Giuliano Bonoli

How do welfare states change? Institutions and their impact on the politics of welfare state reform in Western Europe

In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

WHO WANTS WHAT FROM THE WELFARE STATE

ABSTRACT This article investigates socio-structural cleavages in relation to social policies in Switzerland. It examines the extent to which vertical stratification, age and gender explain variation in individual social policy preferences. We use survey data on reported voting behaviour in 22 direct democratic referendums on distributional issues between 1981 and 2004. Our two main findings are the following: (1) age seems to be the most relevant line of conflict in most distributional issues and (2) vertical stratification (income and education) and gender are less important in explaining individual voting decisions. Our data also suggest that material interests based on socio-structural characteristics account for only part of the variation in social policy preferences, and that value cleavages are also important.

STATISTICAL DISCRIMINATION AND EMPLOYERS' RECRUITMENT: Practices for low-skilled workers

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the recruitment strategies of employers in the low-skilled segment of the labour market. We focus on low-skilled workers because they are overrepresented among jobless people and constitute the bulk of the clientele included in various activation and labour market programmes. A better understanding of the constraints and opportunities of interventions in this labour market segment may help improve their quality and effectiveness. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 41 employers in six European countries, we find that the traditional signals known to be used as statistical discrimination devices (old age, immigrant status and unemployment) play a somewhat reduced role, since these profiles are overrepresented among applicants for low skill positions. However, we find that other signals, mostly considered to be indicators of motivation, have a bigger impact in the selection process. These tend to concern the channel through which the contact with a prospective candidate is made. Unsolicited applications and recommendations from already employed workers emit a positive signal, whereas the fact of being referred by the public employment office is associated with the likelihood of lower motivation.

Reclaiming Welfare: The Politics of French Social Protection Reform

Abstract As the 1995 wave of strikes has powerfully shown, the French welfare state is currently the object of a political struggle between sections of the labour movement and the government. In this article, we look at the politics of the current transformation of the French social protection system. First, we describe the key features of welfare institutions; second, we look at the debate on the socio-economic problems that welfare is currently facing. Finally, we focus on how these issues appear in the political debate, through an analysis of interview data of influential political actors and a discussion of the 1995 Juppe plan, which provides the framework for future reforms. Our conclusion is that the current transformation process cannot be interpreted as simply a movement towards the restoration of financial equilibrium. Instead, it affects the very structure of the French model of welfare by promoting a shift from Bismarckian social insurance towards a non-employment based, state-controlled system.