Research Article

Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?

Volume: 6 Number: 1 June 29, 2022
TR EN

Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?

Abstract

After the Second World War, welfare states developed especially in the Western capitalist countries. In that regard, protectionist, interventionist policies became dominant and while the regulated market ousted the free market, the interventionist state replaced the laissez-faire state. According to Polanyi, counter-movement paved the way to the emergence of the welfare state. He defined counter-movement as a spontaneous societal reaction to the destructive effects of the self-regulating market on the society. In this paper, I aimed to argue whether the notion of “counter-movement” can explain the development of welfare state sufficiently on the basis of three discussions. Firstly, explaining the emergence of the welfare state as a result of the counter-movement ignores the importance of the social classes in this process because the counter-movement is not a class movement; this movement includes people from different economic and social strata. In this regard, I referred to the Social Democratic and Power Resource Theories. Secondly, while the counter-movement aims to protect the society from the destructive impact of the market system, the welfare state did not emerge for the protection of the society. Even if it provided important benefits to the working class, welfare state emerged in order to secure the capital accumulation in the long run. In this respect, I gave reference to the social control thesis and the crisis of crisis management thesis. Thirdly, while the objective of counter-movement is re-embedding the economy in order to protect society, the welfare state did not bring about a re-embedding of the economy.

Keywords

References

  1. Berend, I. T. (2003, March). The Welfare State; Crisis and Solutions. The Europa Institut Budapest. Retrieved from http://www.europainstitut.hu/pdf/beg19/berend.pdf
  2. Bernard, M. (1979). Ecology, Political Economy, and the Counter-Movement: Karl Polanyi and the Second Great Transformation. In S. Gill & J. Mittelman (Eds), Innovation and Transformation in International Studies (1997). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Devine, P. (2007). The 1970s and After: The Political Economy of Inflation and the Crisis of Social Democracy. In A. Buğra & K. Ağartan (Eds.), Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-First Century (1 ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. Ebner, A. (2008). Polanyi’s Theory of Public Policy: Embeddedness, Commodification and the Institutional Dynamism of the Welfare State. In Governance und Public Policy. Retrieved from http://www.sfb597.uni-bremen.de/download/en/aktuelles/TagungA1/Ebner_Paper.pdf
  5. Ginsburg, N. (1979). Class, Capital and Social Policy. London: Macmillan.
  6. Gough, I. (1979). The Political Economy of the Welfare State. London: Macmillan.
  7. Korpi, W. (1989). Power, Politics, and State Autonomy in the Development of Social Citizenship: Social Rights During Sickness in Eighteen OECD Countries Since 1930. American Sociological Rewiev, 54(3), 309-28.
  8. Lacher, H. (1999a). Embedded Liberalism, Disembedded Markets: Reconceptualising the Pax Americana. New Political Economy, 4(3), 343-360. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563469908406408

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Public Administration

Journal Section

Research Article

Publication Date

June 29, 2022

Submission Date

April 30, 2022

Acceptance Date

June 9, 2022

Published in Issue

Year 2022 Volume: 6 Number: 1

APA
Kayaduvar, M. (2022). Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement? Politik Ekonomik Kuram, 6(1), 167-184. https://doi.org/10.30586/pek.1111692
AMA
1.Kayaduvar M. Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement? Politik Ekonomik Kuram. 2022;6(1):167-184. doi:10.30586/pek.1111692
Chicago
Kayaduvar, Merve. 2022. “Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?”. Politik Ekonomik Kuram 6 (1): 167-84. https://doi.org/10.30586/pek.1111692.
EndNote
Kayaduvar M (June 1, 2022) Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement? Politik Ekonomik Kuram 6 1 167–184.
IEEE
[1]M. Kayaduvar, “Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?”, Politik Ekonomik Kuram, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 167–184, June 2022, doi: 10.30586/pek.1111692.
ISNAD
Kayaduvar, Merve. “Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?”. Politik Ekonomik Kuram 6/1 (June 1, 2022): 167-184. https://doi.org/10.30586/pek.1111692.
JAMA
1.Kayaduvar M. Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement? Politik Ekonomik Kuram. 2022;6:167–184.
MLA
Kayaduvar, Merve. “Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement?”. Politik Ekonomik Kuram, vol. 6, no. 1, June 2022, pp. 167-84, doi:10.30586/pek.1111692.
Vancouver
1.Merve Kayaduvar. Is Welfare State the Rearguard of the Polanyi’s Counter Movement? Politik Ekonomik Kuram. 2022 Jun. 1;6(1):167-84. doi:10.30586/pek.1111692

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.