Welfare Regimes in the Commonwealth

A survey of the development of social policy regimes in Australia, India and South Africa

1. Welfare Regimes of Australia, India and South Africa

Australia, India, and South Africa are three nation states with a common historic connections and common links to the present day.  Yet as welfare regimes they developed very different trajectories despite their similarities in terms of a shared adherence to liberal-democratic political institutions.  

This paper will seek to canvas the historical development of the welfare regimes of these three countries through the typology of various scholars.  The key contending typologies are that of Gough and Wood (2004) and Seekings (2008) in relation to the global south.  This paper will canvass the historic and current status of the welfare regimes and seek to analyse them with reference to the typologies.

In Section 2 this paper will provide a brief overview of some differing theories of welfare regimes.  Section 3 will provide a historical and current survey of welfare regimes in Australia, India and South Africa.  And section 4 will discuss the applicability of typologies to the individual regimes.