‘Marx’ or the Market? Intra-party Power and Social Democratic Welfare State Retrenchment

Differences in the intra-party balance of power explain variation in social democratic responses to the economic crisis of the late 1970s. This article evidences this claim by analysing the case of welfare state retrenchment by social democratic parties. Welfare state retrenchment is electorally risky for social democrats and often contrary to their principles. Therefore cases of welfare state retrenchment by social democrats provide an excellent case study of the difficult trade-offs parties have to make between office, policy and vote pay-offs. The article claims that leadership-dominated parties advance office-seeking strategies and are therefore responsive to economic conditions and public opinion. Conversely, activist-dominated parties advance policy-seeking strategies and therefore support traditional social democratic policy platforms or seek more radical solutions. By comparing seven social democratic parties (Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK) between 1980 and 2005, this article explains variation in when social democrats introduced welfare state retrenchment.     

Sozialpolitik im Finanzföderalismus – Hartz IV als Antwort auf die Krise der Kommunalfinanzen

In the literature on welfare state reforms, continental welfare states like Germany have been considered to be resistant to reform. However, recently scholars started to argue that new reform coalitions and policy learning have led to a major restructuring of the German welfare state. In this article we introduce a third argument into the debate and claim that the recent reforms can only be understood by taking into account the specific structure of welfare state financing in Germany. Focusing on the reform of unemployment benefits we show that the crisis of the widespread cost-shifting practice between the federal budget, the social insurance and local authority budgets contributed to fiscal problems which could ultimately only be resolved by engaging in a fundamental restructuring of the financing architecture of welfare provisions for the long-term unemployed.     

Racial Composition, White Racial Attitudes, and Black Representation: Testing the Racial Threat Hypothesis in the United States Senate

We make the case for why the racial threat hypothesis should characterize the relationship between states?? racial composition, whites?? racial attitudes, and black representation in the United States Senate. Consistent with this claim, we find that senators from states with larger percentages of African-Americans among the electorate and more racially conservative preferences among whites provide worse representation of black interests in the Senate than their counterparts. We also apply theories of congressional cross-pressures in considering how senator partisanship and region moderate the effect of white racial attitudes on black representation. Finally, consistent with the racial threat hypothesis, we show that the negative effect of white racial attitudes on the quality of black representation is stronger when state unemployment rates are higher.     

West European welfare states: The old politics of retrenchment

Analysing endeavours to restructure welfare provision, Paul Pierson proposes that the 'politics of retrenchment' is very different from the politics of welfare expansion. In particular, the difficulties of welfare retrenchment are not to be explained by existing theories of welfare expansion; and the 'old' politics of welfare expansion has little to offer in explaining the 'new' politics of welfare retrenchment. This article questions these claims. First, contemporary societal developments are considered in the light of three major theories advanced to explain the emergence of welfare states in Western Europe: the logic–of–industrialism, the crisis of capitalism, and nation–building. Secondly, focusing on trade unions, mainstream left parties, and traditions of governance, the current status of the political forces regarded as vital in building welfare states is assessed. The conclusion drawn is that the resilience of the welfare state in Western Europe lies less in the 'new' politics of 'policy lock in' and 'client interest groups' than in the persistence of the 'old' forces that led to the founding and expansion of welfare states.     

West European welfare states: The old politics of retrenchment

Abstract Analysing endeavours to restructure welfare provision, Paul Pierson proposes that the 'politics of retrenchment' is very different from the politics of welfare expansion. In particular, the difficulties of welfare retrenchment are not to be explained by existing theories of welfare expansion; and the 'old' politics of welfare expansion has little to offer in explaining the 'new' politics of welfare retrenchment. This article questions these claims. First, contemporary societal developments are considered in the light of three major theories advanced to explain the emergence of welfare states in Western Europe: the logic–of–industrialism, the crisis of capitalism, and nation–building. Secondly, focusing on trade unions, mainstream left parties, and traditions of governance, the current status of the political forces regarded as vital in building welfare states is assessed. The conclusion drawn is that the resilience of the welfare state in Western Europe lies less in the 'new' politics of 'policy lock in' and 'client interest groups' than in the persistence of the 'old' forces that led to the founding and expansion of welfare states.     

The puzzle of Dutch welfare state retrenchment

In the literature on welfare state retrenchment and in the general emphasis on the resilience of welfare states, the Dutch case appears puzzling by virtue of the fact that significant retrenchments have actually taken place in the Netherlands. It appears even more puzzling considering that the arguments in this literature as to the difficulties in welfare state retrenchments apply very well to this case, whereas the arguments as to why after all welfare state retrenchments are possible do not apply particularly well. This article argues that the explanation for the Dutch puzzle should be found in Dutch politics. Due to the power of the CDA as a pivotal centre party, the PvdA was at an early stage forced to accept welfare state retrenchment. A party consensus thus emerged allowing Dutch governments to define the issue of welfare state retrenchment as a matter of economic necessity.     

Retrenchment of Social Policy by Other Means: A Comparison of Agricultural and Housing Policy in Turkey

Abstract

In many low- and middle-income countries, conventional welfare state institutions provide social protection only for the formally employed. In contrast, the rural and urban poor are often protected by “social policy by other means”. Based on a comparative analysis of two major unconventional welfare programs in Turkey, agricultural state support and access to squatter housing, this article explains retrenchment of social policy by other means. Agricultural retrenchment was the result of coercive policy transfer from international organizations in a post-crisis context, while the retrenchment of squatter housing was driven by domestic political entrepreneurs responding to decreases in the availability of urban land and the number of informal squatters. In both cases, retrenchment became politically sustainable due to functional replacement with more conventional welfare programs. This analysis challenges the narrow focus of mainstream welfare state research, provides an explanation of retrenchment of social policy by other means, and enhances our understanding of Turkey’s uneven welfare state development.     

Who Cuts Back and When? The Politics of Delays in Social Expenditure Cutbacks, 1980–2005

This article investigates the politics of delays in social spending cutbacks in OECD democracies. In the context of fiscal austerity, policymakers are assumed to have a strong incentive to manipulate the timing of cutbacks strategically. Applying event history analysis to small and large cutbacks in 21 mature welfare states, the authors test whether partisanship, electioneering and institutional constraints contribute to explain the timing of cutbacks. Macro-economic determinants such as worker productivity, economic growth and unemployment are found to be more important than these political variables. However, left-wing governments and welfare states with more institutional rigidity or a greater degree of contribution financing do tend to delay welfare cutbacks, while cabinets that have recently changed their party composition implement cutbacks earlier.     

Framing Deservingness to Win Support for Welfare State Retrenchment

Recent studies of welfare state retrenchment have argued that policy makers can win public support for welfare state reform by framing the issue in terms of deservingness of welfare recipients. However, this literature has not tested the argument at the individual level. Using a Scandinavian context, this experimental study investigates how alternative framing of a welfare state retrenchment proposal affects citizens' perception of welfare recipients' deservingness, policy support and whether perceptions of deservingness mediate policy opinion. A news story was manipulated to present welfare recipients as either deserving or undeserving of welfare benefits. This issue framing affected citizens' perception of deservingness as well as support for retrenchment policy. Opinion change was partly explained by differences in perceptions of deservingness. These results provide strong support for the effectiveness of the deservingness frame.     

The politics of fiscal policy during economic downturns, 1981–2010

This article investigates fiscal policy responses to the Great Recession in historical perspective. It explores general trends in the frequency, size and composition of fiscal stimulus as well as the impact of government partisanship on fiscal policy outputs during the four international recessions of 1980–1981, 1990–1991, 2001–2002 and 2008–2009. Encompassing 17–23 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the analysis calls into question the idea of a general retreat from fiscal policy activism since the early 1980s. The propensity of governments to respond to economic downturns by engaging in fiscal stimulus has increased over time and no secular trend in the size of stimulus measures is observed. At the same time, OECD governments have relied more on tax cuts to stimulate demand in the two recessions of the 2000s than they did in the early 1980s or early 1990s. Regarding government partisanship, no significant direct partisan effects on either the size or the composition of fiscal stimulus is found for any of the four recession episodes. However, the size of the welfare state conditioned the impact of government partisanship in the two recessions of the 2000s, with left‐leaning governments distinctly more prone to engaging in discretionary fiscal stimulus and/or spending increases in large welfare states, but not in small welfare states.     

‘New politics’ in German labour market policy? The implications of the recent Hartz reforms for the German welfare state

The twin predicaments of German labour market performance and welfare state performance triggered an ongoing debate on reforming the German model. Recently, this debate has yielded an outcome in the form of the so-called Hartz laws, a bundle of labour market policies aimed at the reduction of unemployment and the decrease of non-wage labour costs. The Hartz reforms have played a prominent role in the public discussion, but are they really a watershed as both optimists and pessimists claim? In this article we investigate in what sense the Hartz reforms mark a substantive political change and how they are related to similar processes in other countries. To characterise the policy output we discuss three views of policy reform: reform as a process of policy-learning, reform as a process of competitive realignment and reform as a process of reinforcing path dependence. We show which of the three paradigms accounts for which part of the political result. We find evidence for both policy diffusion and retrenchment, but it is too early to speak of a change of regime. Rather, both the changes thus far and the blocked proposals follow a traditional German logic of strong institutional resistance.     

Choosing the path of austerity: how parties and policy coalitions influence welfare state retrenchment in periods of fiscal consolidation

What are the conditions under which some austerity programmes rely on substantial cuts to social spending? More specifically, do the partisan complexion and the type of government condition the extent to which austerity policies imply welfare state retrenchment? This article demonstrates that large budget consolidations tend to be associated with welfare state retrenchment. The findings support a partisan and a politico-institutionalist argument: (i) in periods of fiscal consolidation, welfare state retrenchment tends to be more pronounced under left-wing governments; (ii) since welfare state retrenchment is electorally and politically risky, it also tends to be more pronounced when pursued by a broad pro-reform coalition government. Therefore, the article shows that during budget consolidations implemented by left-wing broad coalition governments, welfare state retrenchment is greatest. Using long-run multipliers from autoregressive distributed lag models on 17 OECD countries during the 1982–2009 period, substantial support is found for these expectations.     

The Politics of Occupational Pension Reform in Britain and the Netherlands: The Power of Market Discipline in Liberal and Corporatist Regimes

The politics of occupational pension reform has attracted less attention than state pension retrenchment. Yet, in countries with large occupational welfare sectors changes in company provision can be equally important for welfare system generosity. This paper compares recent occupational pension developments in the Netherlands and Britain, exemplars of coordinated and liberal capitalism. The paper argues that despite regime-typical differences in the nature and process of change, recent developments have also been remarkably similar. In both countries retrenchment and individualisation has left most citizens at risk of being less well off in retirement. Corporatist governance in the Netherlands has not challenged the overall orientation of this process, but has merely distributed the costs of retrenchment more fairly than liberal Britain. Instead, the constraints of the globalised financial market directed change: exposure to market discipline, reinforced by national policy actors and international market regulators, made occupational provision vulnerable to retrenchment regardless of regime type. Thus, the significance for levels of social protection of differences between liberal and corporatist governance models of occupational pensions may have been overrated.     

Devine intervention? Lessons in systemic retrenchment from Canada’s most generous welfare state

This article tackles the importance of systemic retrenchment in welfare state research by focusing on two core elements neglected in the literature: the civil service and governmental revenues. Saskatchewan has possessed key ingredients associated with generous welfare states: a dominant left-wing party, a supportive bureaucracy and important non-visible fiscal revenues. According to the comparative welfare state literature, this is also an excellent recipe for maintaining a generous welfare state amid attempts, primarily by right-wing governments, to scale it back. Yet, most social indicators in the post-Devine years demonstrate that Saskatchewan can no longer be considered a leading welfare state in Canada. Reforms to the bureaucracy and a host of financial measures resulting in a near default explain why the Devine government was successful in its efforts to disrupt the CCF/NDP social legacy despite the fact that the NDP regained power for 16 years afterwards.     

Social Rights,Civil Rights,and Health Reform in Canada

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that health programs have been largely insulated from welfare state retrenchment. Health care entitlements have in fact been transformed and diminished, albeit in more subtle ways. Employing rhetorical discursive constructions about the nature of social rights, and capitalizing on passive policy drift, reformists have succeeded in altering the right to health care away from a set of collective obligations and toward the competing claims of individuals. As a result, public health insurance programs are abandoning universalistic principles in favor of a narrower conception of rights that is consistent with and supportive of increased privatization of health care financing. Discursive constructions aimed at persuading target audiences to change their ideas aid and abet systemic and institutional factors, making policy changes seem both necessary and inevitable. Using the case of Canada, I contend that such changes are a form of retrenchment.     

Umbau des Sozialstaates? Österreich und Deutschland im Vergleich

In comparative analysis of welfare states, there is a consensus that mature welfare state systems have been confronted, for some considerable time, with substantial pressure towards re-structuring and that, as a result, they actually have undertaken several and varied modifications. This articles aims at exploring and analysing these developments in Austria and Germany from a comparative point of view. The analysis concentrates on two vital fields of social policy: old-age insurance and unemployment insurance. Especially in respect of the development of social policy and regarding important characteristics of the two welfare state systems, both countries traditionally show a large degree of resemblance to each other. Many similarities remained to exist during the phase of growing pressures on the welfare state, whereas at the same time it is evident that differences between the two countries increased. The respective actual developments will be interpreted in the light of corresponding theories of comparative welfare state research and classified as gradual and structural changes.     

Party composition in the American states: Clarifying concepts and explaining changes in partisanship since the 1950s

Students of state politics have long been interested in the partisanship and the degree of interparty competition in the American states. This has led to numerous attempts to quantify state-level partisanship and competition, the most significant by Ranney (1965). Interestingly, however, scholars have never specified clearly the relationship between these two concepts as measured by the Ranney index. This research attempts to do just that and reveals that the two are different measures which are related systematically. More important, understanding changes in a state's partisanship is determined to be crucial to understanding changes in its level of two-party competition. As such, in order to explain changes in partisanship and competition across the American states from the 1950s to the 1970s, we focus on accounting for changes in partisanship. To this end, changes in aggregate demographic variables account very well for states' movement along the Ranney index over the last 3 decades.The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order and imply that this paper is in every way a collaborative enterprise.     

The Puzzling Lack of a Social Dilemma

Among theories dealing with welfare state policy development, theories of social dilemmas and of key actor-group influence over government policy formation are increasingly holding sway. These theories emphasise that few would risk being unilateral contributors to the systems without any compensating elements. Thus, selective, means-testing systems or stingy universal systems in which some citizens 'contribute' while others 'receive' may risk being regarded as unfair in the eyes of the contributors in spite of the redistributive intentions. The degree of welfare state programme 'fairness' and reciprocity would, then, explain the degree of support for the welfare state. However, by using data from the United Kingdom and Sweden, this article will, first, claim that the social dilemma research turns a blind eye to the fact that public opinion in general as well as key groups appears to be able to yield its support even when welfare states contain distinctly selective elements and low-compensation universal programmes. Second, the article will elaborate on the confusion surrounding welfare state taxonomies as one plausible reason for why social dilemma theories may risk missing the target. Finally, the article will elaborate on the future of the welfare state as we know it. The main points are that given the fact that the welfare states in the two countries really already are conglomerates of different types of welfare programmes and, given a weak relationship between key groups and policy formation, the most likely future for the welfare state is that policies will continue to follow mixed paths.     

The Scandinavian Welfare Model in Crisis? Achievements and Problems of the Danish Welfare State in an Age of Unemployment and Low Growth

The "Scadinavian welfare model" is often considered vulnerable to mass unemployment. The Danish welfare state provides and opportunity to examine the capacities of the "Scandinavian model" to adapt to this situation. This article explores a number of alleged crisis problems of th welfare state, ground into budgetary pressures, incentive problems and legitimacy problems. It is conclude that most of these problems have been exasggerated and that the rrreal threats to the economic foundations of the welfare state should be found in political steering and incentive problems rather thant in the exogenous pressures from the social and economic system, or in pressure from th unintended side effects of welfare arrangement. It is furthermore argued that one of the main achievements of the Danish welfare state has been so prevent unemployment and labor market marginalization from developing into a broad-ranged social marginalizaton and a political po-larization which could undermine citizenship and solidarity in society.     

Political Partisanship and Welfare Service Privatization: Ideological Attitudes among Local Politicians in Sweden

This article ties in with a growing international literature examining the link between party politics and welfare service privatization in modern welfare states. In recent decades, a central aspect of policy change in Sweden is that private actors have come to produce publicly financed welfare services on a more regular basis. This overall privatization trend is furthermore characterized by substantial geographical variation across Sweden's 290 municipalities. The ideological attitudes of local politicians have been recognized as particularly important for understanding this development. This article examines the extent to which local politicians’ ideological attitudes regarding welfare service privatization are best explained with a partisan approach emphasizing between‐party polarization as opposed to a critical perspective that points to the proclaimed significance of ideological consensus between left and right parties in certain municipal contexts. Using multilevel modelling and survey data collected from elected politicians in municipal governments, the empirical findings show substantial differences in attitudes between Conservatives and Social Democrats, irrespective of municipal characteristics – most notably the degree of welfare service privatization. Hence, the results strongly indicate that the partisan approach is much more fruitful compared to the consensus approach as a general explanation for local politicians’ attitudes towards welfare service privatization in Sweden. Accordingly, a conclusion is that comparisons at the subnational level within countries are important as a complement to country‐comparative studies when attempting to understand the link between political partisanship and welfare service privatization in modern welfare states.