How Economic Ideas Evolve
The Impact of Religion on the German and Italian Welfare State

This book examines the substantial influence of religious ideas in shaping European welfare states and political economies.

Josef Hien (Author)

9781009569262, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 July 2025

204 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

'Most scholars of the welfare state give short shrift to the notion that ideas matter for the evolution of welfare states, let alone religious ideas. Hien changes that with his definitive account of how religious ideas and electoral competition interact to create distinct pathways of welfare state evolution. A major piece of scholarship. If you asked most welfare state scholars why Germany was able to reform its male breadwinner model of welfare provision in the early 2000s while Italy was not, they would likely reach for employer preferences, demographic changes, and skill formation needs. Hien, in contrast, shows us that with reunification, the long exiled East German Protestants re-entered the electoral fray, transforming the German welfare state, and economy, in the process. A critical intervention and reinvigoration of the debate.' Mark Blyth, The William R. Rhodes '57 Professor of International Economics, Brown University

How Economic Ideas Evolve offers a unique perspective on the development of political economies in Europe. With three major contributions, the book first establishes a link between religious, social, and economic ideas and the diverging development of political economies in Europe. Secondly, the work provides a historical sociological analysis of the contextual factors that influenced the development of religiously inspired socio-economic ideas. Chapters examine the impact of these ideas on economic and welfare institutions in Germany and Italy over three centuries. Lastly, the book goes beyond classic historical sociology to focus on the long-term developmental trajectories and impact of ideas on politics and policy. Thorough and expansive, How Economic Ideas Evolve contributes to the emerging scholarship of ideational historical sociology, broadening the toolkit of historical sociology to research the development and impact of socio-economic ideas and ideologies over long periods of time.

1. Introduction
2. Catholicism and the formation of the German welfare state
3. Catholicism and the Italian Welfare State in the nineteenth century
4. Protestantism and Catholicism in German postwar reconstruction
5. The influence of Catholicism on Italian post war reconstruction
6. What's left? Religion and welfare policies in the twenty-first century in Italy and Germany
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Sociology [JHB]