Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: What Does it Mean to Break with Bismarck?
- 1 Ordering change: Understanding the ‘Bismarckian’ Welfare Reform Trajectory
- 2 A Social Insurance State Withers Away. Welfare State Reforms in Germany – Or: Attempts to Turn Around in a Cul-de-Sac
- 3 The Dualizations of the French Welfare System
- 4 Janus-Faced Developments in a Prototypical Bismarckian Welfare State: Welfare Reforms in Austria since the 1970s
- 5 Continental Welfare at a Crossroads: The Choice between Activation and Minimum Income Protection in Belgium and the Netherlands
- 6 Italy: An Uncompleted Departure from Bismarck
- 7 Defrosting the Spanish Welfare State: The Weight of Conservative Components
- 8 Reform Opportunities in a Bismarckian Latecomer: Restructuring the Swiss Welfare State
- 9 The Politics of Social Security Reforms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia
- 10 Reforming Bismarckian Corporatism: The Changing Role of Social Partnership in Continental Europe
- 11 Trajectories of Fiscal Adjustment in Bismarckian Welfare Systems
- 12 Whatever Happened to the Bismarckian Welfare State? From Labor Shedding to Employment-Friendly Reforms
- 13 The Long Conservative Corporatist Road to Welfare Reforms
- Note
- Bibliography
- About the Contributors
- Index
- Changing Welfare States
12 - Whatever Happened to the Bismarckian Welfare State? From Labor Shedding to Employment-Friendly Reforms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: What Does it Mean to Break with Bismarck?
- 1 Ordering change: Understanding the ‘Bismarckian’ Welfare Reform Trajectory
- 2 A Social Insurance State Withers Away. Welfare State Reforms in Germany – Or: Attempts to Turn Around in a Cul-de-Sac
- 3 The Dualizations of the French Welfare System
- 4 Janus-Faced Developments in a Prototypical Bismarckian Welfare State: Welfare Reforms in Austria since the 1970s
- 5 Continental Welfare at a Crossroads: The Choice between Activation and Minimum Income Protection in Belgium and the Netherlands
- 6 Italy: An Uncompleted Departure from Bismarck
- 7 Defrosting the Spanish Welfare State: The Weight of Conservative Components
- 8 Reform Opportunities in a Bismarckian Latecomer: Restructuring the Swiss Welfare State
- 9 The Politics of Social Security Reforms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia
- 10 Reforming Bismarckian Corporatism: The Changing Role of Social Partnership in Continental Europe
- 11 Trajectories of Fiscal Adjustment in Bismarckian Welfare Systems
- 12 Whatever Happened to the Bismarckian Welfare State? From Labor Shedding to Employment-Friendly Reforms
- 13 The Long Conservative Corporatist Road to Welfare Reforms
- Note
- Bibliography
- About the Contributors
- Index
- Changing Welfare States
Summary
The Adaptive Capacity of the Continental Welfare State
Is the welfare state fit for the 21st century? This question has haunted European policy-makers and researchers for over a decade. Sluggish growth and weak job creation around the turn of the new millennium has not only given way to a fierce ideological battle between different socio-economic ‘models’, triggering political strife and separating antagonistic advocacy coalitions – but also contributed to a strand of analytical literature pointing out the structural impediments to ‘modernize ‘ Continental European and Mediterranean welfare states and make them both more employment friendly and sustainable (see e.g. Scharpf and Schmidt 2000). The Bismarckian version of the European social model was pitted against a false stereotype of the ‘Anglo-Saxon ‘ model of capitalism , allegedly a ‘free market without a safety net’, producing high levels of poverty and inequality, but also against Scandinavian welfare states with universal benefits and strong public services in education, childcare and active labor market policies .
Rather than extrapolating policy recipes from recent economic performance, urging European OECD members to recast their social market economies along the lines of American capitalism , a more illuminating way to understand recent reform dynamics is to contextualize existing social policy repertoires and reform dynamics in the face of the changing economic and technological challenges and evolving social and demographic structures. As shown in the various chapters of this book, the striking intensity and the comprehensive character of social and economic policy reform across the majority of the so-called Bismarckian welfare regimes , including the six founding EU member states of Germany , France , Italy and the Benelux countries, together with the later entrants Spain and Austria as well as the Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic , Slova kia , Hungary and Poland ) and Switzerland , since the mid-1990s, is very much at odds with a prevalent image of a ‘frozen welfare landscape’ in the academic literature. Most important, the substantive extent of welfare redirection across a large number of member states of the European Union (EU ) adds up to the momentum of substantive policy change and goes far beyond the popular concepts of ‘retrenchment ‘ and ‘roll-back’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Long Goodbye to Bismarck?The Politics of Welfare Reform in Continental Europe, pp. 301 - 332Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2010
- 22
- Cited by