Social Science Knowledge and Welfare Expertise – a Closely Intertwined Development

The development of the social sciences in the 19^th and 20^th century has produced knowledge about societies that informed other areas of society and politics. In this process, specific knowledge propositions have been chosen, others neglected, mostly depending on the actors and institutions that acted as carriers and recipients of this knowledge. The paper in hand addresses the question of how social science knowledge and its translation have contributed to the construction of welfare states, especially at their outset around 1900. In this paper, I will analyze a twofold translation of knowledge: The first is how academic social science knowledge diffuses into politics: I will examine how the idea that society was a structured entity, that was put forward by early sociologists such as the Historical School of Economics in Germany, informed social policy experts. Social science knowledge contributed to the insight that the Social Question was induced by societal structures. If this was accepted as a novel insight state-administered social insurances could be justified and planned. The second translation happens between countries: Social policies that had proved useful could be translated to other countries, but the standing of the newly developing social sciences within these countries had a strong influence on how successful these translations were.

I will illustrate my theoretical considerations with examples about how different welfare knowledge propositions influenced the early set-up of state-administered social policies in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands (ca. 1870-1920). Thus I choose to compare two pioneers of public social policies and one “welfare laggard”. I will analyse historical sources in order to analyse how text-based academic knowledge can be translated into policy expertise both within and between countries.