Comparative Welfare State Research Research Articles

The Geography of Comparative Welfare State Research: A Comment

The Geography of Comparative Welfare State Research: A Comment

Ökonomismus zum Wohlfühlen

Gøsta Esping-Andersen is the top star not only of contemporary comparative welfare state research but of European social democrats struggling for welfare state reform as well. The article discusses Esping-Andersen’s vision of a „new welfare state“ and points out why finally even German social democracy discovered the sex appeal of his plea for „investing in women and children“.

Scandinavian Activation Strategies in the 1990s: Recasting Social Citizenship and the Scandinavian Welfare Model

Traditionally Sweden is heralded as epitomising the Scandinavian welfare model, not least to its perceived success in keeping unemployment and labour market inequalities low whilst still securing social protection and economic growth. In contrast, Denmark and Finland have been conceived as the Scandinavian “welfare laggards” primarily due to comparatively rudimentary active labour market policies. The development since 1990 has put an end to that. In fact there has been a role reversal. Denmark and Finland has been the most innovative in recasting a new Scandinavian activation strategy with a series of fundamental changes to their unemployment insurance and active labour market policies. Sweden followed their lead in 2001. This paper analyse these developments that have not been adequately addressed in the comparative welfare state research literature. It shows how the recast Scandinavian activation strategy is fundamentally different from the one prevalent at the onset of the 1990s, including in Sweden. Today social rights to economic compensation are complemented with rights to economic participation, and the obligations of unemployed to strive to become self-supportive have been markedly strengthened. The focus of active labour market policies is no longer to give unemployed new rights to benefit periods, but rather to aid them into work. As a consequence, the nature of social citizenship has changed towards a greater emphasis on participation just as the Scandinavian welfare state model have a greater degree of re-commodification than previously when de-commodification was at centre stage. This transformation of the Scandinavian welfare state has helped overcome some of the underlying pressures towards greater inequalities whilst still maintaining good social protection and without hampering economic growth.

When Is a Change Big Enough to Be a System Shift? Small System‐shifting Changes in German and Finnish Pension Policies

Abstract In the wake of Esping‐Andersen's and Pierson's landmark publications, comparative welfare state research has revolved around the retrenchment of social policy and the transformation of welfare state regimes. One of the chief problems of these studies is the treatment of time. Very often, changes are incremental and their real impacts are not immediately visible but take years or even decades before the consequences fully materialize. The purpose of this paper is to discuss those incremental processes—that consist of series of smaller “not‐system‐shifting changes”—which may gradually change central features of a welfare state. Pension programmes, spanning long time periods, provide a good example. Only in some rare cases were pension schemes reformed in one step and in such a way that one can definitely ascertain a system shift. Most changes, however, are gradual, and recurrently enacted minor adjustments seem to leave the basic principles of the scheme intact. In this paper pension reform policies in Germany and Finland will be used to answer the question of when a change is big enough to be labelled as a system shift. It is argued that small “not‐system‐shifting” changes of the last two decades will eventually alter the basic characteristics of old‐age security in both countries.

Pressures on State Welfare in Post‐industrial Societies: Is More or Less Better?

Abstract Although contemporary comparative welfare state research has advanced our knowledge of how welfare states respond to exogenous and endogenous pressures, the nature and implications of these pressures themselves on post‐industrial societies remains somewhat unknown. In the research literature phenomena such as globalization, Europeanization, demographics, individualization and changing labour markets are often claimed to put considerable pressure on welfare states. We analyse which of the alleged pressures are real “crises” or “challenges” to welfare states and which pressures should only be considered as “controversies”—phenomena whose impacts are nonsignificant, ambiguous, or have not been asserted. We suggest that pressures on post‐industrial societies may not, as is commonly believed, be countered with retrenchment and restructuring of welfare states. In fact, some pressures seem to call for more rather than less welfare state.

Lone Mothers between Paid Work and Care: The Policy Regime in Twenty Countries

Mainstream comparative welfare state research - a review feminist perspectives on comparative welfare state research lone mothers as an analytical category in an examination of how welfare states structure women's relationship to paid work and care - rationale and methods poor mothers - Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom non-poor mothers - the Netherlands poor workers - Austria, Germany, Greece. Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United States non-poor workers - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden patterns of convergence and divergence in the configuration of social rights attached to paid work, care and transitions accross 20 countries.

The Family Economy in the Development of Welfare Regimes: A Case Study

Comparative welfare state research has developed an interest in the role of the family in welfare regimes and in agrarian social classes as influences on the formation of welfare states. This paper seeks to bring together and extend these perspectives by exploring the role of state support for family‐based economic production, especially family farming, in the evolution of welfare regimes. Family employment is a de‐commodified alternative to wage labour. As such, it received extensive support in many of today's advanced welfare states at various points over the past century, giving rise to a form of social protection which differed from that offered by welfare provisions in the usual sense. The paper illustrates this contention by reference to Ireland from around 1870 until the Second World War, where massive state intervention in social and economic life designed to promote small‐scale family farming was a core element of ‘social policy’ broadly defined. The paper also points to other emerging welfare states where broadly similar processes could be found. Though the details and outcomes of those processes varied widely, they point to ways in which both the familial and agrarian dimensions of social policy have a greater significance in welfare regimes than has yet been adequately recognized.

Cooperation for Social Protection

The welfare state can be seen as a measure of the social protection. A major finding within the comparative welfare state research is the differences in scope, institutionalization, and effectiveness against poverty between the institutionalized forms of social protection among the industrialized Western democracies. The major question in this article is, How can we understand and explain the causal mechanism between such institutions, social norms, and human behavior? A model is presented to show that if voters/taxpayers act out of self-interest, both a selective/minimal and an encompassing/universal welfare state are likely outcomes. The different outcomes cannot be explained by the importance of the ideology of ruling political parties or that citizens in these different countries have different basic values about social justice. Instead, the argument is that the puzzle why structurally similar countries vary so much in their systems of social protection can be solved by institutional theory.

THE UNIVERSAL WELFARE STATE AS A SOCIAL DILEMMA

A major finding within comparative welfare state research is the differences in welfare state programs among the industrialized Western democracies. Contrary to most economic analysis, it is argued that many welfare state programs should be defined as public goods and thus be analysed within a `social dilemma' approach. A model is presented to show that if voters/taxpayers act out of self-interest, both a selective/minimal and an encompassing/universal welfare state are likely outcomes (i.e., a multiple equilibria situation). The different outcomes cannot be explained by the importance of the ideology of ruling political parties or by citizens in these different countries having different basic values about social justice. Rather, the argument is that the puzzle of structurally similar countries managing this social dilemma very differently can be solved by institutional theory, specified as the theory of contingent consent.

Class Meets Gender in Comparative Social Policy

Beyond the conviction that inequality is to a large extent politically constructed—whether by practices and processes inside organizations (Acker, see pp. 192-214) or by political parties in the making of public policy (Korpi, see pp. 127-191)—the articles on which I have been asked to comment share little common ground. Whereas Acker's unit of analysis is the organization, Korpi's interest is in comparing the macroproperties of whole societies. And while Acker's strategic goal is to suggest ways of thinking about complex individual cases, Korpi seeks to formulate generalizations based on empirical regularities across cases. Very occasionally the two authors briefly connect, as when Acker both invokes and extends vintage Korpi in commenting that due to the relative weakness of the labor movement in the United States, inequality in the realm of class is more legitimate than in relation to race and gender. More typically, Acker offers concepts and illustrations designed to express how class and gender are complexly related aspects of the same ongoing practical activities. Korpi stops far short of such a radically integrative project. His goal is to modify both the dependent and independent variables of comparative welfare state research in order to incorporate gender alongside our existing understanding of class. Being much closer to Korpi's research program than Acker's, I am going to devote the rest of this essay to some observations on how he treats the project of bringing gender into comparative welfare state research. These observations will pay particular attention to how

Structural pressures, social policy and poverty

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first aim is to examine 15 OECD countries from the point of view of the so‐called third‐generation studies, analysing if the development of poverty and income transfers has been uniform in countries classified under the same welfare state models. This has been done to test how appropriate it is to use welfare state models as an analytical tool in comparative welfare state research. The second aim is to examine the effect of different structural factors on poverty and income transfers. Obtained results indicate that two demographic variables studied behave somewhat differently. The share of older people in the population is – not very surprisingly – connected to an increase in income transfers. In the case of younger population groups, the results are the opposite. The results show that the greater the proportion of older people in the population, the lower the poverty rates. Social policy has in many countries consisted primarily of pension policy, and investments in the elderly population are now beginning to bear fruit. Good pension schemes diminish the immediate poverty risk of older people. As a consequence of their increased well‐being, the overall poverty rate will fall. In addition to demographic factors, the results indicate that the unemployment rate is connected, on the one hand, to growth in income transfers and, on the other hand, also to increases in poverty. However, unemployment’s effect on poverty is not straightforward. The direct effect is indeed an increase in poverty but, if income transfers are taken into account, the indirect effect is a decrease in poverty, since unemployment increases income transfers (unemployment benefits), which on their side alleviate poverty.

Human reproduction and the rise of welfare states: An economic-demographic approach to welfare state formation in the United States and Sweden

This article suggests that comparative welfare-state research would benefit from a closer analysis of economic-demographic factors, and that the United States and Sweden provide illuminating examples. In the early twentieth-century United States, economic prosperity and mass immigration favoured liberal attitudes of non-intervention in the sphere of reproduction: it was widely assumed that citizens would normally manage the critical states of life — such as motherhood, sickness, unemployment and old age — without public support. In Sweden, by contrast, the widespread experience of poverty, coupled with national backwardness and dramatic reproductive challenges (such as ageing, emigration and declining fertility), served to promote a broad support for state-interventionist policies.

A Framework for the Comparative Study of Social Services

Comparative research on welfare states has most focused on social transfers as the depen dent variable. As demographic changes make social services increasingly important ingredi ents of welfare state production, however, it will be necessary to shift the research agenda accordingly, and to take servtces more system atically into account. Building on Stein Rok kan's approach to the study of European political development, this article specifies some tasks for the comparative study of social services. Following a short overview of the topics and phases of comparative welfare state research, it proposes a set of variables for the mapping of variations in service supply as well as a check-list of variables which might help to explain such variations. The new research per spective is then applied to a comparative analysis of services for elderly people in Euro pean countries, which is based on a re-analysis if the country reports for the European Com mission's Observatory on Older People in Europe. Denmark and the Netherlands are shown to have more highly developed levels of social service supply than Germany. Such cross-country variations are related to differ ences in the modes of regulation, of financing, and of service delivery, and to the degree that decision makers at these crucial points are related to consumer interests. A theoretical conclusion relates the proposed new perspec tive to the work of Stein Rokkan. It is argued that variations of social transfer provisions could be analysed in terms of the class cleavage and of the power relations between capital and labour, but that the study of social services requires a shift in the theoretical perspective which puts more emphasis on centre-periphery relations and on church-state relations.

No Exit, No Voice: Women's Economic Dependency and the Welfare State

Research on the welfare state has been particularly concerned with variations in inequality between societies. These studies tend to view the family as a unit of shared interests where incomes are pooled and distributed equally This study makes a theoretical and empirical case for why it is important to look at economic dependency within the family in comparative welfare state research. Hirschman's theoretical framework of exit and voice is applied to the power relations in the family Using comparative data from several Western societies, this study shows empirically that the relationship between overall inequality and women's economic dependency is rather weak. Some guidelines and directions for incorporating women's economic dependency into future comparative welfare state research are suggested.

Karl Marx Returning

Over the past two decades the prevailing postwar political theory paradigm of pluralism has been strongly challenged by other approaches, such as neo-Marxism, Corporatist theory, and a state-centered approach. After the exhaustion of the first wave of neo- Marxism, the 1980s have seen the development of an empirical neo-Marxism Mark II, largely focusing on comparative welfare state research. A critical overview of the bear ing of Pluralist, Corporatist, Statist, and neo-Marxist II conceptions on the patterns of development, the structural forms, and the socio-economic implications of welfare states is given. Finally, a perspective for further elaboration of welfare state theory and analysis is presented, along neo-Marxist lines but incorporating contributions from other intellectual sources.