How did Napoleon III shape the French welfare state?

[Båtsman]

As the title says, I'm wondering how the second republic and the second empire shaped, and still today shapes, the french welfare institutions. I am not all that knowledgeable about the French 19th century history. However, given how the German healthcare system was created by Bismarck as a conservative counter-move against the socialists. And given the way Napoleon III very much owed his rule directly to the 1848 revolution.

 

[Sarmatia1871]

He didn't really. His regime uses a fair amount of reformist and populist rhetoric, and he was pretty important for some aspects of general economic development (like railway building and urban redevelopment). However, French welfare systems are pretty minimal, ad-hoc and reliant on either local government or private and religious organizations throughout the nineteenth century. The main thing Napoleon III does is issue some legislative reforms which give a bit more freedom and some state recognition to these charitable and mutual aid associations.

Some state welfare provision is put in place during the Third Republic from the 1890s onwards (and picks up in the interwar period), partly in emulation of the German system and partly due to its governing ideologies around the promotion of health and "progress", but it's still relatively small. The big welfare system that we associate with modern France is mainly a product of the post-Second World War era.

 

[Båtsman]

He didn't really. His regime uses a fair amount of reformist and populist rhetoric, and he was pretty important for some aspects of general economic development (like railway building and urban redevelopment). However, French welfare systems are pretty minimal, ad-hoc and reliant on either local government or private and religious organizations throughout the nineteenth century. The main thing Napoleon III does is issue some legislative reforms which give a bit more freedom and some state recognition to these charitable and mutual aid associations.

Some state welfare provision is put in place during the Third Republic from the 1890s onwards (and picks up in the interwar period), partly in emulation of the German system and partly due to its governing ideologies around the promotion of health and "progress", but it's still relatively small. The big welfare system that we associate with modern France is mainly a product of the post-Second World War era.

This was surprising really. I'd have thought that there would have been much more done than that, given the social pressure that fueled 1848. But thanks for your response.

 

[Arilou]

Doesent it have something to do with the (relative) lack of french industrialization and the land redistributions during the Revolution? Basically with slower industrialization, low population growth (relatively speaking) and the relatively large number of farmers meant that there wasnt the same kind of huge industrial working class that was entirely dependant on wage labour? So that what social systems there were had more leeway for ad-hoc and local solutons?