reached 20 percent of GDP, ranging from Sweden at 32 percent to
Japan at 10 percent. The bulk of this transformation took place
between 1960 and 1980, at a time when the economy itself was
expanding rapidly.^38 Social transfers and services multiplied, coverage
extended, and benefits improved, to provide the citizens of rich
democracies with unprecedented social protection.
Economic prosperity undeniably contributed to this evolution.
Between 1950 and 1973, the “golden age” of postwar capitalism, the
world economy grew at an unprecedented rate of 2.9 percent a year,
compared to 0.9 percent between 1913 and 1950, and 1.3 percent
during the age of expansion and empire, between 1870 and 1913. In
the West, progress was even more spectacular, with growth rates of
around 4 percent a year in the United States and Europe, and around
8 percent in Japan.^39 Financial resources seemed readily available to
improve social security, at a time when populations were relatively
young and when well-paid and stable jobs were widely available. A
new consensus had also emerged from the experience of worldwide
depression and war, centered on an inclusive understanding of social
citizenship. As stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
all human beings deserved respect and dignity, and every citizen could
claim social rights and expect some security. Concretely, this con-
sensus was translated into national programs designed to protect the
income of the standard household, a one-earner family headed by a
male breadwinner.^40 This convergence around the idea of income
security gave rise to a new debate though, on the nature and extent of
social protection in an advanced democracy.
The welfare state did have antecedents, which went back to the
nineteenth century. Interestingly, social insurance was first born as a
conservative, indeed authoritarian project. Guided by Chancellor Otto
(^38) Alexander Hicks,Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism: A Century of
Income Security Politics, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 153–55;
Francis G. Castles, “The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Economic Development and
the Postwar Welfare State,” in Stephan Leibfried (ed.),Welfare State Futures,
39 Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 40.
Angus Maddison,The World Economy. Volume I: A Millennial Perspective;
40 Volume II: Historical Statistics, Paris, OECD, 2006, pp. 126 and 138.
Hugh Heclo, “The Social Question,” in Katherine McFate, Roger Lawson, and
William Julius Wilson (eds.),Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social
Policy: Western States in the New World Order, New York, Russell Sage
Foundation, 1995, pp. 667–75.
118 Left and Right in Global Politics