9
“institutional continuity and the unprecedented state expansion caused by war
mobilization as causal variables for the permanent reordering of state-society relations
that the postwar welfare state represented. ”
21
We now know that the state has different political dynamism domestically during
wartime than it does in peacetime. However, none of the scholars considers seriously that
variations of war may largely influence the policy outcomes. Did all war participants in
the Second World War have the same “war”? Did one country have the same “war” in the
First World War and the Second World War? The answer is no. Some scholars appear to
notice that variations in war experiences might matter. For example, Skocpol and Amenta
write:
In the United States there were only brief and false scares about Japanese attacks
on the West Coast following Pearl Harbor. But British civilians were bombed by
Nazis; civilian deaths numbered 60,000. This may help to explain the
establishment of war-related health programs for British civilians. … In other
policy areas, however, the differential impact of the war on the two civilian
populations had little effect on public policy.
22
Kryder notes that war duration might matter to other policy areas, such as racial policy
and institutional development: “By the summer of 1943, The Crisis called the ‘long war’
argument ‘the question currently debated wherever colored Americans gather and talk.’
As Horace Cayton described it early in the mobilization: ‘The graver the outside danger
to the safety of this country, the more abundant the gains will likely be.’”
23
This paper
argues that shown instinct of Skocpol, Amenta, and Kryder is right and the war
participants in the Second World War had different war experiences, which led to
different impacts on social policy development.
24
20
Klausen, War and Welfare, 2.
21
Ibid.
22
Skocpol and Amenta, “Redefining the New Deal,” 186.
23
Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 15. The two citations come respectively from George S. Shuyler, “A long War
Will Aid the Negro,” The Crisis, November 1943, and Horace Cayton, “Negro Morale,” Opportunity,
December 1 1941, 375.
24
Some studies show the quantitative linkage between military expenditure and public social security
expenditure. Harold Wilensky compares twenty-two countries historically and shows how the military
expenditure correlates with the public social security expenditure. He finds that massive mobilization in the
Second World War had a positive impact on the social security expenditure and that small mobilization
efforts in the postwar period have had a negative effect. Consequently, he demonstrates that the depth of
mass mobilization matter to the social security expenditure (Harold L. Wilensky, The Welfare State and
Convention