Stages, orders & periods of welfare state development: a global sequence analysis of social policy dynamics

Comparative social policy research frequently deals, implicitly or explicitly, 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).