Poverty and Ideologies: How the Welfare State Gained Political Support in Britain

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter uses the method of the history of political thought to analyze the relationship between poverty and ideologies. Three major ideologies which have influenced government policies regarding poverty in modern welfare history will be analyzed: liberalism, exclusionism, and social democracy. This chapter uses the historical case of Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to examine what these ideologies said about government social policy as a way of alleviating poverty, and how support for (or antagonism against) the welfare state grew therefrom. It was found that in Britain, a new version of liberal ideology that incorporated some elements of social democracy appeared and contributed to the expansion of the welfare state in the early twentieth century. From the analysis in this chapter, three conclusions can be drawn for the first goal of the SDGs. First, in order to eliminate relative poverty in developed countries, it is necessary to recognize the variety of interpretation different ideologies have given to poverty as a social problem. Second, to increase the influence of a particular ideology, consideration should be given to the path dependence of originally rooted cultural factors, for example, the strength of liberal ideology in the case of modern British politics. Third, a comprehensive discourse that spans science, philosophy, and policy is required in order to gain broad support for a particular ideology.