How does the prosecution of war on the homefront affect postwar democratic politics and the likelihood for major reform? Wars cause death and destruction, but important political and social reforms often follow in their wake. At times it appears that the greater the destruction, the greater the growth of state power, and the greater the infringement on civil liberties, the more fundamental and far reaching the reforms. After World War I, Britain, Austria, and Belgium broadened the franchise and many countries granted political rights to women. World War II led to an even greater extension of political and social reforms. It is no accident that a historian would entitle her book War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children.

The mobilization of the homefront is critical to a state's ability to wield power in international politics, and this was especially true during the total wars of the twentieth century. As an American industrialist put it, total war “demands that the blood of the soldier be mingled with from three to five parts of the sweat of the man in the factories, mills, mines, and fields of the nation-in-arms.” Modern states cannot wage total war effectively without labor's cooperation. Industrial strikes are potentially as damaging to the war effort as military mutinies.

All states must increase economic productivity during war, but different states use different strategies with different results. Some states develop a harsh and punitive strategy to gain labor's compliance with the war effort.