Example social policy dissertation topic 7:

Bismarck and Lloyd George: Brothers in social policy arms.

Historically overshadowed by academic preoccupation on subsequent issues of empire and World War, this dissertation revisits the creation of central government welfarism within England. In so doing it celebrates not only the work of the last Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, but suggests that the basis for his government’s social policy programmes and welfare interventions were the reforms advanced twenty years earlier by Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia 1862-1890 and first Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890. In so doing this dissertation offers an academic critique of English measures such as the Health Insurance Bill (1883) and the Accident Insurance Bill (1884), and the Old Age and Disability Act (1889) of Germany. This is a historically based social policy dissertation that offers the writer the opportunity to gain a full understanding of the creation of the British welfare state within a comparative context prior to the Beveridge reforms of the mid-1940s.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Hennock, E.P. (2003). ‘Social policy in the Bismarck era: A progress report’, German History, Vol. 21(2), pp. 229-238.
• Khoudour-Castéras, D. (2008). ‘Welfare state and labor mobility: The impact of Bismarck’s social legislation on German emigration before World War I’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 68(1), pp. 211-243.
• Purcell, H. (2006). Lloyd George. London: Haus.