Welfare State Change in Leading OECD Countries

For decades, issues regarding the sustainability of the welfare state have been an important agenda in both academic and public debate. The existing literature primarily points out to economic globalization and post industrial developments as drivers behind recent welfare state change. Ingmar J. Schustereder investigates the relative influence of these factors and examines to what extent different national systems of social protection have preserved their core institutional features over time. He applies a combination of econometric and qualitative techniques using data of 17 leading OECD countries from 1975 to 2005.

Auteur
Dr. Ingmar J. Schustereder earned his doctoral degree from the European Business School under Prof. Dr. Joachim Ahrens' supervision. He lives in Vienna and works for an international management consultancy.

Résumé

1. 1 Research Scope Ever since the introduction of social insurance legislation beginning in the last th decades of the 19 century, social scientists have been interested in analyzing the causal forces behind the development of the modern welfare state. Precisely, for most of the period the academic debate has hereby mainly centered on the following qu- tions: Why was the welfare state founded in the first place? And which factors have 1 contributed to its rapid expansion in the aftermath of World War Two (WWII)? With the advanced capitalist welfare states beginning to face increasing ch- lenges from the mid-1970s onwards, academic research has recently shifted from providing explanations on the rise of the welfare state to understanding processes of welfare state adaptation. In general, advanced capitalist welfare states confront today two types of challenges: on the one hand, pressures from post-industrial devel- ments, and on the other hand, pressures from global economic forces (see Buti, Franco, and Pench, 1998, pp. 17-26). Following Pierson (2001a), the most severe post-industrial pressures (p. 80) involve ongoing processes of deindustrialization, population ageing, changing household structures, and welfare state maturation (pp. 82-83). Apart from these domestic challenges, advanced capitalist welfare states have recently also been affected by developments occurring in the global sphere. While processes of international economic integration had already resumed in the imme- ate aftermath of WWII, they have significantly intensified during the last four decades.

Contenu
The Welfare State and Welfare Capitalism.- Theoretical Foundations of the Welfare State.- Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: Interlinking Welfare State and Production Regimes.- Historical Development and Contemporary Challenges of the Advanced Capitalist Welfare State.- Historical Phases of Welfare State Development.- Post-Industrial Challenges of the Contemporary Capitalist Welfare State.- Economic Globalization and the Contemporary Capitalist Welfare State.- Empirical Analyses of the Driving Forces Behind the Contemporary Capitalist Welfare State.- Methodological Issues in Comparative Welfare Capitalism Research.- A Quantitative Study on the Determinants of Welfare Spending.- A Qualitative Study on the Recent Development Process of Advanced Capitalist Welfare States.- Summarized Findings and Conclusion.