This book is about the perception and management of social risks in a corporatist welfare state. Using the Netherlands as its backdrop, it provides a primarily qualitative, in-depth case study of the perception and management of different social risk forms: disability, childcare and insufficient employability. More specifically, this book deals with the perceptions of these risks by political, social and economic actors in welfare provision: political parties, state policy makers, trade unionists and employers, the consequential management of these risks within the corporatist context and what this says about the collective nature of social risks in the Dutch welfare state. The book demonstrates that the Dutch corporatist welfare state has the capacity to respond to changing and emerging social risks using existing institutional structures, resulting in new forms of welfare and a transformation of the welfare state.

Changing social risks

The concept of risk is not limited to sociological or social policy studies, but is used across different policy areas. Within sociology, the origin of the word riskis often traced to the German scholars Beck (1992) and Luhmann (1993). Luhmann defined risk by contrasting it with the term danger; danger being attributable to nature and risk being attributable to social action (Blom and Nijhuis, 1996). While this distinction is necessarily a simplification of a complex term, the study of Luhmann's work by Blom and Nijhuis outlines how this simpler definition lies at the heart of Luhmann's constructivist notion of risk. Taylor-Gooby and Zinn (2006), on the other hand, define risk as an uncertainty of outcomes. In this case, certainty is the opposite of risk. Uncertainty arises when individuals are no longer sure who bears responsibility for risks, which in turn gives rise to a reflexive risk society (Beck, 1992).

This book investigates whether actors within the Dutch welfare state perceive risks to be social risks. ‘Social risks are risks that do not result from individual choice but are (also) produced by the social system of production’ (Van der Veen et al, 2011, forthcoming). Individuals who encounter social risks can have difficulty in maintaining a minimum level of subsistence. Social risks can be encountered by individuals at different stages across the life course and they include risks such as sickness, disability, unemployment, old age, care risks and insufficient training or education (employability).