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Public Welfare Provision, Scandinavia, and the Sheer Futility of the Sociological Approach to Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Francis G. Castles  and
R. D. McKinlay
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Extract

In the last two decades, the prevailing orthodoxy in comparative studies has been the sociological view that public policy outcomes are primarily a reflection of what can loosely be described as ‘environmental’ factors: the demographic structure of the population, the incremental logic of policy programmes, and, most important of all, the level of economic development. This paper has two main objectives: first, to demonstrate that the sociological orthodoxy is methodologically and empirically unsound in its central tenet that politics does not matter, and, second, to provide a more detailed, and political, explanation of the particularly high levels of public welfare provision that characterize the Scandinavian countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1979 , pp. 157 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 By public welfare we mean the official provision of health and educational facilities and transfer payments. (Transfer payments include items such as: pensions, unemployment benefits, and social security.)

2 Connery, Donald, The Scandinavians (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966), p. 71.Google Scholar

3 Schnitzer, Martin, The Economy of Sweden (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 16.Google Scholar

4 Anderson, Perry, ‘Sweden: Mr Crosland's Dreamland’, New Left Review, vii (1961), p. 8.Google Scholar

5 Galenson, Walter, ‘Scandinavia’, in Galenson, , ed., Comparative Labour Movements (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), p. 55.Google Scholar

6 Quotation of Olof Palme in Sjöman, Vilgot, I am Curious (Yellow) (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 33.Google Scholar

7 Goldthorpe, John H., ‘Social Stratification in Industrial Societies’, in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Class, Status and Power, 2nd edn. (London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1967), pp. 648–9. Italics added.Google Scholar

8 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 406.Google Scholar Though the ‘end of ideology’ school is principally associated with writers such as Lipset and Bell, it was anticipated in the mid-fifties by a commentator on the Swedish political scene. See Tingsten, Herbert, ‘Stability and Vitality in Swedish Democracy’, Political Quarterly, xxvi (1955), 140–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Christenson, Reo M. et al. , Ideologies and Modern Politics (London: Nelson, 1971), p. 274.Google Scholar

10 Parkin, Frank, Class Inequality and Political Order (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1971), p. 126.Google Scholar Parkin does note, however, that in Eastern Europe intergenerational mobility gives the classlessness thesis ‘a greater plausibility’ (p. 158).Google Scholar

11 Wilensky, Harold, The Welfare State and Equality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

12 Cutright, Phillips, ‘Political Structure, Economic Development, and National Security Programs’, American Journal of Sociology, LXX (1965), 537–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Dye, Thomas R., Policy Analysis (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1976), p. 51.Google Scholar

14 Tressell, Robert, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (London: Panther, 1965), p. 29.Google Scholar

15 Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), P. 259.Google Scholar

16 Easton, David, ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, World Politics, ix (1957), 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in Gerth, Hans H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 78.Google Scholar

18 Finer, Samuel E., Comparative Government (London: Allen Lane, 1970), p. 37.Google Scholar

19 These tests are carried out for the population of advanced democratic states listed in Table 1. We have been obliged to exclude Israel because of missing data. New Zealand is excluded from part of the analysis (transfer payments and general welfare), for the same reason.

20 These results are from simple linear regressions. It could be argued by convergence theorists that with increasing economic growth there will be a change in the marginal utility of public and private goods. This could lead either to a relative reduction in the level of welfare (i.e. welfare would continue to increase with economic development but at a slower rate) or an absolute reduction in welfare (i.e. welfare would initially increase with economic development but after a certain point begin to decline). In both cases, welfare is a function of economic development, but instead of a linear relationship we would be hypothesizing logarithmic and quadratic relationships respectively between welfare and economic development. We have tested for those relationships, but the logarithmic and quadratic regressions still yield insignificant results.

21 The variance in the higher and lower income groups respectively are: 2·25 and 0·92 for educational expenditure, 18·57 and 33·75 for transfer payments, 14·75 and 22·46 for infant mortality, and 5·13 and 4·35 for the composite welfare index.

22 One possible salvation for the convergence theory still remains in the argument that a relationship between welfare and economic development in the population of high-income countries would not be expected. Thus, it could be argued that, since convergence has by and large already taken place, the most salient characteristic of the variance in welfare among the advanced democratic states is that it is extremely small. Any remaining variance is likely to be due to idiosyncratic features rather than levels of economic development. Since convergence theorists have never argued that societies are becoming identical, this is a perfectly plausible and consistent position. This argument hinges on the claim that the variance in welfare among the advanced democratic states is very small. This, however, is not the case. The coefficients of variation of educational expenditure, infant mortality, and transfer payments are respectively 0·21, 0·29 and 0·31. These coefficients are unequivocally not small. (Put another rather less precise way, variations from 4·1 to 7·8 per cent in educational expenditure, and from 9·1 to 22·6 per cent in transfer payments (as a percentage of GDP) and from 9·6 to 22·6 per cent in infant mortality can hardly be construed as extremely small.) Thus, even this alternative formulation of the convergence theory proves to be invalid.

23 Indeed, using Wilensky's data in the twenty-two advanced countries he identifies, we find an insignificant and negative correlation of –0·16 between economic development and welfare. In other words, Wilensky's own 1966 data show that economic development is wholly irrelevant as an explanation of welfare spending in the advanced nations.

24 As an operational definition Christian Democratic parties are counted as parties of the Right where they do not have a secular rival polling at least 10 per cent of the vote (Germany, Italy and Switzerland), and as parties of the Centre where they have such a rival (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands). The size of the vote for the Right is the percentage of total votes received by the major party of the Right averaged over all elections between 1958 and 1972 (see Table 1, p. 158 for the scores). The data are taken from Mackie, Thomas T. and Rose, Richard, The International Almanac of Electoral History (London: Macmillan, 1974).Google Scholar

25 Castles, Francis, The Social Democratic Image of Society (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1978).Google Scholar

26 Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).Google Scholar

27 This group consists of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

28 Our earlier regression gave an R2 value of 0·56. This indicates that party ideology is an important estimator of welfare provision. However, it is not a perfect predictor as 44 per cent of the variance in welfare levels remains to be explained. Unexplained variance is measured by deviations from the estimated regression line. These deviations are known as residuals. If we can explain why some countries have higher scores than we would predict from our regression analysis (and conversely why others have lower scores), we are in effect explaining residual deviation and thereby reducing unexplained variance.

29 The fourth country with a positive residual score is the Netherlands. Since it does have a fragmented labour movement, it clearly does not comply with our argument that social democratic dominance augments welfare provision. This is not, however, inconsistent with our argument as we are searching for sufficient rather than necessary conditions. Furthermore, we should note that it is the only one of the eight cases which is misclassified according to this argument. We shall offer an explanation of the deviancy of the Netherlands later in the paper.

30 It may be objected that to use social democratic strength as well as strength of the Right is illegal as the one is the obverse of the other. This objection would be valid were it not for the presence of centre parties.

31 This discussion can be found at greater length in Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society.

32 On this latter point, see the fascinating study by Hibbs, Douglas, ‘On the Political Economy of Long-Run Trends in Strike Activity’, British Journal of Political Science, viii (1978), 153–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hibbs shows that (a) strike activity in advanced countries ‘has decreased to truly negligible levels only in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden’, and (b) a correlation of –0·96 between the increase in the average percentage of democratic socialist cabinet posts held and the increase in the post-war strike volume (man-days lost per 1,000 employees).

33 There remains the problem of the particularly high level of welfare in the Netherlands despite the absence of Social Democratic dominance. The easy way out is to attribute current high levels of welfare spending to North Sea gas revenues. There is no question that the Netherlands did move up the welfare league table during the 1960s and 1970s (see Kaim-Caudle, Peter R., Comparative Social Policy and Social Security (London: Martin Robertson, 1973)).Google Scholar However, this argument is hardly sufficient, since Dutch governments in the period clearly had the option to devote gas revenues to other purposes. We suggest a more adequate explanation (which is actually parallel to the Scandinavian case of Social Democratic dominance) can be derived from the work of Lijphart. The high level of religious fragmentation in the Netherlands, more pronounced than in the other Benelux countries, has resulted in what Lijphart terms the agreement-to-disagree rule: ‘On issues considered vital by any bloc, no decision can be made without either their concurrence or at least substantial concessions to them. The veto power is not absolute. No single group can block action completely, but its wishes will be considered seriously and accommodated as much as possible by the others. In short, the rule is majoritarianism tempered by the spirit of concurrent majority’ (Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)).Google Scholar Such a rule might serve as a functional alternative to the guarantee of working-class interests provided by the Social Democratic dominance. The Netherlands is the only country in Europe in which the religious parties have received a more substantial percentage of the working-class vote than opposing socialist parties. The continuous period in office of the religious parties has meant that to some extent working-class interests have retained a constant voice in government.

34 We do not deny that the occasional study has pointed to the role of political factors in policy determination. We do maintain, however, that these occasional references do not represent the conventional wisdom. For a general discussion of the underestimation of the salience of politics, see Paige, G. D., ‘The Rediscovery of Politics’, in Lewis, Paul G. et al. , eds., The Practice of Comparative Politics (London: Longman, 1978), pp. 361–71.Google Scholar