Transformations of the Welfare State: Small States, Big Lessons
Herbert Obinger, Peter Starke, Julia Moser, Claudia Bogedan, Edith Gindulis, and Stephan Leibfried
Abstract
This book gives a twist to the longstanding debate on the impact of economic globalization on the welfare state. It focuses 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 integrates the literature on the political economy of small states with more recent research on the im ... More
This book gives a twist to the longstanding debate on the impact of economic globalization on the welfare state. It focuses 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 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. It systematically tests these scenarios against the experience of four countries: Austria, Denmark, New Zealand, and Switzerland. The comparative analysis of reform trajectories since the 1970s in four key policy areas — pensions, labour market policy, health care, and family policy — provides substantial evidence of a new convergence in welfare state patterns. 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 study is that the transformation does not match the doomsday scenario predicted by neo-classical economists in the 1990s.
Keywords:
economic globalization,
welfare state,
OECD countries,
world economy,
small states,
social policy,
pensions,
labour market policy,
health care,
family policy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199296323 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296323.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Herbert Obinger, author
Professor of Comparative Public and Social Policy, University of Bremen
Author Webpage
Peter Starke, author
Research Fellow, University of Bremen
Julia Moser, author
Project Manager "Human Resources Development", Rationalisierungs- und Innovationszentrum der Deutschen Wirtschaft e.V., RKW Kompetenzzentrum, Eschborn, Germany.
Claudia Bogedan, author
Head of Department for Labour Market Policy, University of Bremen
Edith Gindulis, author
Research Fellow, University of Bremen
Stephan Leibfried, author
Professor of Public and Social Policy, University of Bremen
Author Webpage
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