Republican duties: Depopulation, the social question, and the rise of the welfare state in France, 1870--1914

This dissertation aims at explaining the complex mechanism by which the French Third Republic shaped its welfare state apparati, on its intellectual, policy and, ultimately, political dimensions. Two important motivators were at work in the making of the welfare state in France. First, the perennial problem of poverty, the "social question," constantly invoked the need for state action in economic redistribution. Second, the perception of a sudden population decline also elicited the need to reformulate the conceptions of the state, its citizens and their relationship.;The dominant liberal reaction to the "social question" was to foster prevoyance, that takes sexual restraint as the central feature, aiming at producing rational, calculating, and even moral, capitalist subjects. This Malthusian and fundamentally liberal strategy imploded in the Third Republic. The basic assumption of the Malthusian theory, overpopulation, no longer held. Depopulation also questioned the very validity of the liberal individualist assumption, questioning whether society had to be based on rational but "selfish" individuals.;The depopulation crisis led to two different consequences. First, the coupling of the social question and depopulation elicited institutional reform. Radical republicans carefully navigated the political terrain, advocating "duty without right," which became the governing principle of the welfare state in France. Second, the depopulation crisis coupled with the "social question" also invited new formulation of political theory. Solidarism, the name given to this new political theory, had two strands. The first, administrative solidarism, is the more recognizable one, which argued that vigorous, rational and centralized state action had to be exerted, without compromising the liberal political cadre. The other strand of solidarism of Emile Durkheim, Henry Michel and Leon Duguit existed---though in separate disciplinary spaces---investigate the way to guarantee the political participation of virtuous citizens, while striving for the public good. Solidarism as a whole was thus an important instance of the development of republicanism, which still resonates as alternative political imagination.