During the years preceding the financial and fiscal crisis, Greece's welfare state had been mainly extending provisions in order to serve the political patronage system built after regime change in 1974. This system reached its limits as the number of active insurance contributions given by the...

Social democratic parties during the early stages of their development have accepted capitalism and have considered the welfare state as a tool in order to indirectly achieve the goals of social justice and cohesion. In the first half of the 20th century, the welfare state was the basic tool for...