Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T19:03:02.160Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How do welfare states change? Institutions and their impact on the politics of welfare state reform in Western Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

Type
Focus: The future of the Welfare State
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkinson, T. (1991) The Development of State Pensions in the United Kingdom, London: London School of Economics (Welfare State Programme Discussion Paper No. 58).Google Scholar
Atkinson, T. and Micklewright, J. (1989) Turning the screw: benefits for the unemployed 1979–1988. In: Dilnot, A. and Walker, I. (eds), The Economics of Social Security, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1751.Google Scholar
Barr, N. and Coulter, F. (1990) Social security: solution or problem? In: Hills, J. (ed), The State of Welfare. The Welfare State in Britain since 1974, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 274337.Google Scholar
Benner, M. and Vad, T. (2000) Sweden and Denmark: hanging places in defence of welfare. In: Scharpf, F. and Schmidt, V. (eds), From Vulnerability to Competitiveness: Welfare and Work in the Global Economy, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bichot, J. (1997) Les politiques sociales en France au 20ème siècle, Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Bonoli, G. (1997) Pension politics in France: patterns of co-operation and conflict in two recent reforms, West European Politics, 20(4), 160181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonoli, G. (2000) The Politics of Pensions Reform. Institutions and Policy Change in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bonoli, G. and Palier, B. (1997) Reclaiming welfare. The politics of social protection reform in France. In: Rhodes, M. (ed), Southern European Welfare States. Between Crisis and Reform, London: Francis Cass, pp. 240259.Google Scholar
Bonoli, G. and Palier, B. (1998) Changing the politics of social programmes: innovative change in British and French welfare reforms, Journal of European Social Policy, 8(4), 317330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castles, F. and Pierson, C.(1996) A new convergence? Recent policy developments in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, Policy and Politics, 4, 233245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CNAF (1999) Revenu Minimum d'Insertion au 31 décembre 1998, Recherche, prévisions et statistiques, May.Google Scholar
DHSS (1985) Reform of Social Security, Green Paper (3 vol.), London: HMSO (Cmnd. 9517–9).Google Scholar
DSS (1997) Social Security Statistics, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
DSS (1998) A New Contract for Welfare. Green Paper, London: HMSO (Cmnd. 3805).Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, B. (1999) Does a European social model exist? Can it survive? In: Huemer, G., Mesch, M. and Traxler, F. (eds), The Role of Employer Associations and Labour Unions in the EMU. Institutional Requirements for European Economic Policies, Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Erskine, A. (1997) The withering of social insurance in Britain. In: Clasen, J. (ed), Social Insurance in Europe, Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 130150.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
European Commission (1995) Social Protection in Europe, Brussels: European Commission, DGV.Google Scholar
Evans, M. (1996) Means-testing the Unemployed in Britain, France and Germany, London: London School of Economics (Welfare State Paper No. 117).Google Scholar
Ferrera, M. (1993) Modelli di solidarietà, Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Ferrera, M. (1996a) Modèles de solidarité, divergences, convergences: perspectives pour l'Europe, Swiss Political Science Review, 2(1), 5572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrera, M. (1996b) The southern model of welfare in social Europe, Journal of European Social Policy, 6(1), 1737.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glennerster, H. (1995) British Social Policy since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hall, P. A. (1986) Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, P. A. and Taylor, R.C.R. (1996) Political science and the three new institutionalisms, Political Studies, XLIV, 936957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassenteufel, P. (1997) Le ‘plan Juppé’: fin ou renouveau d'une régulation paritaire de l'assurance maladie?, Revue de l'IRES, spring-summer (special issue on ‘Le paritarisme, institutions et acteurs’), 175189.Google Scholar
Holliday, I. (1992) The NHS Transformed, Manchester: Baseline Books.Google Scholar
Immergut, E. (1992) Health Politics. Interests and Institutions in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Join-Lambert, M.-T. (1997) Politiques Sociales, Paris: Dalloz.Google Scholar
Kato, J. (1996) Review article: institutions and rationality in politics — three varieties of neo-institutionalism, British Journal of Political Science, 26(4), 553582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, R. (1995) The Politics of the NHS, 3rd edn, London: Longman.Google Scholar
March, J. and Olsen, J. (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organisational Basis of Politics, New York/London: Free Press/Collier Macmillan.Google Scholar
MIRE (1999) Comparing Social Welfare Systems in France and Northern Europe, Paris: Rencontres et Recherches de la MIRE (vol. IV, Copenhagen Conference).Google Scholar
Nesbitt, S. (1995) British Pension Policy Making in the 1980s. The Rise and Fall of A Policy Community, Aldershot: Avebury.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD (1995) Effect of ageing populations on government budgets, Economic Outlook, 57, 3342.Google Scholar
Outin, J. L. (1997) Les politiques d'insertion. In: Vernières, M. (ed), L'insertion professionnelle, analyses et débats, Paris: Economica.Google Scholar
Palier, B. (2000) Defrosting the French welfare state, West European Politics (special issue, Ferrera, M. and Rhodes, M., eds) 23(2), 114137.Google Scholar
Pierson, P. (1993) When effects become cause. Policy feedback and political change, World Politics, 45(4), 595628.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, P. (1994) Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and The Politics of Retrenchment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, P. (1996) The new politics of the welfare state, World Politics, 48(1), 143179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruellan, R. (1993) Retraites: l'impossible réforme est-elle achevée?, Droit social, 12, 911929.Google Scholar
Steinmo, S., Thelen, K. and Longstreth, F. (eds) (1992) Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephens, J. (1996) The Scandinavian welfare states achievements, Crisi, and prospects. In: Esping-Andersen, G (ed) Welfare States in Transition, London, Sage, pp. 3265.Google Scholar
Waine, B. (1995) A disaster foretold? The case of personal pension, Social Policy & Administration 29(4), 317334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, K.R. and Rockman, B.A. (eds) (1993) Do Institutions Matter? Government Capabilities in the United States and Abroad, Washington DC: The Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar