From Reform to Crisis. The West German Welfare State during the Great Coalition and the Social-liberal Era

Completed postdoctoral project 

For a long time now, social policy has intervened not only in emergency situations and precarious fringe areas of society, but instead influences in varied ways the living conditions of the entire population. 

This completed postdoctoral project looked at two distinctive phases of the development of the West German welfare state: the period of expansion in the 1960s and early 1970s, during which social policy transformed against the backdrop of optimistic thinking about what might be possible in the future into an active ‘societal policy’, and the years ‘after the boom’ from the second half of the 1970s – a phase in which growing unemployment, an aging population and altered gender roles profoundly changed the scope and priorities of social policy actions and brought about the transition to a politics of cost reduction and consolidation that persists to this day. 

The study correlated the rise, zenith and limits of the expansion of the welfare state. It enquired after the methods and possibilities of the reform of central institutions under the conditions of prosperity and austerity, as well as after the long-term effects of such reform processes, and investigated moreover knowledge systems, actor constellations and the social consequences of decisions in social policy. In this way, it makes a contribution to historicising West Germany and helps to explain the genesis of new problem areas that shape the face of our present.

 

 

Hinweise zum Projektabschluss

 

Publications:

- Von der Reform in die Krise. Der westdeutsche Wohlfahrtsstaat in der Großen Koalition und der Sozialliberalen Ära (Geschichte der Gegenwart, Bd. 12), im Druck, erscheint Göttingen 2019

- Der entfaltete Sozialstaat und die Wiedervereinigung, in: Ulrich Becker/Stephan Leibfried/Peter Masuch/Wolfgang Spellbrink (Hg.), Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik: Grundlagen und Herausforderungen des deutschen Sozialstaats. 60 Jahre Bundessozialgericht, Göttingen 2014, S. 161-179 (zus. mit Christiane Kuller).

- Sozialpolitik nach dem Wirtschaftswunder, in: Bernd Rother (Hg.), Willy Brandt. Neue Fragen, neue Erkenntnisse, Bonn 2011, 207-218.

- Umbau am „Modell Deutschland“. Sozialer Wandel, ökonomische Krise und wohlfahrtsstaatliche Reformpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland „nach dem Boom“, in: Journal of Modern European History 9 (2011), S. 215-240.

- Der bedrängte Wohlfahrtsstaat. Deutsche und europäische Perspektiven auf die Sozialpolitik der 1970er-Jahre, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 47 (2007), S. 103-136.

Open

Bildinfo

Winfried Süß

Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam

Email: suess [at] zzf-potsdam.de
Telefon: 0331/28991-71

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