Replication Data for: Stages, Orders & Periods of Welfare State Development: A Global Sequence Analysis of Social Policy Dynamics

Many theoretical strands in comparative social policy research implicitly or explicitly deal with ‘time’ and ‘timing’ in the development of welfare states. We identify three types of such temporal theorizations – i.e. stage models, timed orders and periodizations – and analyze their relevance for global social policy development. We do so by employing sequence and cluster analysis to a new comprehensive dataset of social policy adoption in 164 countries over 140 years (1880-2019). While our analysis reveals certain common stages of social policy consolidation – from education mandates and health care systems over work-related protections to care services – we also find varying trajectories which challenge conventional regional clustering narratives. Moreover, our analysis highlights two periods which have so far not featured prominently in comparative welfare state research: The interwar years (1919-1929) and the period of decolonization (1949-1969).

比较社会政策研究中的诸多理论脉络，均或隐或显地涉及福利国家发展进程中的「时间」与「时序」议题。我们识别出三类此类时间维度理论建构——即阶段模型、时序秩序与分期法——并分析其对全球社会政策发展的研究价值。为此，我们针对164个国家1880年至2019年（共140年）的社会政策采纳情况构建全新综合数据集，并运用序列分析与聚类分析展开研究。尽管分析揭示了社会政策体系整合的若干共性阶段——从教育强制政策、医疗保障体系，到劳动相关保障与照护服务——但我们同时发现了差异化的发展轨迹，这些轨迹对传统区域聚类的既有论断构成挑战。此外，本研究还凸显了比较福利国家研究中此前未获充分重视的两个时期：战间期（1919-1929年）与非殖民化时期（1949-1969年）。