Social Policy and Social Citizenship: Britain's Welfare States

In Britain the imagery and rhetoric of the postwar welfare state remain powerful—citizens should have equal access to public services based on need not place of residence. Devolution is sometimes depicted as a threat to this tradition. This article shows that the immediate risk of a social policy race to the bottom is small. Moreover, because of the peculiarities of British territorial politics the traditional imagery was never borne out in practice; the article traces policy variation before and after devolution. Finally, locating British social policy within the comparative framework of “nationalization” and “citizenship,” I argue that Britain lost its status as an exemplary welfare state partly because it failed to provide an adequate territorial framework for the development of social policy.