Exploring the warfare-welfare nexus in Eastern Europe: the impact of war on social policy development in Poland

Mass-industrialised warfare – the First and the Second World Wars, directly and indirectly, shaped the formation and the development of the welfare state – that is the wide consensus among scholars studying the warfare-welfare nexus. While there have been studies about the state-building efforts outside of Western Europe, the studies don't analyse the nexus in detail and especially lack the Global South and Eastern Europe. To address this research gap, this thesis aims to contribute to the study of the warfare-welfare nexus by taking Poland, an Eastern European country, as a case study and asking the question of how mass-industrialised warfare affects the development of social policy in Poland. From the onset, Poland was a unique choice as a case since its history significantly differed from that of Western Europe as it was occupied by imperial powers. Then after, it was again occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War which brought state-building to a halt. Nevertheless, Poland is still a valid choice as a case because it experienced both the First and the Second World Wars. The analysis covered the interwar period and the immediate aftermath of the Second World War up to the year 1960. For the analysis, the data used was fiscal data, legislation and additional secondary literature. The theory of Richard Titmuss and Peacock and Wiseman shaped the research question and the consequent analysis of data. While Richard Titmuss's theory provides the condition under which social welfare policy is developed Peacock and Wiseman's theory provides a lens to assess the fiscal changes taking place to introduce such social welfare programs. I conducted a congruence method and a general version of process tracing to analyse the data. The results indicated that war created immediate social and humanitarian needs which made it necessary for the introduction of social policy. Furthermore, the results also showed that there were permanent changes in the tax policy and the fiscal response of the government in the long run as a consequence of state-building and the introduction of progressive social welfare policies. I argue that this experience played a critical role in shaping the Polish welfare state. This thesis thus contributes to a much-needed understanding of the nexus between war and social policy development in an unexplored area like Eastern Europe and provides a starting point for future research involving other countries from that region and beyond.