Transformations of the Welfare State

Transformations of the Welfare State gives a new twist to the longstanding debate on the impact of economic globalization on the welfare state. The authors focus on several small, advanced OECD economies in order to assess whether (and how) the welfare state will be able to compete under conditions of an increasingly integrated world economy.

Small states can be seen as an 'early warning system' for general trends, because of their dependence on world markets and vulnerability to competitive pressures. The book's theoretical part innovatively integrates the literature on the political economy of small states with more recent research on the impact of globalization on social policy to generate a set of ideal-typical policy scenarios. In the main body of the book, the authors systematically test these scenarios against the experience of four countries: Austria, Denmark, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

The comparative, in-depth analysis of reform trajectories since the 1970s in four key policy areas -- pensions, labour market policy, health care, and family policy -- provides, according to the authors, substantial evidence of a new convergence in welfare state patterns. They go on to argue that this amounts to a fundamental transformation of the welfare state from the old Keynesian welfare state positioned 'against the market' to a new set of supply-side policies 'with' and 'for' the market. Yet one of the big lessons to be learned from this timely study is that the transformation does not match the doomsday scenario predicted by neo-classical economists in the 1990s. There is no evidence of a 'race to the bottom' of social expenditure and standards of social protection, nor of a convergence towards a 'liberal' social policy model. Looking to the possible future of the welfare state in an era newly marked by profound uncertainty, the authors sound an optimistic note for states of any size.

Herbert Obinger is Professor of Comparative Public and Social Policy at the University of Bremen, directs the Unit on History and Institutions of the Centre for Social Policy Research (CeS) and directs two projects in the Collaborative Research Centre Transformations of the State (TranState). Some publications: with F.G. Castles, J. Lewis, S. Leibfried, and C. Pierson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press 2010); with S. Leibfried and F.G. Castles, ed., Federalism and the Welfare State. New World and European Experiences (Cambridge University Press 2005).

Peter Starke is Research Fellow in Political Science at the Collaborative Research Center Transformations of the State (TranState) and at the Centre for Social Policy Research (CeS). At TranState he works on a comparative project on social policy in small open economies. He is the author of Radical Welfare State Retrenchment: A Comparative Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), a qualitative comparison of the politics of benefit cutbacks in Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. He also published several quantitative articles on welfare state convergence.

Julia Moser is Project Manager of Human Resources Development at the Rationalisierungs- und Innovationszentrum der Deutschen Wirtschaft e.V., RKW Kompetenzzentrum, Eschborn, Germany. She was a Research Fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre Transformations of the State (TranState) and is author of Der schweizerische Wohlfahrtsstaat: Zum Ausbau des sozialen Sicherungssystems 1975-2005 (Campus 2008), an in-depth qualitative analysis of welfare state transformation in Switzerland.

Claudia Bogedan is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (WSI) of the Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf (Germany) and a former research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre Transformations of the State (TranState), where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on Danish welfare state reforms. Her research focuses on welfare state reforms in Bismarckian welfare states, labour market policies in Germany and the "Nordic Model ". She recently published an edited book with S. Bothfeld and W. Sesselmeier on the changes in German labour market policies since the 1970s (Arbeitsmarktpolitik in der sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Vom Arbeitsförderungsgesetz zum Sozialgesetzbuch II und III, VS Verlag 2009).

Edith Gindulis is a Research Fellow in Political Science at the Collaborative Research Centre Transformations of the State (TranState). Her areas of expertise include abortion politics in OECD-countries and social policy in the German Democratic Republic. She is the author of a book on the politics of abortion rights, Der Kampf um die Abtreibung. Die Abtreibungsregime der OECD-Länder und ihre Bestimmungsfaktoren im Vergleich (Westdeutscher Verlag 2003).

Stephan Leibfried is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bremen, Director of the Collaborative Research Centre Transformations of the State and member of the Unit on History and Institutions of the Centre for Social Policy Research there. Some publications: with H. Obinger, F.G. Castles, J. Lewis, and C. Pierson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press 2010), with S. Mau, eds., Welfare States: Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction, 3 vols. (Edward Elgar 2008); with Achim Hurrelmann et al., eds., Transforming the Golden-Age Nation State (Palgrave Macmillan 2007); with Michael Zürn, eds., Transformations of the State? (Cambridge University Press 2005); with E Rieger, Limits to Globalization. Welfare States and the World Economy (Polity 2003); with L. Leisering, Time and Poverty in Western Welfare States (Cambridge University Press 1999).