Liberal Welfare State Regimes Research Articles

Federalism and Policy Design in Two Liberal Welfare State Regimes: Comparing the Politics of Labour Market Policies in Canada and the United States

This paper explores the relationship between federalism and the policy design of labour market policies in two liberal welfare state regimes – Canada and the United States – addressing the following research question: How do variations in policy design intersect with federalism in both countries and how can these variations provide powerful, self-reinforcing or self-undermining feedback effects over time? Combining the literatures on the varieties of federalism, the liberal welfare regime, and policy design and feedback, the paper shows that paying close attention to federalism is necessary to understand diverse national policy designs that produce self-reinforcing feedback effects over time.

Public perceptions of child protection, children’s rights, and personal values: An assessment of two states

Although there is an expansive literature on public attitudes towards the welfare state, we know comparatively little about public attitudes toward child protection. Gauging public opinion about the state’s role in protecting children is complicated by the contested ideas that underlie the field. Child protection lies at the nexus between competing values about state obligations to allow unfettered parental freedom or to permit constraints on some parental behaviors. At issue is also the notion of balancing the individual rights of the parties involved: parents and children. Similar to the larger welfare state literature, public attitudes about child protection may be shaped by core human values. This study includes representative samples of the public in Norway and California (n = 2148), countries that are commonly viewed as representative of social democratic and liberal welfare state regimes. Respondents reviewed a vignette portraying a child at risk of harm and were asked a series of questions to gauge whether and/or how the state might constrain the parent’s behavior, questions pertaining to the rights of children, and their views about core human values. Findings indicate that residents of Norway were more likely to favor the values of security and equal rights, and Californians more likely to favor the value of self-direction. Contrary to the larger body of welfare state literature which suggests that human values help explain public attitudes about welfare provisions, in general, this study did not find that human values generally explained differences in country attitudes toward constrained parenting or toward children’s rights. Findings offer an exploratory first step in expanding notions about child protection as nested in welfare states.

COVID-19, poverty reduction, and partisanship in Canada and the United States

Abstract Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, policies likely to reduce poverty significantly have been adopted in both Canada and the United States. Yet, this poverty reduction logic has emerged in different ways in the two countries—with the United States embracing more significant departures from its policy status quo. This situation leads us to ask the following question: in each country, what are the political conditions under which public policies susceptible of reducing poverty are enacted? To answer this question, we study the politics of poverty reduction both before and during the pandemic, as we suggest that grasping the evolution of partisan and electoral patterns over time is necessary to explain what happened during the pandemic, whose impact is closely related to how it interacts with such patterns. Our analysis suggests the need to consider more carefully the impact of both crises and partisanship on social policy, including poverty reduction.

Impact of Financialization on Income Inequality in Aspect of Welfare

Recently income inequality has been growing in many countries, and it is one of the biggest economic and social problems. The International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and other organizations stress the importance of this issue. According to Atkinson, Brandolini (2009), changes in income inequality show whether a particular society becomes more egalitarian over time or not, in which socio-economic direction it progresses.Even countries with similar economic structures differ in the level of income inequality and, according to Stiglitz (2015), differences in income inequality are related to policy decisions. The decisions of countries may depend on the prevailing view if markets are efficient or inefficient. In the first case, countries tend to rely more on neoliberal economic doctrine, and in the second, on the welfare state, where the role of government is more active (Stiglitz, 2017). However, it is observed that the growing income inequality is related to the growing role of the financial market, i.e. the phenomenon of financialization, which weakens the role of government. Thus, assessing the impact of financialization on income inequality is an actual topic of scientific debate.The results of studies, assessing the impact of financialization on income inequality, are mixed. Some financialization dimensions, such as financial liberalization, banking / financial crises increase income inequality, but microfinance intensity reduces income inequality. The contradictory results can be explained by the fact that research samples differ, various indicators reflecting the financialization are used, different independent variables are included in the regression equations.Studies have also been conducted in groups of countries that belong to different welfare state regimes (Josifidis, Mitrović, Supić, Glavaški, 2016; Dafermos, Papatheodorou, 2013). These studies emphasize that the level of income inequality is related to the efficiency of the social security system, i.e. income inequality is lower in Social–democratic welfare state regime (inherent universal social services and benefits) and Conservative–corporatist welfare state regime (social security model related to employment status) groups of countries than in the Mediterranean welfare state regime (characterized by the fragmentation of the social security model) and Liberal welfare state regime (inherent the specificity of the social security model, there is no universality) groups of countries. However, there is a lack of research that assesses the impact of financialization on income inequality in different welfare state regime groups of countries. The research problem: what is the impact of financialization on income inequality, is this impact the same in different EU welfare state regime groups? The object of the research - the impact of financialization on income inequality. The aim of the research is to assess the impact of financialization on income inequality in EU country groups.Research methods: analysis of scientific literature, grouping, generalization, regression analysis of panel data.When assessing the impact of financialization on income inequality in different welfare regimes EU country groups during the period 1998-2017, the least-squares regression analysis method of the panel data was used. The conducted research confirms the hypothesis and clearly shows that financialization, measured both by financial development index and domestic credit to the private sector, increases income inequality in all groups of countries. Thus, it shows that the role of the financial market is growing and financialization processes are contributing to the growth of income inequality in all groups of welfare regime countries and may reduce the role of government. These results are in line with Stiglitz, 2012; Razgūnė, 2017; Dünhaupt, 2014; Golebiowski, Szczepankowski, Wisniewska, 2016; Palley, 2008) who analyzed the relationship between financialization and growing income inequality. However, the study of Dabla-Norris et al. (2015), by contrast, find that the ratio of domestic credit to GDP in developed countries reduces income inequality.

Employment and income support policies during the early phases of COVID-19: Lessons from the U.S., Denmark, and Taiwan

As COVID-19 spread across the world in 2020, health and economic activities have been impacted, and unemployment has risen across many countries. The consequences have been particularly harmful to vulnerable populations such as women, racial minorities, or part-time workers. While many governments enacted employment and income support policies as a response to this economic and health crisis, there has been a lack of comparative and evaluative reviews of how policies have addressed unemployment and inequality during the pandemic. In this study, we draw on Esping-Andersen’s (1990) frame of a liberal versus social-democratic welfare state to contextualize some employment and income support polices during the early phases of COVID-19 from the U.S., Denmark, and Taiwan, aiming to enhance the understanding of such policies. We found that the U.S., being more aligned with a liberal welfare state regime, relied on more market mechanisms to address labor and employment issues. Denmark and Taiwan, being more aligned with a social-democratic welfare state, enacted more interventions in and redistributions outside of the market to address employment problems. The human costs of unemployment and unemployment and labor market hysteresis are addressed in light of these two different approaches and outcomes.

Social policy responses to COVID‐19 in Canada and the United States: Explaining policy variations between two liberal welfare state regimes

AbstractCanada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare‐state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian governments in response to COVID‐19. In general, we show that Canadian responses were both more rapid and comprehensive than those of the United States. This variation, we argue, can be explained by analysing the divergent political institutions, pre‐existing policy legacies, and variations in cross‐partisan consensus, which have all shaped national decision‐making in the middle of the crisis.

BİRLEŞİK KRALLIK VE AMERİKA BİRLEŞİK DEVLETLERİNDE SAĞLIK HARCAMALARININ ANALİZİ

In the light of Welfare State Literature, both the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) are categorized as Liberal Welfare Regime by Esping-Andersen, whose classification is widely accepted in the literature, and other researchers. But as a significant difference, whereas the UK has a universal free healthcare system contrary to typical Liberal Welfare State Regime, the US doesn’t have a universal healthcare system and furthermore, the healthcare system is mostly based on private insurance schemes. Moving from that point, health expenditures in the UK and the US has been compared and analyzed since the conditions create a significant comparing chance. This study’s main argument is based on the claim of even though the US health expenditures are about two times higher than the UK (per capita and as a rate of GDP) health system in the UK is financially more efficient than the US in terms of better public health outcomes and quality. In order to do so, the study analyzes the quantity and quality of healthcare expenditures in both countries by using literature, World Health Organization and different rating systems and furthermore both systems are discussed by 8 selected public health outcomes. The study concludes that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is giving better quality of service with almost two times lesser financial resources in terms of public health outcomes and some policy recommendations have been made.

Historical Origins of a Welfare-State Regime: Unemployment Protection in Japan, 1919-1949

Although Japan since the 1920s witnessed unemployment, no system of unemployment insurance existed in Japan until after the end of World War II. Historians of welfare and labor have taken this to mean that the prewar Japanese government deviated from international standards of welfare policy, an argument that ties into notions of Japan as a liberal welfare state in the literature on varieties of capitalism and welfare-state regimes. The present paper confronts this type of argument from two angles. First, the type of unemployment that Japanese society faced in the 1920s was substantially different from that the advanced industrialized countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania had to deal with, as can be shown by analyses of the structure of the work force. Second, the main problem actually posed by unemployment in Japan, i.e. the situation of day laborers, was addressed, albeit not by the central state, but by municipal governments who installed local relief associations. If one acknowledges the potential of historical studies to contribute to social science typologies, the results of the present paper show that the claim that Japan is a liberal welfare state regime is difficult to sustain.

European welfare regimes: Political orientations versus poverty

This inquiry analyzes how political orientations shape welfare states and labour market institutions when seeking to reduce poverty. In order to identify effects of these two key variables, we conduct a panel regression analysis that includes two poverty measures: poverty rates before and after social spending. This inquiry considers 14 EU countries, and in the period from 1995 to 2008, which are grouped according to welfare state regimes. We consider Social Democratic, Corporatist, Mediterranean and Liberal welfare state regimes. Panel regression results indicate that political orientation engenders no significant statistically measurable effects on poverty rates before social spending. Effects register, however, as significant when considering poverty rates after social spending. With respect to the first set of results, we advance two key explanations. First, we note a longer period of time is necessary in order to observe actual effects of political orientation on market generated poverty. Second, political parties with their respective programs do not register as influential enough to solve social problems related to income distribution when taken alone. Influences register as indirect and are expressed through changes in employment rates and social spending. The second set of results support the hypothesis that a selected political regime does indeed contribute to poverty reduction. In sum, political orientation and political regime does indeed affect poverty through welfare state institutions, as well as through labour market institutions.

Electoral rules, class coalitions and welfare state regimes, or how to explain Esping-Andersen with Stein Rokkan

It has been recognized since the publication of Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism that the advanced Western welfare state comes in—at least— three variants: as a Nordic social-democratic regime, a conservative regime on the European continent or as a liberal welfare state regime in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Why exactly welfare states fit into this three-regime typology remains controversial, however. This article presents an argument which provides the three-regime heuristic with a historical foundation. The argument combines insights into the importance of electoral rules for the representation of socioeconomic interests (of the lower and middle classes) with insights about the different cleavage structures which left their imprint on the party systems of Western Europe. This article’s central claim is that a majoritarian electoral system leads to a residual-liberal welfare state, whereas in countries with proportional representation, either a red–green coalition between Social Democracy and agrarian parties (Scandinavia) or a red–black coalition between Social Democracy and Christian Democracy (on the European continent) was responsible for the build-up of the Nordic and continental welfare state, respectively.

How Welfare Regimes Generate and Erode Social Capital: The Impact of Underclass Phenomena

The origins of social trust have been much discussed in recent years. This attention is understandable, as social trust is perceived to be a mechanism for overcoming the pri mary social problem highlighted by rational choice theory: how actors without mutual trust logically would choose a suboptimal solution (the prisoner's dilemma problem). Social trust is thus believed to be very important in solving collective problems, mak ing democracy work, and generating economic growth.1 In brief, everyone agrees that social trust is nice to have. However, its origins, creation, and in some countries erosion are up for discussion. Table 1 shows the empirical results of the World Values Surveys (WVS) conducted in the beginning (1990-1993) and the end (1999-2001) of the 1990s. As argued by Inglehart, economic development and religion have a huge impact. Therefore, this study is limited to the rich capitalist countries that share Christianity as a common cultural background.2 Furthermore, the countries will be categorized accord ing to Esping-Andersen's renowned distinction among liberal (Anglo-Saxon), conserva tive (continental European), and social democratic (Scandinavian) welfare regimes.3 The standard question for social trust (also labeled interpersonal or horizontal trust) has been used: Generally speaking, would you say that people can be or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?. Table 1 reveals two major puzzles. The first is the striking level of horizontal trust in the social democratic regimes. In 1990 the share responding that most people can be trusted averaged 61 percent in these countries. In the nine conservative regimes, the average was 31 percent, whereas the average was 48 percent in the four liberal regimes. The distinctiveness of the social democratic regimes is even more remarkable in the lat est wave, where the average was 63 percent in the social democratic regimes as com pared to 29 percent in the conservative regimes and 38 percent in the liberal regimes. Regime patterns are not clearly present. At first sight, the distinction between conserva tive and liberal regimes does not appear to be of much relevance. However, one can not deny that the countries that Esping-Andersen grouped as social democratic welfare regimes distinguish themselves. The second, rather striking finding is that the dramatic erosion of social trust appears only in the countries Esping-Andersen labeled liberal welfare state regimes. The

Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies

Do mass policy preferences influence the policy output of welfare states in developed democracies? This is an important issue for welfare state theory and research, and this article presents an analysis that builds from analytical innovations developed in the emerging literature on linkages between mass opinion and public policy. The authors analyze a new dataset combining a measure of social policy preferences with data on welfare state spending, alongside controls for established causal factors behind social policy-making. The analysis provides evidence that policy preferences exert a significant influence over welfare state output. Guided also by statistical tests for endogeneity, the authors find that cross-national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social, Christian, and liberal welfare state regimes. The results have implications for developing fruitful connections between welfare state scholarship, comparative opinion research, and recent opinion/policy studies.

Minority nationalism and welfare state attitudes: Québec and Scotland compared

Modern welfare states are not all cut from the same cloth, and much research has been devoted to describing and analysing their similarities and differences. Esping-Andersen (1990) identifies three types of welfare state regimes, the liberal 'anglo-saxon' model, the conservative/corporatist model, and the social democratic model. In the liberal welfare state, exemplified by the United States, Australia and Canada, and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, the market and the private sector are viewed as the main engine of growth and redistribution. The welfare state is 'residual' in the sense that state intervention is designed to correct or adjust inadequacies of the market. In this model, programmes are often means-tested and targeted rather than universal. In the conservative corporatist welfare state regime, exemplified by Germany, France and Italy, the welfare state was typically built 'from above', often with a pattern of collaboration between Church and State. In the social democratic welfare state regime, found in Scandinavia, the labour movement and left political parties had a key role in shaping the welfare state. In these settings, state programmes are extensive and universal, and their redistributive effect is substantial. In positing that modern welfare states fall into these three distinct regime clusters, Esping-Andersen put forth his typology as a set of ideal-types, allowing for the empirical possibility that within each cluster, some countries might be more typical of it than others. Both Canada and the United Kingdom have often been classified as belonging to the first cluster of liberal welfare state regimes. In both cases, this classification has been nuanced and qualified by researchers who point out that for various reasons, neither Canada nor the United Kingdom are as pure exemplars of the liberal pattern as the United States and even Australia. For example, Esping-Andersen put the UK in the liberal cluster because it was increasingly heading in that direction in the Thatcher years (as quoted by Evans 1996: 189), although analyses of levels of public support for the welfare state during the 1980s and early 1990s clearly put the UK closer to continental Europe than to the United States and Australia (Evans 1996). In similar fashion, it has been argued that Canada's welfare state regime can be seen as a hybrid of several influences, with the dominant liberal residual model coexisting alongside the visible influence of conservative and social democratic impulses. In its level of public support for the welfare state, Canada displays a slightly higher or 'more European' level than the United States, although Canada still resembles the United States more than it resembles any other country (Laczko 1998). Thus in a general sense the welfare state regimes of Canada and the United Kingdom both display characteristics that make them members of the liberal cluster, but not the 'most typical' members. One important feature shared by the United Kingdom and Canada is that both are multinational states, and each has territorially concentrated internal 'national minorities'. This chapter will explore the connection between minority nationalism and welfare state attitudes in Canada and in Great Britain, focusing specifically on differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada and Scotland and the rest of Great Britain. In both settings, there is of course a history of distinct institutions setting the minority nation or territory somewhat apart from the majority neighbour and partner. In both Quebec and Scotland, a separate legal system, a distinct educational system, and a distinctive dominant religion are three factors that have historically reaffirmed the particularities of the minority region in the larger Canadian and British contexts. What is the extent of subnational and regional differences in outlooks on social inequality and welfare state activity? How have distinct subnational historical patterns influenced the structure of opinions today? …

Is there a Connection between Welfare State Regime and Dwelling Type? An Exploratory Statistical Analysis

This exploratory paper tests whether there is a relationship between the nature of a particular society (represented by its welfare state regime), and the characteristics and appreciation of the single-family dwellings and the apartments within this society. In order to grasp differences in the nature of societies, the study uses the welfare state typology of Esping-Andersen (with the addition of a Mediterranean welfare state regime). In this (adapted) typology, four different welfare state regime types are distinguished: a social-democratic welfare state regime, a corporatist welfare state regime, a liberal welfare state regime and a Mediterranean welfare state regime. Different statistical techniques are used to investigate the relationship between welfare state regime type and dwelling type. First, a number of bivariate tables are presented that indicate how the incidence, tenure category, quality and the appreciation of single-family dwellings compared to apartments differ between welfare state regimes. Subsequently, there is an analysis of the bivariate relations between these aspects. To find out whether the typology of Esping-Andersen really is a useful classification system with regard to the characteristics and appreciation of single-family dwellings as against apartments, a cluster analysis is conducted. The clusters that result from this analysis are interpreted and compared with the typology of the four welfare state regimes. Based on the results of these statistical analyses, some conclusions are drawn and some directions for further research are outlined.

Not Ozzie and Harriet: Postwar Divorce and the American Liberal Welfare State

This article analyzes divorce as a technology of governance in twentieth-century America in order to examine the emergence of a rights-based liberal welfare-state regime during the postwar era. The author offers an interpretation of the post–World War II “divorce boom” that challenges prevailing notions of postwar domestic tranquillity and highlights the legal formalization of family relations and the administration of the developing welfare state. The article posits an important shift in postwar public policy regarding divorce from the policing of public morality through family preservation to the regulation of public welfare through family structures. The legal consequences of this shift are explored at the local level by focusing on the “problem” of the Chicago divorce courts and the frustrated attempts of postwar reformers in Illinois to employ the traditional methods and rhetoric of Progressive Era reform. At the national level, the author examines the formulation of new governmental objectives and individual rights in the liberal welfare-state regime through an analysis of the United States Supreme Court's decisions regarding migratory divorce.

Class Interests, Class Politics and Welfare State Regime

The question of the social bases for support of the welfare state has been a major concern of theoretical and practical arguments about the development of social policy. Some writers have argued that the (un)popularity of welfare services is trongly influenced by institutional regimes, which range from the universal to the residual type. Others have drawn attention to the lack of support for certain categories of recipients of government assistance in all types of regime. This paper assesses the significance of theories about the institutional correlates and social bases for support of the welfare state. It also examines data from a survey of opinions in a liberal welfare state regime which are relevant to these debates.