The Warfare-Welfare Nexus. An Ecological-Evolutionary Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of the Rise and Decline of National Public Welfare Systems

In this paper we propose an ecological and evolutionary model for the historical comparative analysis of some major changes in national public welfare systems. In section 1 the essential features of the conceptual framework are outlined, by shortly reviewing some recent works developed by scholars that are working in an ecological, evolutionary or historical-comparative perspective. Sections 2-4 are devoted to an application of the model to the analysis of, respectively, the advent, growth and recent downtrend of national public welfare systems. The analysis shows the role played by changes in military technology and organization in influencing the change of state structures – at first towards the provision of public transfers and services for citizens’ welfare, more recently instead quite in the opposite direction. The aim of the paper is to show the usefulness of an ecological and evolutionary thinking in this field of study, by highlighting aspects so far hardly considered in the historical development of welfare systems.