Repository | Book | Chapter

The violent manner of the dissolution of the state-empire system created a space within which novel political arguments could be made — in the peripheral areas of the system these demands were lodged by aspirant replacement elites and centred upon political independence and thereafter concerned the business of state-making, nation-building and the pursuit of development — in the core areas, where old structures and ideas had been radically disturbed, there were similar calls from patrician reformers and subaltern groups for change and one set of demands centred upon novel claims in respect of welfare — the assertion of the responsibility of the state to attend to the basic needs of all its citizens and the parallel claim to a human right to such welfare provision. In the former metropolitan core territory, the notion of welfare became one of the defining ideas of the post-war polity — an aspect of the contested compromise between classes that could not easily be challenged, much less significantly changed.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137023834_3

Full citation: