Conservative Welfare State Research Articles

From the Conservative welfare state to an 'uncertain something else': German pension politics in comparative perspective

English The 2001 German pension reform represents the beginning of a new welfare politics of a new welfare state. It adds to the former exclusively pay-as-you-go financed public system a capitalfunded private pillar. This private pillar is a politically regulated welfare market. The new pension policy is a striking example of a structural reform in a politically risky policy field. This change was made possible by two processes: first, running out of options in respect of traditional concepts of problem solving and, second, a new experimental policy style. As a result, the new German welfare state is on an irrevocable path from a conservative welfare state to a new recombinant type mixing different elements of ‘worlds of welfare’.

The Adjustment Path of the Austrian Welfare State: Back to Bismarck?

Esping-Andersen (1990; 1999) was interested in identifying the similarities between countries within the three categories of welfare states that he distinguished: the by now familiar types of ‘Scandinavian’ or ‘social democratic’, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or ‘liberal’, and the ‘continental’ or ‘conservative’ welfare states. Scharpf and Schmidt (2000a; 2000b) went further and took a closer look at differences within these categories. They studied how countries reacted to common challenges of internationalization, and found quite a few variations between countries – even within the same welfare regime. They argue that policy responses have been influenced by three sets of factors: (a) the nature and intensity of policy challenges; (b) governance institutions defining actor constellations and their modes of interaction; and (c) perceptions and preferences of the actors involved (Scharpf and Schmidt, 2000a: 1–20). This implies that the affiliation to a welfare state regime cannot alone explain or predict the modes of adaptation and reform countries choose when confronted with problems of internationalization. Does this make EspingAndersen’s typology less useful or even obsolete? Not quite. The type of welfare state, that is the manner in which it provides income to its citizens – by general taxes, by insurance, or work and residual poverty protection – and the way in which it provides services (broadly public, by the family or by subsidizing private schemes) is still a major explanatory variable of reforms. It was typical for all conservative welfare states, for example, first to try to shift the increasing unemployment problem away from the labour market, either by sending people into early retirement, into invalidity, into motherhood or into longer training, whereas it was typical for liberal welfare states to create flexible employment patterns and lower wages. Scandinavian countries had developed active labour market policies very early and, therefore, faced labour market problems later and less dramatically than most conservative welfare states. Though Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare state families is still useful, it seems worthwhile to analyse them in more depth in order to understand the reforms and performance of welfare states when faced with challenges of internationalization. The present paper deals with EspingAndersen’s ‘continental’, ‘conservative’ and strongly ‘corporatist’ family of welfare states, made up of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. These welfare states are rooted in the ideas of Bismarck and von Taffe (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 24). They are dominated by a system of social insurance which implies that social entitlements are derived from employment rather than citizenship (contrary to the social-democratic model) or proven needs (as in the liberal model), and which is committed to a preservation of status differentials. Social protection tends to be differentiated by occupational classes. Benefits mirror status and earnings rather than redistributive ambitions (Esping-Andersen, 1990:

Democratization and Welfare State Development in Taiwan. By Christian Aspalter. [Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002. xii+171 pp. ISBN 0-7546-1603-7.

Taiwan studies suffer from an overemphasis on cross-straits relations and national identity, making Christian Aspalter's Democratization and Welfare State Development in Taiwan a refreshing change. After his previous comparative publication, Conservative Welfare States in East Asia, Aspalter offers readers the first English language book-length publication explaining the development of Taiwan's welfare state.

Conservative Welfare State Systems in East Asia

Introduction Japan South Korea Taiwan Hong Kong Singapore Mainland China The Future of Conservative Welfare State Systems in East Asia Bibliography Index

The Politics of Mothers' Employment: France in Comparative Perspective

Contemporary theories and typologies of welfare states in Western Europe assume that social democratic parties are the engine behind progressive policies on gender roles and on the participation of women in the labor force. The French case challenges these assumptions—this conservative welfare state, surprisingly, provides an extensive system of public day care along with other forms of support that facilitate mothers' employment. This article explains the existence of the French system through a comparative historical analysis of child care policy in France and other European welfare states. The mainfindingsconcern the role of organized religion in shaping contemporary public day care policies. In contrast to most conservative welfare regimes, the French welfare state has been shaped not by clericalism and Christian democracy but by secularism and republican nationalism—forces that influenced some of the earliest public policies for the education of young children in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that later affected the founding of the contemporary day care system in the 1970s. In that latter period of propitious economic circumstances, pragmatic policy elites eschewed moralizing critiques of mothers' employment and established a system of financing that has enabled the long-term expansion of public day care. These findings have implications for our understanding of gender politics and welfare regimes in Western Europe. The secularization of political life—not social democratic power—best explains why public policies in France and in many Scandinavian countries have promoted the demise of the traditional family model.

Reregulating breadwinner models in socially conservative welfare systems: comparing Germany and Japan

Through a paired comparison between Japan and Germany, we suggest that the legacy of the strong male-breadwinner model creates particular pressures on socially conservative welfare states in a period of restructuring. These countries are reregulating gender relations in different ways. We relate differences between Germany and Japan to contrasting state-society relations: specifically the role of the Japanese state in trying to stem both economic and demographic decline on the one hand and the role of the social partners in Germany to stimulate employment growth and reduce unemployment on the other. In addition, we point to the impact of the European Union (EU) on the matters of labor market and equality regulations in our analysis of Germany.

Social Housing Policy in a Conservative Welfare State: Austria as an Example

Taking Austria as an example, the article sets out to explore the relationship between a particular type of welfare regime and the kind of social housing policy developed within such an environment. Austria has repeatedly and consistently been classified as the ideal type of a conservative and familialistic welfare regime and as a paradigm case of corporatism. Particular attributes of such a regime (fragmentation, corporatism, familialism, immobilism) do have their repercussions within Austrian housing and may be detected within Austrian housing policy.

Female employment differences, poverty and care provisions

In this article, we link an analysis of female employment in the OECD with a reflection on the role of the welfare state regarding the provision of care. First, we reveal a picture of multi-speed labour market participation, with highly skilled women approaching male employment rates irrespective of the type of welfare state and low-skilled women lagging considerably behind, especially in the conservative welfare states. We also show that the gaps between the sexes, educational groups and countries grow even wider among women with children. Consequently, dual earnership is far from generalized in the OECD and differences in poverty rates may be explained by (among other factors) the uneven participation in paid labour of women. To counteract this phenomenon, we therefore plea for a welfare state reform towards the inclusion of care. This will ease the entry to paid employment for mothers and low-skilled women, and thus act as a poverty reduction strategy. A combination of several policy measures is suggested.

Beyond European Welfare Regimes: Comparative Perspectives on East Asian Welfare Systems

This article examines three comparative perspectives on East Asian welfare systems with special reference to Japan and Korea. First, an expenditure approach shows that the levels of government spending in Japan and Korea are lower than in UK and Sweden, but it necessarily underestimates the welfare expenditure publicly spent in Japan and Korea, due to the regulator type of policy intervention in financing welfare programmes. Second, the standard analysis of cross-sectional redistribution shows that social and fiscal policies have made only a small impact on income distribution, but the profiles of policy intervention reveal the distinctive characteristics of social security systems in these two countries. Lastly, this article examines the welfare systems in Japan and Korea in the light of Esping-Andersen's conservative welfare regime type. It argues that the welfare systems in these two countries do not fit into the type of the conservative welfare state and suggests that there is a case for an ‘East Asian welfare model’, at least regarding Japan and Korea.