Organizational forms and welfare coalitions: corporate law and the movement for social insurance in the US and UK

Maya Adereth

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Scholars of the welfare state have long argued that, in liberal democracies, welfare state expansion depends on successful coalitions in its favour. Under what circumstances do these coalitions form? Party systems, economic interest, and political mobilisation have all been thought to influence the emergence of coalitions for welfare state expansion. In this article, I argue that law plays a critical role in facilitating the last of these factors. Drawing on a growing body of literature that sees law as constitutive of, rather than merely reflective of, social relations, I demonstrate that available legal forms meaningfully inform opportunities for welfare coalitions. In particular, I examine how debates over what a trade union is—a voluntary association of individuals, or a corporate body deserving of a state statute—shaped coalitions for welfare reform in the US and the UK at the turn of the twentieth century.

Keywords: comparative politics; historical sociology; institutional political economy; law; trade unions; welfare state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 K00 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2025-10-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in British Journal of Sociology, 17, October, 2025. ISSN: 0007-1315

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/129715/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:129715

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().