This edited volume has offered comparative, historical, and political perspectives on the development of social policy concepts and language in a number of advanced industrial countries. For decades, social policy scholars and practitioners have used concepts such as ‘welfare state’ and ‘social security’ without paying much attention to where these concepts come from and how their meanings have changed over time. The previous chapters in our volume have addressed this question by exploring the social policy language of relevant international organisations: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); European Union (EU); International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank; and of countries spread across four continents (Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North America). These chapters have explored the characteristics of social policy concepts and language. In this brief concluding chapter, we discuss the main findings of our volume and outline an agenda for research on the history and politics of social policy concepts and language.

Main findings

As the chapters of this volume demonstrate, social policy language has evolved in close connection with the building of national social policy institutions. This language has been shown to have significant variation across time and space. Similar concepts have acquired different meanings and connotations, and some countries have preferred some concepts to others.

The most notable example of conceptual stability is Germany, where ‘welfare discourse revolved around a remarkably stable centreline: the (re)conciliation of economy and society by means of the Sozialstaat’ (see the chapter on Germany in this volume). Even though German society was subjected to profound social upheavals (two world wars and the 1933 Nazi takeover of power), the concept of the Sozialstaat continued to serve as a common frame of reference in German social policy debates.

As other chapters of this volume illustrate, ‘welfare state’ is probably the most influential of the key social policy concepts to be found (and translated) in most national contexts. In Britain, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark, for example, ‘welfare state’ became an almost hegemonic term in the post-war era. The chapter on Britain clearly shows that enthusiasm for this new term was hardly universal, and the critics included not only ideological opponents of social reforms but also prominent social policy figures such as William Beveridge and T.H. Marshall.