Social Science Hisotyr and Welfare State Resilience: Proposing a New Periodization

• Europe's Welfare States are, it seems, under unprecedented pressure. Has the banking collapse of 2007/8 ended decades of Welfare State resilience?  Drawing on the new social science history of the Welfare State (Beland and Petersen 2014, Petersen and Petersen 2013) this paper contextualizes current challenges to state welfare in a critique of earlier historical 'periods' - all of which were marked by 'crisis'. It adds conceptual analysis (of temporality) to the new history, critiquing the 'epochal generalization' implicit in standard periodizations (of a 30 year 'Golden Age' followed by a less clearly specified, equally long, 'Silver Age' of resilience (Taylor-Gooby 2002)).  During the latter period the Welfare State was cast as an 'immoveable object' facing putatively 'irresistible forces' of neo-liberalisation (Pierson 1998).  This paper argues that the contemporaneous evidence shows robust and resilient Welfare States were established (and the Golden Age began) later and that this experience was more differentiated across western European states than the standard account suggests.  The paper reflects on the process of 'epochal generalization' implicit in the academic use of periodized histories, noting the dangers of presentism and the fallacy of anachronism that exist as periodizations reflect the current concerns of analysts and policymakers.  It offers an alternative periodization specific to the Welfare State (rather than also encompassing, say, Fordism) - that began in the mid-1960s.  The evidence is mounting that  the early 1960s and late 2000s, which suggests that the 'age' of resilient welfare may be coming to an end.