Conclusion. Cold War and the Welfare State: A Comparative Synthesis

The concluding chapter has three main sections. The first section summarizes the main findings of the book. The overall conclusion of the book is that the Cold War mattered for welfare state development—in some cases and periods, even significantly—but did so through different mechanisms, interacting with the national socio-economic, political, and institutional context. We generally find the impact to be more direct in the Socialist Bloc and to be strongest in the early phase of the Cold War. In the second section, we discuss the impact of the Cold War on social policy development in the Global South. The third section briefly points out some future avenues for research on the impact of the Cold War on the development of welfare states.