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This chapter draws on the previous chapters of this edited volume to point out broad lessons about the cases and issues discussed throughout the volume, which should help stress both the commonalities and the variations among the empirical cases. Furthermore, the chapter outlines a broad agenda for the international and comparative research on social policy language in contemporary societies.

This chapter analyses the social policy language in Denmark and Sweden from the late 19^th Century until today. Scandinavia has long been considered an international stronghold for comprehensive welfare states. The starting point in this chapter is a discussion of the historical usages of concepts such as “Folk” (the People) and “velfærd” (welfare) and the early social policy language of the two countries. In the postwar era, the term “welfare state” becomes a key concept. The chapter offers a detailed analysis of the complicated history of the term “welfare state” in the postwar era related to the history of the Social Democratic welfare states. The concept was contested in the 1940s and 1950s and only in the 1960s we find a moment of consensus. The concluding discussion dwells with the more recent tendency to substitute “welfare state” with the softer and more inclusive term “welfare society”.

This chapter examines the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) contribution to the construction of a transnational social policy language. It traces the changes in the OECD’s social policy discourse from the formation of the Directorate for Manpower Social Affairs and Education in 1974?the high point of “Keynes plus” ideas through the period of “welfare state in crisis,” launched at its 1980 conference?through to the (re-)discovery of a positive, or “social investment,” role for social policy in the 1990s and into the new millennium. The chapter concludes with an assessment of its current position as it extends the geographical reach of its analysis to include the “emerging” countries and tries to come to grips with social policy after the “financial meltdown.”

This introduction chapter develops the overall framework for the following chapters. First, it demonstrates that there is a need to take a closer look at the development of key concepts in social policy language such as ‘welfare state’, ‘social security’, ‘welfare society’. The terms, metaphors, and concepts we use when studying social policy are far from innocent and are closely tied to political struggles and transnational processes. Therefore, from a comparative and international perspective, studying terminology and concept formation is an important part of both political and policy analysis. Second, the chapter discusses different approaches to the study of social policy concepts and language, including conceptual history, discourse analysis, and the role of ideas literature. Third, this introductory chapter outlines the structure and the content of the volume as a whole.

This chapter explores the development of two major policy concepts in France, a country with a rich intellectual and social policy tradition where the language of social policy has become quite contentious over the last three decades. Focusing mainly on this recent period, the chapter discusses the meaning and development of the concepts of solidarity, social exclusion, social security, and ‘État-providence’, which is the French equivalent (but not exact translation) of the Anglo-American term “welfare state.” These concepts have long been controversial, in part because they are typically involved in the inherently political drawing and redrawing of the contested boundaries of state action in France. Overall, the chapter uses the French case to explain how the analysis of social policy language can help scholars adopt a more reflexive and historically-minded approach.

The interest of the Spanish welfare state for analyzing the evolution of social policy language is derived precisely from its peculiar historical development. Social policy was initiated in Spain in 1900. The development of social insurance followed the Bismarckian model from then until the end of Franco’s authoritarian regime in 1975. However, the Spanish welfare state has become a mix-model during the last 35 years of democratic rule. In fact, while the income-maintenance system remains broadly rooted in Bismarckian principles, health care, education, and, partially, social care services have been universalized following the social democratic model. This chapter analyzes the changes in social policy language, focusing especially on the periods of transition to democracy and consolidation. The chapter also compares the language used in different policy areas and whether it is in accordance with the principles in which they are grounded.

Germany is commonly known as the precursor of institutionalized state interventionism with regard to the social question. The peculiar history of paternalistic-authoritarian social policy “from above,” absorbing and expropriating earlier forms of municipal welfare and cooperative self-help, lies behind the specific combination of statist and communalist semantics to be found in German social policy language .and especially the concept of Sozialstaat discussed in this chapter. Based on the double experience of war corporatism in the first part of the twentieth century, and driven by a booming economy and the emergence of fordist class compromise, the post-war social policy discourse was injected with a rhetoric of partnership, the idea of “the social” as a common good being warranted by the state and (its) social partners marking social policy language until German reunification. Since the late 1990s, however, a semantic shift has taken place under the auspices of activation: liberal semantics of personal responsibility, self-reliance, and a “culture of poverty” promoted by state welfare have come to the fore, reflecting and reinforcing a paradigmatic change in the logic of social policy in Germany.

This chapter examines the shift in New Zealand’s discursive articulations of social policy including usage of “welfare” and “welfare state.” Identifying the increased attention to language within social policy analysis, the chapter adopts an historical lens to examine change over the past five decades. It identifies the rise and fall of welfare and the emergence of alternative concepts including social development under Labour-led administrations (1999-2008) and subsequent attempts by the National Party to write a new narrative. Drawing on extensive archival research that spans the establishment of the welfare state to contemporary events, the chapter’s analytical approach serves to question: 1) language use (predicates, phrases, and vocabulary); 2) narratives, binaries, and indexes that invoke relations and values; 3) the uses of metaphors, myths, and naturalizations; 4) pointers that cue readers to make bridging assumptions; and, 5) subject positioning within texts.