Spending programs constitute the welfare state rather than being caused by it

Evidence

The concept of a welfare state illustrates quite nicely the combination of an ontological approach to concepts with a family resemblance structure. By definition a welfare state provides basically two kinds of services, income security via programs like old age pensions, unemployment insurance, and support for poor people, and medical programs or insurance. If you want to measure how extensive the welfare state is you examine to what degree the state provides these services. For example, many use the International Labor Organization data which cover spending on these kinds of public or semipublic programs. To be a welfare state is to provide or pay for these kinds of services. I do not think it makes much sense to talk about an unmeasured or latent variable that “causes” this kind of spending. It makes more sense to say that those kinds of programs constitute a welfare state. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 409

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete worked example of constituting dimensions: income security plus medical provision define the concept.
• XREF: Connects to latent-variable modeling and index construction in comparative politics (ILO spending data debates).