Understanding Welfare reforms Bruno Palier Sciences Po - Paris, France

Outline -The development of welfare state studies -The new politics of the welfare state -The three worlds of welfare reforms -Explaining reforms : the three “i”

I. The development of welfare state studies Understanding Welfare expansion: Various independent variables A) the developmental approaches * Marx and Polanyi * Functionalism: the modernization theories (industrialisation, democratisation) Wilensky, Flora…

B) The role of the labour’s organisation The social democratic road to Welfare The power resources approach (five steps: targeted, vluntary State Subsidised, Corporatist, Basic Security, Encompassing) Korpi, Palme, Esping-Andersen…

C) The role of employers’ interest -Micro-economic foundations: Risk pooling, workforce management, VoC (Swenson, Mares, Soskice, Iversen, Estevez-Abe)

D) Macro-foundations -The role of state elite: building the State, building political compromises (Rokkan, Ferrera) -Macro-economic foundations Fordism, mass industry, mass consumption (Regulation school)

II. The new politics of the welfare state The various causes of the welfare state crises: - Growth to limits (maturation) - Globalisation - De-Industrialisation (the trilemna: equality, employment, budgetary restraint) - Women's entry to the Labour Market - Demographic Changes - New macro-economic paradigm : from Keynes to Schumpeter

II. The new politics of the welfare state From credit claiming to blame avoidance: the era of retrenchment -New problems, new policies, same institutions: path dependency (irresistible forces, immovable objects) -Institutions matter : political institution (electoral system, political regime…), Welfare programmes, Policy feed back

III. The Three worlds of Welfare Reforms ESPING-ANDERSEN, Gøsta (ed.), 1996, Welfare States in Transition, National Adaptations in Global Economies, London, Sage; FERRERA, Maurizio, RHODES, Martin (eds.), 2000, Recasting European Welfare States, West European Politics (Special Issue), April; LEIBFRIED, Stephan (ed.), 2001, The Future of the Welfare State, Cambridge University press; PIERSON, Paul, (ed.), 2001, The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press; SCHARPF, Fritz W., SCHMIDT, Vivien A., (eds.), 2000, From Vulnerability to competiveness: Welfare and Work in the Open Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 volumes; SYKES, Rob S., PRIOR, Pauline, PALIER, Bruno (eds.), 2001, Globalization and European Welfare states : challenges and changes, Londres : Macmillan; TAYLOR-GOOBY, Peter (ed.), 2001, Welfare States Under Pressure, Londres, Sage STEPHENS, john D., HUBER, Evelyne, 2002, Development and crisis of the welfare state : parties and policies in global markets, Chicago : University of Chicago Press; SWANK, D., 2002, Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; WILENSKY, Harold, 2002, Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and performance, University of California Press.

III. The Three worlds of Welfare Reforms -Beyond Retrenchment: recasting the welfare state -Re-commodification, cost-containment, recalibration - The Anglo-saxon way, - The Nordic way, - The Continental impasses…

IV. Explaining reforms : Measuring social policy changes: Distinguishing among policy changes (P. Hall) Social policies as public policies: goals and instruments 3 sets of goals 4 instrumental (institutional) dimensions

Explaining reforms : Tracing and comparing reform processes « The three i »: three dynamics of changes - Ideas : changing social policy paradigms - Welfare Institutions : Beyond continuity from path dependency to « Cumulative but transformative changes » (K. Thelen, W. Streeck): « displacement », « layering », « drift », « conversion », « exhaustion » - Interests: Labour/Capital… New actors? State elite? Policy community? The impact of political institutions

Explaining reforms Three levels of analysis: International ideas, Welfare regimes (institutions) National timing, conflicts and compromises