Bringing in the third pillar: protective legislation and the welfare state

Abstract

ABSTRACT Welfare state research over the past five decades has largely focused on two broad social policy pillars: (1) arrays of income programmes, such as social assistance, unemployment insurance, family allowances and pensions, and (2) a range of social services, including childcare, healthcare, social housing and education. However, an important cluster of policy measures, constituting a third policy pillar, has been largely neglected in the cross-national welfare state research to date, protective legislation. It comprises the networks of protective and regulatory laws and constitutional rights emplaced to secure and promote our welfare. Central to all social policy areas, these measures, including rent control policies, workplace health and safety laws, legislation preventing discrimination against people with disabilities and child corporal punishment bans, are distinct from laws that determine access to income programmes and social services or set out the terms of their provision. Rather, they constitute a standalone third category of policy measures, are key components of all welfare states and, depending upon how they are actualised, can be just as central to our well-being and the promotion of our welfare. They can also have compounding or synergistic interactions with policies in the other two policy pillars.