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More than just Welfare Transfers? A Review of the Scope of Esping-Andersen's Welfare Regime Typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2014

Daniel Buhr  and
Volquart Stoy
Daniel Buhr
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen E-mail: [email protected]
Volquart Stoy
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

With the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC) Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990) intended to provide a comprehensive typology covering welfare regimes as well as their effects on the economy. However, the initial TWWC-framework fell short of its promises as it ignored welfare services and the industrial sector of the economy. In the last twenty-five years many studies have analysed these previously overlooked aspects. In this article we review this research. We find that most empirical studies on welfare services, as well as on the economy, confirm the validity of the TWWC typology. However, insufficient attention has been paid to exposing the interplay between the different areas. In the second part of the article we provide two alternative explanations for the linkage between welfare regime and capitalism typologies. There is evidence for a functionalist explanation as proposed by the Varieties-of-Capitalism (VoC) framework, as well as for a political explanation delivered by the power resources approach.

Keywords

Welfare regimesThree Worlds of Welfare CapitalismVarieties of Capitalismwelfare services
Type
Themed Section on Twenty Five Years of the Welfare Modelling Business
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 271 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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