The development of family policies in a familist welfare state: the Spanish case, 1900-1958

Abstract

[eng] The low development of family policies has been considered a fundamental feature of contemporary southern European welfare states. As a result, family relations and inter-generational solidarity emerged as preferred welfare providers in the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian mixed welfare economies. As most determinants of the emergence of welfare regimes are related to long-term factors and path dependency, historical research has a fundamental role in disentangling family policy changes and regularities. Nonetheless, historical inquiries on the formation of family policies are still scarce. This thesis provides an in-depth, historical analysis of family policy formation by taking the development of Spanish maternity leaves and family allowances from 1900 to 1960 as a case study and approaching it from a European comparative perspective. Chapter 1 presents the first systematic comparison of the development of European family policies up to 1960, and it is also the first step to frame the Spanish case within the European context. After that, the study focuses on Spain as a case study to disentangle the political economy of family policy formation. Therefore, Chapter 2 analyses the political debates that shaped the formation of compulsory maternity leave insurance in Spain from 1900 to 1944 and shows how political regime changes conditioned such a process. Finally, it investigates the underlying debates on family allowances and the influence of the political regime in shaping the scheme between 1926 and 1958. The thesis has implications for the comparative welfare state regimes literature, for analysing the impact of political regime and religion (Catholicism) on social policy formation, and for understanding the gendered dimensions of early social reforms.