.