How Economic Ideas Evolve

Josef Hien is Researcher in Political Science at the Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm and a member of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Mid Sweden University. He is interested in the connection between politico-economic institutions, religion, ideologies, and cultures.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Catholicism and the formation of the German welfare state; 3. Catholicism and the Italian Welfare State in the nineteenth century; 4. Protestantism and Catholicism in German postwar reconstruction; 5. The influence of Catholicism on Italian post war reconstruction; 6. What's left? Religion and welfare policies in the twenty-first century in Italy and Germany; 7. Conclusion.

'Most scholars of the welfare state give short shrift to the notion that ideas matter for the evolution of welfare states, let alone religious ideas. Hien changes that with his definitive account of how religious ideas and electoral competition interact to create distinct pathways of welfare state evolution. A major piece of scholarship. If you asked most welfare state scholars why Germany was able to reform its male breadwinner model of welfare provision in the early 2000s while Italy was not, they would likely reach for employer preferences, demographic changes, and skill formation needs. Hien, in contrast, shows us that with reunification, the long exiled East German Protestants re-entered the electoral fray, transforming the German welfare state, and economy, in the process. A critical intervention and reinvigoration of the debate.' Mark Blyth, The William R. Rhodes '57 Professor of International Economics, Brown University