Welfare municipalities: economic resources or party politics? Norwegian local government social programs of the 1920s

This article analyses the introduction of Norwegian local government social security programs for the elderly, disabled persons, widows and single mot hers in the 1920s. The role of local government as an agent and initiator o f welfare state development has been for the most part neglected within the welfare stale literature. indeed, thr first social security programs in No rway were introduced by local governments, affecting nearly half of the pop ulation. Even if these programs were not very generous compared with the so cial security programs of our time, many of them were equal to, or even mor e generous than, the national pension scheme introduced in 1936. This artic le examines what distinguished the social security municipalities from thos e that did not implement such programs, and the variation in generosity pro files. The conclusion is that the main determinant regarding the implementa tion and generosity of the local social security programs is the political strength of the two Norwegian socialist parties at the time - the Social de mocratic party and the Labour party - both bring too impatient to wait for a national social security plan, and both being willing to mobilise economi c resources through taxation and borrowing.