Welfare state on the theoretical crossroads: analysis of the twenty-first-century studies

ABSTRACT Welfare theories, models, and programs vary in historical development and country. In the 21st century, socio-economic and economic changes significantly impact the welfare state and its social development and role. The aim of the paper is to identify the main focuses of welfare state research in the 21st century based on scientific articles. For this purpose, the tasks were set to implement bibliometric research, textual analysis, and systemic structuring results. The methodology covers bibliometric/authors co-occurrence analysis and automated content analysis, as well as general analysis and synthesis methods. Considering the dynamics and number of publications, the respective emphases of welfare state research are presented in three periods. First, bibliographic pairing analysis revealed clusters comprising conceptual nodes based on the keywords. After regrouping according to the close similarity enlarged 5 clusters presented in the paper are as follows: (1) welfare, (2) political issues, (3) service and care, (4) countries, and (5) women. The study will enable scientists and the interested public to gain an insight into current thematic and future research trends of the welfare state. Some interesting intersections for further research are suggested.

Friedrich August von Hayek (1965), at a lecture in Tokyo in 1964, pointed out regarding the term 'planning' that he left the use of this otherwise good word to his opponents because he was forced to use his word in the era of collectivism (Hayek, 2002, 18). After establishing the welfare state, the term 'welfare' suffered a similar fate. Namely, the opponents of the policy of state interventionism, who was involved in the conservative-liberal critique of Keynes' economic policies, began to criticize the word 'welfare'. As a result, welfare, which the state must provide through social policies, is gradually perceived as a threat to individual freedom. In this way, the idea of welfare, which is deeply rooted in human nature, becomes a target for the heavy artillery of the philosophy of extreme individualism. Thus, Henry Hazlitt used Herbert Spencer's masterpiece of individualist philosophy, Man vs. the State, and called his work criticizing the foundations of the institutionalized welfare state Human versa, the Welfare State. However, it is not the term 'welfare' that should be criticized, but possibly the use of this term, since it was also an integral part of the individualist philosophy on which classical liberalism was based, whose values in the second half of the XX. Then, in the second half of the twentieth century, conservative liberalism (neoliberalism) took hold.
In political theory, the term welfare usually means ensuring a minimum level of wellbeing for citizens in society. Today the prevailing view is that the state is obliged to provide an adequate social welfare mechanism to meet the basic needs of life. At the same time, although welfare can be understood as the individual's well-being, it is most often understood in the collectivist sense as general well-beingin the well-being of all, i.e. the whole society. The term 'welfare' is one of the key concepts in political theory. It is usually associated with the institutionalized welfare state or a particular form of capitalist society from the second half of the XX. It is associated with a nineteenth-century society based on a comprehensive social security system and full employment policy. After establishing the welfare state with the state's key role in ensuring the social wellbeing of citizens, it can be said that the concept of welfare is fully integrated into the conceptual basis of this political and economic concept. Although the concept of welfare is not usually separated from state intervention measures today, this was not the case in the early days, which means there is no consensus on how welfare should be ensured. In 2020, humanity witnessed the Covid-19 outbreak, and it was expected that the way social security is provided will change in the post-pandemic period.
During the Depression and World War II, voters and governments in rich countries reshaped the relationship between the state and its citizensthe past year has been a wild experiment in social spending. In 2020, at least 1,600 new social protection programs will be launched worldwide. Rich countries allocated an average of 5.8% of GDP to help a record number of workers. To this end, a comparative study between current peerreviewed academics can identify the essential issues and contribute to understanding changes in social protection theory and practical approaches. Thus, an investigation of this nature goes in-depth to identify changes in sustainable development and social responsibility policies. The insights gained can provide guidelines for further research that will later contribute to social policy's theoretical and practical development.
In some countries, the main space for solving this problem is transferred to the level of corporations, but in most countries, it is the state's responsibility despite different approaches. How and in what ways the state can ensure the welfare of societythis object of scientific discussion and debate has been constant during the times. However, it should be noted that a study of the state's role alone is insufficient to identify the welfare state's primary emphases. Thus, for example, if in the early period the focus was on the triangle (state, markets, and families), then voluntary associations were added to the triangle (it is considered a 'welfare diamond'). Later this combination was expanded and there was taken into account: The social partners (trade unions and employers' associations); Social responsibility of firms (overlapping with so-called 'corporate social responsibility'); Combinations including state subsidy to other welfare producers, e.g. family (e.g. payment for care); Companies (e.g. subsidized employment); Voluntary associations (subsidies); The Market (tax subsidies or fiscal welfare) and so on.
Globalization and technological transformations have made some adjustments to welfare models. In addition, the increase in state participation in the economies of Western European countries has acquired new content.
On the one hand, these processes provide new opportunities for enhancing national well-being and deprive the state of the levers of regulation.
If we look at the development and occurrence of research and publication of articles in the field of the welfare state in the twenty-first century, first, we notice a trend of increasing the number of publications after 2008, i.e. somewhere during the period of the global financial crisis (2007)(2008)(2009). Articles during this period have focused on whether the welfare state has been significantly reduced since the crackdown of 2007-2008. The theoretical approaches provide us with two opposing views on the phenomenon of shrinking the welfare state. Thus, one theoretical orientation goes to the explanation that the austerity imperative stifled the expansions that would otherwise be observed during crises. Another direction, considered more optimistic, is based on the findings that social investment policies have been tested in different places, in addition to the general restriction of public funding (Kerstenetzky & Pereira Guedes, 2021).
The number of publications increases significantly after 2015, i.e. during the recession and deflation. The consequences of this crisis led to the collapse of important key economic sectors and companies, which affected the drop in demand and trillions of US dollars. Furthermore, between 2008 and 2012, due to weak demand, there was a recession, which also affected the European sovereign-debt crisis (Lane, 2012).
The second and beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century bring constant social-economic challenges that are encouraged by the emergence of technological innovations that impact business changes (Alkaraan et al., 2022;Kraus et al., 2021). Among the factors that shape the socio-economic changes, it can be exposed that digitalization, Covid-19, political risks, and financial and economic risks (Poruchnyk et al., 2021). For the first time after 1970, when neoliberalism emerged, we witnessed a wholesale transformation of the industry worldwide (Free & Hecimovic, 2021). However, in contrast to the theory of neoliberalism, which was based on the limited economic role of the state (establishing property rights, enforcing contracts, and regulating the money supply) and the promotion of international free trade and privatization initiatives (Abildgaard & Jørgensen, 2021), today opposite economic and political actions come to fore. Crises in the process of globalization may also indicate its end and open up a possible new path, amongst which inclusive globalization warrants exploration (Liu et al., 2018). The political decisions such as Brexit or the Ukraine crisis, China's and Russia's plans for new world order, and the protectionism of the United States are affecting the disruption of global supply chains, possibly leading to the end of globalization processes and the emergence of regional economic partnerships (Nygaard, 2022). The Chinese government's proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is going probably in the current situation for the most prominent that promote inclusive globalization, the characteristics of which could be justified by inclusive growth with effective and efficient government regulation, inclusive infrastructure development, nationally chosen development paths that fit national conditions, inclusive participation, and cultural inclusion (Liu et al., 2018). The other two factors that significantly impact the EU's current and future economic situation are digitalization and the pandemic, which coincide in time and space and have a converging significance (Dvorak et al., 2021). First, the rapid and accelerated development of digital technologies and disruptive innovations during the pandemic completely changed the views and possibilities of socio-economic development. It drastically changed the way of production, work, business, retail, entertainment, culture, information, etc., due to the easy accessibility, mass production of technological devices, and general internet access (Hai et al., 2021). Until recently, a scale was difficult to understand and practically unattainable (Dahlke et al., 2021). Furthermore, the governments from Europe to Latin America are facing the consequences of the elderly population's increase in social and health transfers as a social measure to decrease the risk of poverty and social exclusion (Beal Krause, 2021;Özsoy & Gürler, 2021;Valkama & Oulasvirta, 2021) which also increase because of migration, especially in the USA and Europe (Gopinath & Poornappriya, 2020).
The pandemic started at the end of 2019, which turned into a global health crisis, and increased the state's responsibility. So, naturally, it is time to revise the theories of the welfare state because an extraordinary situation different from previous periods has been created. For example, researchers analyze the modern challenges of the wellknown Nordic model of the welfare state, indicating that the key issue is whether a crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak is changing the Nordic welfare states. They conclude that the crisis so far has strengthened key characteristics of the Nordic welfare states by the state taking on a vital central role not only for the functioning of the market but also continued in a path-dependent way with universal and relatively generous benefits such as for those who become unemployed or have reduced income because of the crisis (Greve et al., 2021).
Based on Eurostat analysis (2021), it can be concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 influenced an increase in the level of the risk of poverty compared to 2019 in the group of seven EU members. The medium-term and long-term consequences of Covid-19 for society also coincide with the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, economic sanctions against Russia, and possible changes in geostrategic spheres of influence and political and economic distribution (Astrov et al., 2022). Moreover, fears are growing in international markets that the Ukrainian crisis could halt the post-pandemic recovery and, due to rising inflation, lead to a prolonged period of limited economic growth amid solid price increases, which could lead the world to a period of stagflation (COFACE, 2022).
In the twenty-first century, socio-economic and economic changes significantly impact the welfare state and its social development and role. The paper aims to identify the main focuses of welfare state research in the twenty-first century based on scientific articles. For this purpose, the tasks were set to implement bibliometric research, textual analysis, and systemic structuring results. Also, some presumptions and ideas for future research directions regarding the welfare state are presented. The study will enable scientists and the interested public to gain an insight into current thematic and future research trends of the welfare state.

Data collection
The literature was searched using the Web of Science Core Collection. Searching, SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, and ESCI databases were used to identify relevant papers. According to the article's content about the welfare state, the authors searched articles that include the term welfare state in the title or keywords. The timeframe was set from 2000 to June 30, 2022. The search results were limited to articles published in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, the review was limited to scholarly literature written in English. Searching the Web of Science resulted in 2510 documents. A careful review of titles, abstracts, and keywords was performed, and 2510 titles, abstracts, and keywords of articles published in 961 scientific journals were suitable for analysis. Figure 1 presents the number of articles published from 2000 to 30. June 2022. As shown in Figure 2, the number of published articles increased slowly until 2010, when there was a decrease, while after 2015, there was a steep increase in articles. By types are included in research 1870 articles, 562 review articles, and 78 early access articles. Table 1 presents the scientific journals that published 20 or more selected papers between 2000 and 30th June 2022. Table 1 shows 12 journals (out of 961 analysed), 495 articles, and 19.72% of 2510 articles. Therefore, we can note that approximately 20% of the articles were published in 12 scientific journals (which is 1.2% of all 961 analysed journals).

Data analysis
We prepare bibliometric methods and automated content analysis (ACA).

Bibliometric analysis
Bibliometric analysis is used to analyze and map cumulative scientific knowledge. This results in the capture of a large amount of unstructured data, which enables the study to build a solid foundation for the progress of the field, especially in the research area of the welfare state. Furthermore, it helps to determine the current themes (a network visualization) and direction of future research avenues (trends) (an overlay visualization) of the welfare state. The analyses were prepared with a VOSviewer.
The analyses results show the progress of the field and enable scientists and the lay public to (1) obtain an overview of the welfare state in the twenty-first century in one study, (2) identify gaps in the article, (3) derive new proposals for the future research and (4) discover the future research agenda for the welfare state (Donthu et al., 2021).

Content analysis
According to Krippendorff (2019), content analysis presents a systematic text analysis. The content analysis aims to discover concepts, themes, and relations in the text and discover new knowledge and unknown qualities about the data to produce valid and  trustworthy inferences. The implementation of content analysis takes place within the framework of a physical examination and the entry of bibliographic references. That assures that it is going for a content-relevant examination of the text. Third, content analysis is performed manually. Therefore, a limited review of written sources is provided on which themes and concepts are defined. The first limitation of the research presents the limited scope of the text review. Only this affects the appearance of parallel research limitations such as insufficient sampling and biased evaluations, as well as limitations associated with a long-term search for a large number of articles and thus reduced efficiency and effectiveness (Vaismoradi et al., 2013). Another critical limitation of manual content analysis is the prioritization of sources according to the researcher's interest, which overlooks other significant findings (Smith & Humphreys, 2006). All these limitations have led to an alternative approach to manual content analysis, represented by automated content analysis (ACA). The ACA is a method for preparing a mixed synthesis. For its implementation, different software significantly impacts the content analysis to be more efficient, objective, and robust (Kuckartz, 2014). We used Leximancer 5.0 software to perform the content analysis. Leximancer 5.0, a high-level natural language processing software, was used for the data analysis. Leximancer generates results in a topic guide and concept map and enables researchers to re-evaluate new articles and prepare topics for future research perspectives (Cheng & Edwards, 2019). Leximancer has three steps processes. First, it identifies concepts using concept seeds extracted from the articles by uncontrolled seeding or provided by the researcher with controlled seeding. Second, the Leximancer defines concepts, and at last, it ranks the concepts according to their weights (Pucihar, 2020).

Bibliometric analyses results
The VOSviewer software prepared the co-occurrence of the author's keywords. The minimum number of occurrences of keywords was set to 10. From the 4334 keywords, 92 meet the threshold. Next, the VOSviewer software calculated the total strength of the co-occurrence links with keywords. The 92 keywords with the greatest total link strength were selected. The analysis enables a comprehensive understanding of the top keywords for welfare state technology when preparing the study. Table 2 presents the top 20 high-occurrence keywords.
Authors keyword co-occurrence analysis: a network visualization Figure 2 is a network that included pairs of keywords that co-occurred ten times or more. The map shows the structure of knowledge about the welfare state articles published between 2000 and June 30, 2022. The 92 most representative keywords emerged from the analysis. Although the dominant word in the map is 'welfare state', other words related to 'welfare state' are increasingly added in a series of subnets. The size of nodes indicates the keywords' centrality, and the thickness of the lines indicates the co-occurrence frequency of keyword pairs.

Authors keyword co-occurrence analysis: an overlay visualization
In order to forecast the future development of welfare state theory, it is necessary to know the latest research trends. Therefore, an author's keyword-based analysis: an overlay visualization of articles, was conducted to determine the direction of future research agenda about the welfare state. Figure 3 shows the 92 most representative keywords that emerged from the analysis. The most recent research topics are colored in yellow. This group includes topics that appeared after 2017 and are essential for future research about the welfare state. On the left side of Figure 3 are topics in yellow related to the European social survey, social spending, political parties, European Union, austerity, and social investment. Social protection, South Korea, Italy, Covid-19, civil society, and Denmark are on the right.

Automated content analysis results
The results of the ACA performance with Leximancer showed that eight topics and sixtythree concepts were created based on the analysis of selected articles. The themes, hits, and related concepts are presented in Table 3. Figure 4 shows the related concepts connected to the themes presented in circles. Themes on a Leximancer concept map are heat mapped, and this means that hot colors (red, orange) denote the most important themes, while cool colors (blue, green) denote those less critical (Leximancer, 2020). The themes are 'welfare', 'countries', 'political', 'services', 'care', 'rights', 'women', and 'welfare state'. Figure 4 presents that the circles of specific themes overlap with the circles of other themes, forming cross-sections containing individual concepts that fall into both overlapping themes. For example, the theme 'welfare' overlaps with the themes 'welfare state', 'political', 'services', and 'countries'. The theme 'welfare state' overlaps with the theme's 'welfare' and 'countries'. The theme 'countries' overlaps with the theme's 'welfare', 'welfare state,' and 'women'. The theme 'women' overlaps with the theme's 'countries', 'care', and 'services'. The theme 'care' overlaps with the theme's 'women' and 'services'. The theme 'services' overlaps with the theme's 'care', 'rights', 'countries', 'political', and 'welfare'. Finally, the theme 'political' overlaps with the theme's 'welfare' and 'services'.
The concepts 'public' and 'policy' lie between the intersection of the themes 'welfare' and 'political'. The concept 'work' lies between the intersection of the theme's 'welfare' and 'services'. The concepts 'national' and 'case' lie between the intersection of the theme's 'welfare' and 'political'. The concept 'European' lies between the intersection of the theme's 'countries' and 'welfare'. The concepts 'education' and 'people' lie between  the intersection of the theme's 'countries' and 'women'. The concept 'private' lie between the intersection of the theme's 'care' and 'services'. The concepts 'United States' and 'government' lie between the theme's 'services' and 'rights'.

Discussion
The research revealed that various aspects of the welfare state are constantly of interest to scientific research from the beginning of the twenty-first century to the present day.
According to the number and dynamics of the published works, the research period can be divided into three parts: the first partfrom 2000 to 2008 (up to 97); the second part -2009-2016 (97-170) and the third part -2017-2021 (more than 170). The number of publications increases significantly after 2015 after collapse of important key economic sectors and companies (Lane, 2012).
The number of papers published from 2000 to 2008 fluctuated from 50-97. This number was exceeded after the global financial-economic crisis of 2008. The necessity of a scientific investigation explains mentioned activation to find the way out of a difficult and complex situation with joint efforts.
Scholarly discussions of this period focused on welfare state regimes, welfare reform, solidarity, employment, taxation, social assistance, social insurance, women, and the family. The topic remained relevant even in the period of the post-crisis recession. Therefore, the second period (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) is characterized by focusing the most welfare studies on social policy, political economy, public opinion, retrenchment, unemployment, welfare regimes, Europe, immigration, gender, child welfare, education, public policy, etc.
The results showed a remarkable increase in publications on this topic since 2016, peaking in 2020. It is not surprising that the subject matter is related to the crisis caused by the pandemic, its negative consequences, and the search for a solution based on scientific research. In pre-pandemic studies, there was a greater emphasis on inequality, welfare attitudes, and migration.
It was revealed that thematic objects of the scientific analysis of the welfare state on a large scale are: welfare, countries, political issues, services, care, rights, women, and the welfare state.
Thematic clustering identified, as mentioned above, eight main groups and also revealed both research emphases within the cluster as well as cross-cutting (mutually overlapping) research issues. Thematic clusters are the main topics of the analysed content, the frequency with which they appear and how they are related (Roblek et al., 2020).
The analysis of conceptual accents reveals that it is possible to expand these groups regarding overcovering, for example, welfare & welfare state, political & rights, and Services & Care. Thus, welfare state studies can be divided into five main cluster themes: (1) welfare, (2) political issues, (3) services and care, (4) countries, and (5) women. However, this grouping reflects the broad themes identified by the research base and does not indicate the level of the actuality of the various welfare issues.
This result indicates that the traditional lines of studies mainly continue in welfare state research (1-4) and gender issues (5) as a different highlight.
Cluster visualization revealed thematic overlaps and intersections, which we believe are also interesting for future research. On the one hand, it will be useful for a systematic understanding of the topics emphasized and the level achieved in the studies of the welfare state, and on the other hand, for the search for new research ideas.
We would emphasize, however, that digitization has a great influence on the welfare state. It can improve quality of life of citizen and enables them to have access to public services and care system (Tomičić Furjan et al., 2020). With the help of digitization, we can change how countries and governments provide social services; ways of organizing participation in politics and society; how cooperation in the labor market works, and how health services are provided (Buhr et al., 2016).

Agenda for future research
In the near future, we think that welfare state studies will remain in the orbit of scientific research, considering the sharp increase in publications in the recent period, and generally because of the traditionally broad covering many unsolved problems. The variations in the provision of human well-being are great, and the contribution of scientific research and the shedding of light on the issue is necessary. Comparative studies and dissemination of the results are of utmost importance.
From the results of the seventh wave of the World Values Survey, for example, we selected the popular welfare Scandinavian countries -Sweden and Denmark, two EU countries -Germany and Slovenia, and the post-Soviet country -Georgia. From the opinions related to the state's responsibility, within the framework of the 9-point rating scale, the opinions to which the respondents gave 6, 7, 8, or 9 points are summed up. Despite the differences, it is clear that many surveyed respondents in all countries place a large responsibility on the state and far less on people to provide for themselves. It should also be noted that values do not change quickly Figure 5.
This bibliometric research revealed several topics emphasized after 2017, such as the European social survey, social spending, political parties, European Union, austerity and social investment, social protection, South Korea, Italy, Covid-19, civil society, and Denmark. We assume that recent research on the welfare state, especially the challenges identified after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020), will provide an impetus for the conceptual emphasis of further research.
Even though much of the research on the welfare state is related to domestic issues, we think that in the future, it will develop at the intersection of many global spheres, as changes such as digital transformations, challenges of the pandemic, geopolitical shifts due to wars, energy crisis, and the rise of the China factor affect the functioning of an effective welfare state. As a result, good governance will be directly related to human well-being.
Due to many global changes and challenges, new research topics will appear on the horizon of scientific research.
Due to the increasing influence of global factors, we consider it important to mention the sustainable development goals defined by the twenty-first-century agenda, which determine the benchmarks of future development and express the opinion that scientific research will pay more attention to the issues of ensuring welfare in connection with the following sustainable development goals: No Poverty(#1); Zero Hunger (#2), God Health and Well-Being (#3); Quality Education (#4); Gender Equality (#5); Affordable and Clean Energy (#7); Decent Work and Economic Growth (#8); Reduced Inequalities (#10); Pease, Justice and Strong Institutions (#16) (see more about SDGs on the UN SDG Knowledge platform).

Conclusion
Through the bibliometric analysis and automated content analysis of welfare state investigation from 2000 to June 30, 2022, the presented work has depicted and revealed the dynamics of the development of scientific research in the given period and cluster structuring within this topic.
It is undoubtedly clear that the welfare state as an object of research remained in the interest of scholars during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. According to the number and dynamics of the published works, the research period can be divided into three parts: 1. 2000-2008; 2. 2009-2016; 3. 2017-2021. Bibliometric analysis revealed peculiarities of research accents in different periods, and they are in line with the challenges of real life, such as global financial-economic crisis, recession, pandemics … Identified five main theoretical cluster themes are: (1) welfare, (2) political issues, (3) services and care, (4) countries, and (5) women.
A limitation of this paper is related to the database. First, it should be noted that the bibliometric research included only English-language articles published on the Web of Science. Journals selected according to the excess of the research object/theme do not raise doubts considering the peer review and reliability of the publications, but obviously, the studies are of different depth. However, the analysis carried out on the textual base selected by us and the exclusively structured clusters on the topic of the welfare state is useful for further multivariate analysis.
Given the focus of recent research, welfare state studies can continue aiming the topics such as social spending, political parties, austerity and social investment, social protection, civil society European Union and the cases of different countries.
Also, due to the increasing influence of global factors on the domestic situation, the authors express an opinion on the expansion of interdisciplinary studies of the welfare state and consider it useful to discuss welfare issues in connection with several sustainable development goals.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes to contributors
Nino Papachashvili is a Professor and Head of the Institute for Development Studies at Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University (Georgia). Her areas of research lie at the intersection of international trade and economic development issues, digital transformations, knowledge economy, institutional aspects of economic development, etc. She is a scientific board member of International Business Systems Laboratory (BSLab). Her pieces of research are published in international indexed journals. Her academic activity includes supervising of the MBA program; delivering the lectures at the university, editing, and reviewing scientific articles and books in the field of economics and business; organizing international scientific conferences, seminars, and round tables. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Development Studies.

Vasja
Roblek is a PhD Student at the Faculty of Organization studies in Novo Mesto. He gained his MSc from the University of Primorska and his research interests include management, knowledge management, information management and sustainability.
Maja Meško, Ph.D., has held a position as a full professor of human resources management at the Faculty of organizational sciences, University of Maribor. She also has a certificate for associate professor of kinesiology (science in sport) at the Faculty of sport, University of Ljubljana. She completed her Bachelor's studies in psychology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and finished her Doctoral study of Kinesiology at the Faculty of Sports, University of Ljubljana. Her main teaching and research areas include management, psychology in management, organizational culture, health, and health management, where she authored or co-authored various scientific papers. She is also actively engaged in national and international R&D projects.
Iztok Podbregar has held a position as a full professor for crisis and strategic management at the Faculty of organizational sciences, University of Maribor. He is also the dean of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences UM for the 2021-2025 mandate. His research interests include management, crisis in management, and strategic management, where he authored or co-authored various scientific papers. He is actively engaged in national and international R&D projects.