Robert Henry Cox

The Social Construction of an Imperative: Why Welfare Reform Happened in Denmark and the Netherlands but Not in Germany

This article seeks to explain why Denmark and the Netherlands made dramatic progress reforming their welfare systems in the 1990s and why Germany had a relatively slow start. Some possible explanations found to be incomplete are institutional differences in welfare programs, the uniqueness of circumstances (for example, German unification), and the balance of political power in governing institutions. An important part of the puzzle is an increasing perception of the need to reform that was more widespread in Denmark and the Netherlands. The social construction of an imperative to reform in these countries generated a political consensus that was elusive in Germany but that may be developing under Gerhard Schröders government.

The Consequences of Welfare Reform: How Conceptions of Social Rights are Changing

The idea of the welfare state is commonly grounded in the principles of social rights, universality and solidarity. Over the past twenty years, welfare reforms have challenged the salience of this conceptualisation. This article argues that changes such as austerity measures, pension reform, administrative decentralisation and efforts to revive the obligation of citizenship have fostered a more discursive conception of social rights. When rights are discursive, the relative power of various clientele interests plays a greater role in the distribution of benefits than objective conditions of need. Also, such notions as universality and solidarity are giving way to selectivity and individual responsibility as the paramount principles of the welfare state.

From Safety Net To Trampoline: Labor Market Activation in the Netherlands and Denmark

In recent years Denmark and the Netherlands have made dramatic shifts from passive to active labor market policies. Though often portrayed as a necessary response to high levels of structural unemployment, such changes are more than a mere technical adjustment of welfare programs to a changing economic climate. They represent new ideas about the goals of public policy and the social rights of citizenship. This article surveys the politics of labor market policies in the two countries to demonstrate that the recent activation programs reflect a departure from the ideas and goals of the postwar welfare state.

Ideas as coalition magnets: coalition building, policy entrepreneurs, and power relations

ABSTRACT One of the most common ways by which ideas influence policy outcomes is by facilitating the construction of a political coalition. The ideas that have this capacity we call coalition magnets, and this contribution explains how coalition magnets open a path for policy reform. The key components of a coalition magnet are the ambiguous or polysemic character of the idea that makes it attractive to groups that might otherwise have different interests, and the power of policy entrepreneurs who employ the idea in their coalition-building efforts. We illustrate the utility of the concept with an examination of three ideas that were creatively employed to construct new policy coalitions: sustainability; social inclusion; and solidarity.

Can Welfare States Grow in Leaps and Bounds? Non‐Incremental Policymaking in the Netherlands

The rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state in the 1960s is described as an example of non-incremental policy growth. The reasons for this include: the largeness of policy change; the willingness of policymakers to consider new programs that marked dramatic departures from older programs, the commitment of policymakers to the goal of universalizing programs rather than introducing satisfycing measures; and the disruption of the traditional mode of corporatist representation in policymaking. The possibilities for an equally rapid dismantling of the welfare state are discussed.

Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere

Discursive governance refers to implicit mechanisms of governance such as narratives, leitmotifs, and strategic metaphors in political language. It examines how the framing of policies affects political and social representations in accordance with the wishes of political authorities. Ad hoc discourses generate a space where politicians configure, transmit, and initiate politics ideationally, rather than vouchsafing substantial policy change with respect to governance. This book studies the dynamics of political discourse in governance processes. It demonstrates the process in which political discourses become normative mechanisms, first marking socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating the subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere. The key contribution of this volume is tracing the discursive relationships among actors, namely governments and political parties, policy participants and societal actors, and the public in European nation states, intergovernmental organizations, subnational or regional entities, and geographies beyond Europe where European norms trigger ideational processes of change. The book extends earlier work in the field by exploring how policy and politics create social knowledge, make some ideas publicly salient, and bring together coalitions of actors that find certain policy alternatives attractive and eventually generate political and policy change.

German Efforts to Shape European Renewable Energy Policy

This chapter demonstrates how Germany strove to shape the European Union’s (EU) emerging policies on renewable energy. We argue that German decision-makers were motivated by three factors. First, they were influenced by a broad consensus in their own country about the desirability of renewable energy and believed the solutions that worked for Germany would also work for the entire EU. Second, Germany sought to protect the regulatory innovations it had developed by promoting those same regulations at the European level. Third, by establishing a European system that resembled its own, German decision-makers sought to give its own entrepreneurs in the renewable sector a competitive edge in the broader European market. We demonstrate this argument with a process tracing of the development of the 2009 Directive on Renewable Energy Sources (RES).

After Corporatism: A Comparison of the Role of Medical Professionals and Social Workers in the Dutch Welfare State

This article compares the emerging role of professional groups in two areas of welfare policy in the Netherlands. The focus is on the role of medical professionals in Dutch disability programs and of social workers in the area of public assistance. The study shows that medical professionals have come to replace the labor and capital interests formerly engaged in disability policy-making. In the area of social work, professional social work agencies have superceded religious charity organizations that found their basis for policy influence in a “pillarized” society. The argument presented is that a policy shift accounts for this change in what formerly were corporatist policy institutions. The policy shift results from a change in the nature of welfare policy debate from fundamental discussions of the rights basis of welfare programs toward technical discussions of how best to make the programs operate. An examination of retrenchment debates in the 1980s shows that professionals remain important actors in the policy process. The implications for corporatist theory are discussed.

Alternative patterns of welfare state development: The case of public assistance in the Netherlands

Among the numerous studies of the development of welfare states, less attention has been paid to the smaller European democracies. In an attempt to address this problem, this article investigates the development of public assistance programmes in the Netherlands. The historical record shows that the development of the Dutch public assistance programme has been more contentious than the development of similar programmes in other countries. An explanation for political controversy surrounding Dutch public assistance focuses on the manifestation of corporatism in a policy area that involved private charity organisations, rather than labour and capital interests. The incorporation of private charities permitted them to slow state encroachment on their activities. Implications of the case for the study of corporatism in other countries are discussed.

Introduction: Discursive Governance: Operationalization and Applications

This book studies the dynamics of political discourse in governance processes. Our starting point is Searle’s key argument—that some rules do not just regulate, but also create the possibility of the very behavior that they regulate (2010). Specifically, this book demonstrates the process in which political discourses become normative mechanisms, first marking socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere. The book traces such discursive processes within a set of key policy contexts, such as European integration, regional development, citizenship, migration, health care, family, gender, and sexuality. It shows how ideas acquire roles in effect to politics and policymaking, and then reverberate in the public sphere. In this effort, our book draws upon frameworks from different empirical and theoretical fields such as policy research, social representations theory, party politics, and citizenship.