Welfare State Change Research Articles

Conceptualizing and operationalizing social rights: Towards higher convergent validity in SCIP and CWED

There is widespread consensus in the comparative welfare state literature that the welfare state can be best conceptualized in terms of social rights of citizenship. The Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP) and the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset (CWED), which rely on operational definitions of quantified legislated social rights, constitute centrepieces of this thriving research. As leading state-of-the-art tools for capturing welfare stateness, these two datasets are being widely used. Scholars in general have also been treating them as interchangeable measurement tools. Upon closer inspection, however, we discover that the two datasets point to contrasting images of welfare state change for certain countries and time periods. This article aims to contribute to the scholarly exchange on the validity problem in measuring welfare state generosity. The exchange has hitherto been confined to problems of dataset choice with respect to only replacement rates, a set of key indicators included in both datasets. However, there are 11 key non-replacement rate indicators SCIP and CWED have in common, whose convergent validity has yet to be questioned. We thus explore the convergent validity of these non-replacement rate indicators across the two datasets. We then replicate the two leading composite indexes (Decommodification Index (DI) and Benefit Generosity Index (BGI)) constructed on the basis of these indicators. We identify problems of invalidity manifested in discrepancies in non-replacement rate indicator scores and index values for DI and BGI. We show how these discrepancies could lead to contrasting assessments of welfare state change. We then identify a set of potential sources for these discrepancies, most of which are related to different operationalizations of similar concepts. We conclude by calling for more dialogue among developers of SCIP and CWED to further clarify their conceptual and operational points of departure.

福祉国家の変容と社会的ケア : 雇用・家族・ジェンダー( 調和する社会の諸相)

福祉国家の変容と社会的ケア : 雇用・家族・ジェンダー( 調和する社会の諸相)

When changing welfare states and the Eurocrisis meet

The aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 certainly marks a “stress test” for European welfare states. Massive increases in fiscal deficits and public debt, required to pre-empt a more severe global meltdown, have since forced policymakers to consider deep cuts in welfare services, including health, education, and social transfers to the poor, the unemployed and pensioners, in order to shore up public finance solvency and economic stability. The crisis has affected different economies differently, as a result of their relative vulnerability to endogenous and external economic shocks and also because of the differing institutional capacities they were able to mobilise to address the economic duress. Policies with a social investment flavour (activation, childcare) have been somewhat more resilient in the face of fiscal austerity in the early days of financial crisis management. But will the social investment carry the day as demographic headwind will bring social contracts under further duress, especially in countries facing high unemployment and the most daunting budgetary pressures, where long-run population ageing and the feminization of the workforce have not been adequately dealt with before the crisis. In the current context of fiscal predicament, it is crucial not to overlook the growth potential of productive social policies. This contribution examines what is needed to rescue an affordable social investment impetus from the one-sided short term policy orientations triggered by the financial and fiscal crisis at both the level of the European Union and its member states. Questions of institutional design today encompasses two, tightly interconnected, dimensions. Any long term resolution to the crisis has to be both effective and legitimate at level of the EU as well as at the domestic level of the national politics. At the level of the EU, the task is to devise a stable macroeconomic regime for the euro-zone, which is able to better accommodate and discipline the diverse needs of different member economies. Domestically, institutional change requires recalibrating the welfare state by combining capacitating social policy supports with a fair distribution of life chances. The key challenge is to make long-term social investment and short-term fiscal consolidation mutually supportive at both the EU level and in the Member States. The critical challenge lies in redirecting the broad political support for the welfare state in most EU member countries toward designing a new model of welfare state that is able to equip European citizens and societies to face endogenous social change and growing global competition.

Waiting for Godot? Welfare Attitudes in Portugal before and after the Financial Crisis

Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarisation in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However, the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualised country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change, and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

Welfare Attitudes in Portugal Before and after the Financial Crisis

Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarisation in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However, the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualised country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change, and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

Social Investment as a Perspective on Welfare State Transformation in Europe

The intense debate on welfare state transformation concerns as much the interpretation of past developments as it does the direction in which European welfare states should evolve in the future. Within this debate, the idea of “social investment” (SI) as a framework to understand and design welfare state change has gained particular prominence. The SI perspective stresses that social expenditure, far from being purely a cost factor and thus a burden on economic competitiveness, can increase economic efficiency while at the same time fostering equality and social inclusion.

Social investment: A guiding principle for welfare state adjustment after the crisis?

The European welfare states have undergone a significant amount of change over the last decades. In light of the unresolved tensions resulting from changed macroeconomic conditions, the emergence of new social risks as well as from the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftershocks, more adjustments are needed. The present paper investigates the current outlook on welfare state change, retracing its socio-economic drivers and the salient steps that were undertaken to reform welfare states in the last decades. Since the outbreak of the crisis, calls to adopt a social investment perspective on welfare state reform intensified, both in the academic field and at the EU policy-level. Ample space is therefore devoted to the discussion of this perspective, its conceptual basis, and implementation. For a number of reasons, social investment seems the most appropriate approach to frame the objectives that contemporary welfare states have to pursue and to devise a consistent set of policies. The objections which have been moved against the social investment perspective have however to be taken seriously. Moreover, current developments indicate diverging trends across EU Member States, with lack of progress in those countries which are most in need of a social investment strategy. To become an effective policy paradigm, the social investment perspective thus needs a stronger anchoring within the EU architecture and more co-ordinated commitment from Member States.

Testing the Limits of Welfare State Changes: The Slow‐moving Immigration Policy Reform in Japan

AbstractIn the 1990s, the Japanese government made transformative policy change by significantly expanding social care, thereby contradicting the core of the country's familialistic welfare principle of non‐state intervention in the family. Remarkably, social care expansions were widely accepted by the public as necessary, if not welcome, changes to deal with low fertility and an ageing society. Japanese people seemed to have no problem accepting that the rapid demographic ageing and the ‘modernization’ of the family necessitated outsourcing childcare and elder care. As the supply of native‐born care workers continued to shrink, the Japanese government began turning to foreign care workers. Unlike the case of social care expansion, however, immigration policy changes are proving difficult. Despite ample motivations, opportunities, and positive political mobilization, policy reforms have been slow and are far from achieving their goals. Most Japanese citizens are highly ambivalent about opening up the country to immigration, and the idea of immigration and multicultural societies remains disconnected from that of a shared national identity premised on ethnic and cultural homogeneity. This article shows the importance of public sentiments and national collective imaginary in policy change.

Changing Welfare States, How Can They Be Explained: Restructuring and Divergence of the Welfare State

Changing Welfare States, How Can They Be Explained: Restructuring and Divergence of the Welfare State

Literary Lessons in Law: Legal Culture in a Changing Welfare State

Can literary fiction provide a specifically advantageous framework for discussions about law and legal culture in an increasingly diverse society? This study addresses the challenges that some aspects of postmodernity pose to legal culture and legal thinking in the Danish welfare state. Showing how literature can take an open space in public debate I venture into an analysis of two Danish literary creations – the poem ‘The Coffee Break Team’ [Da: Kaffeholdet. My translation] from 2013 and a novel Pelle, The Conqueror, written 1907-10. As a third dimension a small sample of students is inquired about the poem. They are studying to become welfare state professionals and hence bearers of the relation between the state and its citizens. I discuss my literature samples against changes that have taken place in the Danish nation building project involving inclusion or exclusion of groups of the population. In a concluding section I balance my findings in relation to the initial question and place them within the law and literature tradition.

Welfare Capitalism in Crisis: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Labour Market Policy Responses to the Great Recession

AbstractSocial policy responses to the recent economic crisis have varied considerably across advanced capitalist countries. This study aims to explain this cross-national diversity through a qualitative comparative analysis of labour market policy responses to the Great Recession across eighteen advanced welfare states. The results of the study suggest that theories of welfare state change that attribute theoretical centrality to political and institutional factors do not provide a compelling explanation for patterns of labour market reform observed since the onset of the economic crisis. Rather, they appear to be explained principally in terms of the variable fiscal capacity of the state. In particular, the study findings indicate that the presence of fiscal crisis has acted as a necessary (but insufficient) condition for the presence of recommodification, while the absence of fiscal crisis has acted as a sufficient (but unnecessary) condition for the absence of recommodification. These empirical developments suggest that there is a need for a scholarly return to the problematic relationship between capitalism and the welfare state.

Welfare State Change and Social Citizenship in the Post-Yugoslav States

This article discusses the interaction between social citizenship and the welfare state in the context of post-communist transformation. It particularly examines the relationship between changing political institutions and notions of citizenship, and changing welfare policies. The welfare diversity can be attributed to inherited legacies and the transitional context, and particularly the political responses to it. They can be best understood in the context of democratization processes which have affected both the notion of citizenship as well as the welfare state reform. Additionally, increasing internationalization challenged existing structures and offered new perspectives. The role of the European Union has, however, been quite uneven in this process. Based on the combined effect of these influences in the post-Yugoslav space, four social citizenship types could be discerned: neo-corporatist (Slovenia), accommodating (Croatia), paternalistic (Serbia and Montenegro), and neoliberal (Macedonia and Kosovo).

Welfare Mix as a Contested Terrain: Political Positions on Government–Non-profit Relations at National and Local Levels in a Social Democratic Welfare State

As welfare states are increasingly challenged and replaced by welfare mix models, new ideas about the functions of non-profit and voluntary organisations (NPVOs) provoke political conflicts that should be reflected in research. This paper explores the significance of political and ideological dimensions to present changes in the Swedish welfare state regarding NPVOs as welfare services providers. Investigating both national and local level, the study addresses political as well as practical implications of the reframing of NPVOs as service providers rather than being associated with a voice function. The article shows extensive differences between national and local levels as contentious ideological cleavages at national level are dormant in local level politics. Variations in the way relations to NPVOs are structured in practice at local level appear related to factors other than political dimensions. The findings support the development of an analytical framework that reflects political dimensions and allow for empirical focus that includes national and local level politics and practices.

Credit-Claiming or Blame Avoidance? Comparing the Relationship between Welfare State Beliefs and the Framing of Social Policy Retrenchment in France and Germany

This study aims to theorize more concretely the micro-foundations of reform strategies with attention to the role of would-be reform winners in motivating strategy choice. The theory incorporates insights about multidimensional preferences into Weaver’s framework and builds on a growing literature on the framing of welfare state change in order to hypothesize that governments may face a vote-seeking incentive to justify retrenchment by appealing to aspects of the reform that their voters support. Recognizing the political relevance of a pro-retrenchment constituency sheds light on unappreciated political dynamics of welfare state retreat. Illustrative case studies of France and Germany provide insights into the relationship between voter preferences and the political strategies.

The Role of Ideas in Policy and Institutional Change: A Comparison of the Open Functional Approach, Constructivism and Discourse Theory

Most scholars engaged in ideational analysis agree that the availability of new ideas may cause existing welfare state policies and institutions to alter. This article considers the extent to which the open functional approach and constructivist approaches are able to explain the role of ideas in policy and institutional change. Notwithstanding their contribution to the study of the role of ideas in policy and institutional change, these approaches suffer from some shortcomings as they fail to view ideas as non-stable entities. In order to address these shortcomings, an alternative poststructuralist discourse theoretical explanatory model is presented. Applying this model to the case of the rise and fall of Dutch life course policy, the article shows how a discourse theoretical view of ideas as floating signifiers contributes to the study of the role of ideas in welfare state change.

Welfare State Change: Ideal Type Analysis based on the Old and New Social Policies

Welfare State Change: Ideal Type Analysis based on the Old and New Social Policies

The Four Worlds of ‘Welfare Reality’ – Social Risks and Outcomes in Europe

After three decades of welfare state crisis, change and transformation can we still speak of welfare state regimes when looking at their outcomes? The analysis of outcomes provides a picture of ‘the real worlds of welfare’ and is of considerable importance to understanding political legitimacy across countries. We use aggregate longitudinal data for West European countries in order to map welfare outcomes and cluster countries. The cluster results are also assessed for their sensitivity to the choice of different countries, years or indicators. All European welfare states have a significant capacity for reducing poverty and inequality. However, the degree of this reduction varies considerably, especially when examining different social groups, i.e. unemployed people, children, youths or the elderly. Outcomes cluster countries largely in line with previous institutionalist literature, differentiating between conservative, liberal, Mediterranean and social-democratic regimes. As the main exception, we identify Germany, which can no longer be characterised as the proto-typical conservative welfare state. When analysing old social risks such as unemployment and old age, Europe appears to be characterised by two groups, i.e. one consisting of liberal and Mediterranean countries and a second made up of social-democratic and conservative countries. New social risks such as child and youth poverty, by contrast, replicate very closely the theoretical four-cluster typology. Our sensitivity analyses reveal that our clusters tend to be stable over time. Welfare regimes continue to serve as a useful analytical tool and relate to outcomes experienced by European citizens.

Welfare States’ Policy Response to New Social Risk: Sequence Analysis for Welfare Policy

This paper focuses on the trajectories of welfare state change through policy response to new social risks and methodologically categorizes the pattern of trajectories with sequence analysis. New social risks are the risks that people face in their life course due to the economic and social changes related to post-industrialization. By comparing a typology of welfare states based on trajectories of policy change in last three decades with Esping-Andersen’s threefold typologies of welfare states, we can determine whether welfare states maintain their existing welfare systems or change them. The results of sequence analysis on social expenditures and total tax revenue show that welfare regimes undergo a substantial change. In particular, conservative welfare regime countries show various trajectories when reacting to new social risks. This finding empirically supports studies that assert the transformation of the welfare state.

Arndt, Christoph. 2013. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social Democracy’s Transformation and its Political Costs (Changing Welfare States). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 280 S., € 39,95.

Arndt, Christoph. 2013. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social Democracy’s Transformation and its Political Costs (Changing Welfare States). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 280 S., € 39,95.

Book Review: Europe: Changing Welfare States

Book Review: Europe: Changing Welfare States