Mutual benefit societies, institutional design, and the emergence of public sickness insurance programs : A comparative analysis of six European nations

• Prior research has tended to explain social insurance design in terms of purposive political strategy.  Yet previous structures of class representation, rather than strategic politics only, explain why early welfare states segregated or integrated provision on a class basis. In investigating Europe’s pre-1900 public sickness insurance programs, we find that “inclusionary” Belgian and Swedish insurance laws reflected the class-transcension of these countries’ mutualist organizations.  “Exclusionary,” occupationally segregated German and Austro-Hungarian laws reflected the fragmented corporatism of benefit organizations there.  In France, however, statist segregation of mutuals was partly upheld even against the background of more lateral mutualist traditions.  Finally, Denmark’s class-transcending mutualist movement could not prevent a more “exclusionary” law’s emergence—here based on targeting, or means testing. Categorical programs, especially those incorporating the “third sector“, cause political problems—particularly when third-sector organizing is not correspondingly categorical.  This should trouble contemporary politicians combining inclusionary and exclusionary programs and/or rhetoric.

Nyckelord

social insurance

mutualism

corporatism

third sector

voluntarism

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)