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Summary ArticlesThree worlds of welfare capitalism or more? A state-of-the-art report
This paper surveys the debate regarding Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare states and
reviews the modified or alternative typologies ensuing from this debate. We confine
ourselves to the classifications which have been developed by Esping-Andersen’s critics in
order to cope with the following alleged shortcomings of his typology: (1) the
misspecification of the Mediterranean welfare states as immature Continental ones; (2) the
labelling of the Antipodean welfare states as belonging to the ‘liberal’ regime type; (3) a
neglect of the gender dimension in social policy. We reconstruct several typologies of
welfare states in order to establish, first, whether real welfare states are quite similar to
others or whether they are rather unique specimens, and, second, whether there are three
ideal-typical worlds of welfare capitalism or more. We conclude that real welfare states are
hardly ever pure types and are usually hybrid cases; and that the issue of ideal-typical
welfare states cannot be satisfactorily answered given the lack of formal theorizing and
the still inconclusive outcomes of comparative research. In spite of this conclusion there is
plenty of reason to continue to work on and with the original or modified typologies.
The tenet of Esping-Andersen’s treatise of the welfare state was that, for a long time in both
the theoretical and empirical literature, too little attention had been given to cross-national
differences in welfare state structures.
The pivotal questions are as follows: How and why has the welfare state developed? How
and why do national welfare systems differ from one another – or are they similar to each
other? Do welfare states cluster into different regime types and, if so, how and why?
Do typologies based on ideal-types have theoretical and empirical value as Esping-Andersen
assumes? The conclusion emerging from the philosophy of science literature is clear: not if
ideal-types are goals in themselves, but only if they are the means to a goal; namely, the
representation of a reality, which cannot (yet) be described using laws (Klant, 1984).
Esping-Andersen addresses the question of whether the welfare state is merely the sum
total of a nation’s social policy repertoire, or whether it is an institutional force above and
beyond a given policy array. His answer is straightforward: the welfare state cannot be
regarded as the sum total of social policies, it is more than a numerical cumulation of
discrete programmes.
Esping-Andersen boldly suggests that when we focus on the principles embedded in welfare
states, variations are not linearly distributed around a common denominator. They are
clustered around three highly diverse regime-types, each organized according to its own
discrete logic of organization, stratification, and societal integration. Therefore, we can
identify three models, or ideal-types of welfare states: conservative, liberal and social-
democratic. These ideal-types owe their origins to different historical forces and they follow
qualitatively different developmental trajectories. Contrary to the ideal world of welfare
,states, the real world is likely to exhibit hybrid forms. There are no one-dimensional nations
in the sense of a pure case. Today, every country presents a system mix.
Weber (1949; 1968 [1922]) deals with two different kinds of ideal-types, individualistic and
holistic ones (cf. Hempel, 1965 [1952]; Rogers, 1969; Watkins, 1969 [1953]). Esping-
Andersen’s ideal-types of welfare state regimes are holistic. They propose to give a bird’s
eye view of the broad characteristics of a social or historical situation. The ideality of such
types lies in their simplification and aloofness from detail. They emphasize the ‘essential’
features of a situation considered as a whole.
Holistic = considering a person or thing as a whole, rather than as separate parts.
From a logical point of view (von Kempski, 1972), the general term ‘welfare state’ is a label
for a certain class of democratic industrial capitalist societies, characterized by certain
properties (i.e. social citizenship or the fact that more or less extensive welfare provisions
are legally provided, or, in still other words, the fact that the state plays a principal part in
the welfare mix alongside the market, civil society, and the family). Welfare states have
seldom been established as a result of big plans or big fights, but mostly as results of
complex processes and successive steps of social and political engineering in the history of
democratic industrial capitalist societies.
In spite of the largely incremental emergence of welfare states, Esping-Andersen is of the
opinion that this class of societies does not consist of a great number of unique cases, but
that they cluster together in three distinct subclasses. To determine the characteristics of
these subclasses without going back in history, two indicators are crucial:
decommodification and stratification. Together they define a two-dimensional property-
space. Although real welfare states are most of the time not unique, they certainly are never
completely similar.
What are the historical and political forces behind the regime differences? According to
Esping-Andersen (1990: 29), three interacting factors are significant: the nature of class
mobilization (especially of the working class), class-political action structures, and the
historical legacy of regime institutionalization. The provisional answer to his central
questions is therefore: If you look at the history of so-called welfare states you find three
idealtypical trajectories, a liberal, a conservative and a social-democratic one. Fortunately,
one does not have to go back in history, however, in order to typify ‘real’ welfare states. We
can characterize them, as we have mentioned before, by looking at their positions on two
fundamental dimensions of welfare statism:
1. The degree of decommodification, i.e. the degree to which a (social) service is
rendered as a matter of right, and the degree to which a person can maintain a
livelihood without reliance on the market.
2. The kind of social stratification and solidarities, i.e. which social stratification system
is promoted by social policy and does the welfare state build narrow or broad
solidarities?
,There appears to be a clear coincidence of high decommodification and strong
universalism in the Scandinavian, social-democratically influenced welfare states. There is
an equally clear coincidence of low decommodification and strong individualistic self-
reliance in the liberal Anglo–Saxon nations. Finally, the Continental European countries
group closely together as corporatist and etatist, and are also modestly decommodifying
(Esping-Andersen, 1990: 77).
In spite of anomalies such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, the overall picture is
convincing, at least at first glance.
First, there is the liberal type of welfare capitalism, which embodies individualism and the
primacy of the market. Second, there is a world of conservative corporatist welfare states,
which is typified by a moderate level of decommodification. Finally, Esping-Andersen
recognizes a social-democratic world of welfare capitalism. Here, the level of
decommodification is high, and the social-democratic principle of stratification is directed
towards achieving a system of generous universal and highly distributive benefits not
dependent on any individual contributions.
One important criticism of Esping-Andersen’s classification is that he did not systematically
include the Mediterranean countries. Specifically, in The Three Worlds of Welfare
Capitalism Italy belongs – according to him – to the family of the corporatist welfare state
regimes, whereas Spain, Portugal and Greece are not covered by his typology. Although he
admits that these countries have some important characteristics in common – i.e. a Catholic
imprint (with the exception of Greece) and a strong familialism – he seems to include them
in the continental/corporatist model.
Esping-Andersen also discusses the Antipodean countries (i.e. Australia and New Zealand)
as representatives of the liberal welfare state regime. This is because of their marginal
commitment to public welfare and strong reliance on means testing. However, according to
Castles (1998), Australia and New Zealand have a more particular and a more inclusive
approach to social protection than the standard liberal form.... It therefore seems that the
Antipodean countries represent a separate social policy model.
By explicitly incorporating gender, several authors have tried to reconceptualize the
dimensions of welfare state variation. Subjecting the mainstream welfare state typologies to
an analysis of the differential places of men and women within welfare states would,
according to them, produce valuable insights. This does not mean, however, that the
characteristics used to construct the typologies are exhaustive (Sainsbury, 1996: 41). Gender
analysis suggests that there are whole areas of social policy that Esping-Anderson simply
misses. What seems to be particularly lacking is a systematic discussion of the family’s place
in the provision of welfare and care. A further omission is that there is no serious treatment
of the degree to which women are excluded from or included in the labour market.
According to many feminist authors, it is the sexual division of paid and unpaid work –
especially care and domestic labour – that needs incorporating in the typology.
If we take, for example, a closer look at the Dutch case, we see that Esping-Andersen (1990)
originally assigned the Netherlands to the social-democratic type, whereas Korpi and Palme
, see it as liberally oriented; the basic security type. However, most authors place the
Netherlands in the second category of corporatist/continental/ conservative welfare states.
This is also the choice of Visser and Hemerijck (1997), perhaps the foremost specialists on
the Dutch welfare state. Curiously enough, this is done using Esping-Andersen’s work as a
constant, positive reference. If we have another look at Esping-Andersen’s work, this is not
as surprising as one would expect. It is true that the Netherlands is rated relatively high on
socialdemocratic characteristics, but not exceptionally low on liberal and conservative
characteristics. Recently, Esping-Andersen has called the Netherlands the ‘Dutch enigma’
because of its Janus-faced welfare regime (1999: 88). The Netherlands is indeed more a
hybrid case than a prototype of a specific ideal-type. If one attaches more importance to
certain attributes than to others – and adds other characteristics or substitutes previous
ones – then it is easy to arrive at different classifications.
Esping-Andersen’s tentative answer to the question of why three different welfare state
regime types emerged has been sketched earlier on in this paper. Different welfare regimes
are shaped by different class coalitions within a context of inherited institutions. This answer
is embedded in a power-resources mobilization paradigm. The tentative answer to the
question of why regime shifts are scarce is that a national state cannot easily escape its
historical inheritance. Institutional inertia is one factor why different welfare state regime
types persist, and path dependency is another. Whether there is, within the welfare
modelling business, an alternative available to Esping-Andersen’s power-resource
mobilization cum institutional inertia/path dependency theory is difficult to determine.
The Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment: A Literature Review - Peter
Starke
Retrenchment: if a government or organization retrenches, it spends less
money (economize)
Welfare state retrenchment is widely seen as a highly unpopular endeavour and,
therefore, as politically difficult to pursue. This assumption has underpinned most of the
political science research on this issue, notably Paul Pierson’s seminal contributions
about the ‘new politics of the welfare state’. Yet, the question remains why and under what
circumstances cutbacks take place in highly developed welfare states despite these formidable
political obstacles. This article reviews the literature on the politics of retrenchment, namely
on the impact of socio-economic problem pressure, political parties, political institutions,
welfare state structures and ideas. Most authors agree that socio-economic problems –
particularly domestic problems – contribute to an atmosphere of ‘permanent austerity’
which inspires cutbacks. Moreover, according to most scholars, the extent of retrenchment
possible depends on the specific institutional configuration of a political system and the path
dependence of existing welfare state structures. The debate on the relevance of political
parties and ideas, by contrast, is still far from settled. Further unresolved issues include the
nature of the dependent variable in retrenchment studies. Also, the exact motives for
cutbacks are theoretically still little understood, as are the political mechanisms through which
they are realized. I argue that, because of the nature of these persisting issues, the pluralistic
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