The Welfare State as a Permanent Social Institution

Most political institutions come and go. Monarchies collapse, empires fragment, and economic systems are replaced when they stop working. The welfare state, however, is often described differently. Within the tradition of positive liberalism, it is not treated as a passing experiment or a response to one historical crisis, but as a permanent feature of organised society. This idea sits at the heart of how modern democracies understand their own purpose, and it explains why no mainstream government today campaigns on the promise of abolishing public health, education, or social security altogether.

What positive liberalism actually claims 🔗

To understand why the welfare state is seen as permanent, we first need to understand the philosophy behind it. Positive liberalism is a strand of liberal thought that broke away from the older classical or laissez-faire tradition. Classical liberals believed freedom meant the absence of interference, so the ideal state was a “night-watchman” that simply protected contracts and kept order. Positive liberals rejected this as inadequate.

Their argument was simple but powerful. A person who is starving, illiterate, or sick is not truly free, even if no law stops them from acting. Real freedom requires the actual capacity to act, and that capacity depends on material conditions. The thinker who gave this view its philosophical backbone was T.H. Green, whose 1881 address “Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract” gave early expression to ideas central to the modern welfare state. Green reformulated liberalism so that it stressed positive action by the state rather than only the negative rights of the individual.

This tradition was carried forward by thinkers such as J.S. Mill, L.T. Hobhouse, Harold Laski, R.M. MacIver and J.M. Galbraith in the inter-war period. For all of them, the state was not the enemy of liberty. It was the precondition of it.

Why the welfare state is treated as permanent 🔗

If freedom genuinely depends on basic security, then the institutions that provide that security cannot be temporary. This is the logical core of the “permanence” claim. A welfare state created only to fix one recession could be dismantled once the recession ended. But a welfare state understood as the guarantor of meaningful freedom must be a standing institution, because the human need it serves never disappears.

People are always being born, growing old, falling ill, losing jobs, and raising children. These are not crises that strike once and pass. They are permanent features of human life in every generation. A society that wishes to ensure a minimum standard of living for all its citizens therefore needs permanent machinery to do so. From this angle, the welfare state is less a policy choice and more a fixed organ of the modern social body.

A response to permanent risks, not temporary ones 🔗

It helps to separate two kinds of problems. A temporary problem, such as a flood or a one-time shortage, calls for a temporary response. A permanent problem calls for a permanent institution. Old age, disability, unemployment, and childhood vulnerability fall into the second category. Because the underlying risks recur endlessly across the population, the response has to be continuous and institutional rather than occasional and charitable.

The state as a neutral arbiter for the common good 🔗

A central assumption in this view is that the state can act as a neutral arbiter standing above competing interests and working for the general welfare. This idea is closely tied to classical pluralist thought, which holds that the state represents the common interests of society and is accountable to the people through democratic processes. On this reading, the state does not belong to any single class or faction. It balances the claims of different groups and protects the weak from being crushed by the strong.

For T.H. Green, what should determine the freedoms a society protects is not the raw outcome of the market but social moral rights recognised as contributing to the common good. The welfare state becomes the institutional expression of that common good. It steps in precisely where the unregulated market produces outcomes that society judges unacceptable, such as destitution, exploitation, or denial of education to the poor.

How this works in practice 🔗

The neutral-arbiter role plays out through two broad tools: interventions and regulations. Interventions are direct actions, such as running public hospitals, funding schools, or paying pensions. Regulations are rules that shape private behaviour, such as minimum wage laws, factory safety standards, and environmental controls. Together, these allow the state to correct imbalances without abolishing private enterprise altogether, which is why most welfare states operate as mixed economies rather than fully planned ones.

The catch: who wields the power matters 🔗

Here the theory becomes more honest about its limits. Saying the welfare state is permanent does not mean it always works well. Its effectiveness depends heavily on who controls it. Political leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders shape the welfare state’s priorities, and their choices decide whether it genuinely serves the common good or merely the interests of those in power.

This is where the “neutral arbiter” claim faces serious challenge. Critics from the New Right argue that the state often becomes a self-serving entity more interested in its own expansion than in serving citizens. They warn that welfare programmes can be captured by political interests, used to win votes rather than to pursue long-term social good. There is also the well-documented worry that there can be no guarantee that the outcome of competitive party politics will match the moral imperatives of state welfare.

This is the unresolved tension at the heart of the welfare state. The institution may be permanent, but its character is not fixed. The same machinery that can lift millions out of poverty can also create dependency, waste resources, or be bent toward narrow political ends. Political will therefore becomes decisive. Leaders genuinely committed to social justice produce a very different welfare state from leaders who treat it as a tool for patronage.

The welfare state in the Indian context 🔗

For students studying this in India, the abstract theory has a concrete home: the Constitution itself. India did not adopt the welfare state as an afterthought. The framers built welfare commitments directly into the foundational document, which is why the welfare state functions here as a permanent constitutional institution rather than a reversible policy.

This commitment appears in two interlocking forms. Fundamental Rights in Part III secure political equality and civil liberties, while the Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV pursue socio-economic equality. The Directive Principles, contained in Articles 36 to 51, require national effort in education, childhood care, health, unemployment relief, old age support, and the minimising of inequalities. Though they are not enforceable in court, they are declared fundamental to the governance of the country.

Article 38 and the duty to promote welfare 🔗

The clearest statement of the permanent welfare duty is Article 38, which directs the state to secure a social order in which justice – social, economic, and political – informs all national institutions. This is not merely aspirational language. It commits the government to actively minimise income inequalities and eliminate disparities in status, facilities, and opportunities. The 44th Constitutional Amendment of 1978 strengthened this by adding a duty to reduce economic inequalities among groups, not just individuals.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar described the Directive Principles as the “instrument of instructions” that would hold every government accountable. This phrasing captures the permanence argument perfectly. Whichever party wins an election, it inherits a standing constitutional obligation to govern as a welfare state. The institution outlasts any single government, exactly as positive liberalism predicts.

From principle to programme 🔗

These principles have shaped real legislation over the decades. Land reform laws, the nationalisation of banks, fixation of minimum wages, equal remuneration laws, the Panchayati Raj system, environmental safeguards, and compulsory education for children all flow from the constitutional welfare mandate. The Directive Principles directly direct the state to create a society where citizens can live a dignified life, building a socio-economic charter for a modern democratic welfare state.

Why the debate still matters 🔗

The claim that the welfare state is permanent is not a claim that it is beyond criticism. Over the past several decades, the welfare state has come under attack from liberals who consider comprehensive welfare provision incompatible with liberalism itself. Debates about dependency, fiscal sustainability, and government efficiency are real and ongoing.

Yet the institution persists. Even its critics rarely call for its total abolition; they argue instead about how large it should be, how it should be funded, and how it should be delivered. That tells us something important. The argument has shifted permanently from “should there be a welfare state?” to “what kind of welfare state should we have?” In that sense, positive liberalism’s central prediction has largely held: the welfare state has become a fixed institution of modern society, even as its exact shape remains contested ground.

What do you think? If the welfare state’s quality depends so heavily on who holds power, can it ever truly be a “neutral arbiter,” or is neutrality just an ideal we keep striving toward? And as risks like automation and climate change reshape the future, what new welfare functions might become permanent that we cannot yet imagine?

References

1. https://www.tutor2u.net/politics/reference/negative-and-positive-freedom-liberalism
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/T-H-Green
3. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/23740/1/Unit-16.pdf
4. https://sauer-thompson.com/archives/philosophy/002946.html
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/welfare-state
6. https://www.lawjournals.org/assets/archives/2018/vol4issue1/4-1-38-426.pdf
7. https://thelaw.institute/criminal-justice-system/directive-principles-welfare-state-india/
8. https://www.dhyeyalaw.in/the-directive-principles-of-state-policy-dpsp-and-the-welfare-principle-in-india
9. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/liberalism-and-the-welfare-state-9780190676681