This is the first comprehensive analysis of public and private welfare in France available in English, or French, which offers a deeply-researched explanation of how France's welfare state came to be and why the French are so attached to it. The author argues that France simultaneously pursued two different paths toward universal social protection. Family welfare embraced an industrial model in which class distinctions and employer control predominated. By contrast, protection against the risks of illness, disability, maternity, and old age followed a mutual aid model of welfare. The book examines a remarkably broad cast of actors that includes workers' unions, employers, mutual leaders, the parliamentary elite, haut fonctionnaires, doctors, pronatalists, women's organizations - both social Catholic and feminist - and diverse peasant organisations. It also traces foreign influences on French social reform, particularly from Germany's former territories in Alsace-Lorraine and Britain's Beveridge Plan.

François Ewald's landmark The Birth of Solidarity—first published in French in 1986, revised in 1996, with the revised edition appearing here in English for the first time—is one of the most important historical and philosophical studies of the rise of the welfare state. Theorizing the origins of social insurance, Ewald shows how the growing problem of industrial accidents in France throughout the nineteenth century tested the limits of classical liberalism and its notions of individual responsibility. As workers and capitalists confronted each other over the problem of workplace accidents, they transformed the older practice of commercial insurance into an instrument of state intervention, thereby creating an entirely new conception of law, the state, and social solidarity. What emerged was a new system of social insurance guaranteed by the state. The Birth of Solidarity is a classic work of social and political theory that will appeal to all those interested in labor power, the making and dismantling of the welfare state, and Foucauldian notions of governmentality, security, risk, and the limits of liberalism.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of public and private welfare in France available in English or French. It argues that France simultaneously pursued two different paths toward universal social protection. Family welfare embraced an industrial model in which class distinctions and employer control predominated. By contrast, protection against the risks of illness, disability, maternity, and old age followed a mutual aid model of welfare. The book also traces foreign influences on French social reform, particularly from Germany's former territories in Alsace-Lorraine and Britain's Beveridge Plan.

In this work, Timothy Smith argues that although post-World War II politicians have attempted to take credit for the creation of the welfare state, the social reform movement in France actually grew out of World War I. Smith shows that French social spending before World War II was well above the European average and demonstrates that the present welfare state is based on a structure that already existed but was expanded and consolidated with great political fanfare during the 1940s. Smith shows that France's most important social legislation to date - providing medical insurance, maternity benefits, modest pensions, and disability benefits to millions of people - was passed in 1928 (and amended and put into practice in 1930). This law covered over 50 per cent of the population by 1940. Few other nations could have claimed this sort of social insurance success. As well, by 1937 the centuries-old public assistance residency requirements had been transferred from the local to the departmental (regional) level. France's success in introducing important social reforms may require us to rethink the common view of interwar France as a time of utter political, economic and social failure.

A comparative analysis of social policies in Britain and France between 1914 and 1945.

Women workers and the revolutionary origins of the modern welfare state

DIVDocuments the early days of the French welfare state through the Musée Social, an early think tank./div

This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.

This book examines the history of the French welfare state from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. The French social security system has changed profoundly over the last few decades. The Bismarkian model of governance and social protection inherited from the Second World War has progressively faded away in favor of a reinforcement of the state’s capacity to intervene on policies and the implementation of national health insurance coverage. In order to understand this major transformation, this book draws on rich original sources to offer a historical and sociological perspective on elite policymakers and policy change. In doing so, it identifies correlations between the changing social backgrounds and career paths of elites in charge of social insurance policies since the 1940s, and the development of health policy programs. It will appeal to all those interested in public policy, health policy, social studies and French history and politics.