Welfare and Work in the Open Economy Volume I: From Vulnerability to Competitiveness in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This is the first of a two‐volume study of the adjustment of advanced welfare states to international economic pressures, in which leading scholars detail the wide variety of responses in 12 countries to the challenges to their employment and social policy systems in the period between the first oil‐price crises of the early 1970s and the increasing economic globalization of the 1980s and 1990s. Rejecting any notion of convergence to some kind of neo‐liberal orthodoxy, the authors find that most countries have remained true to the basic features of their post‐war model as they have liberalized their employment and social systems. Moreover, within different welfare‐state constellations, while some countries are still struggling to adjust, others have reached a new sustainable equilibrium. On the basis of in‐depth country studies in Volume II (including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark), the present volume provides comparative analyses of countries’ economic vulnerabilities and institutional capabilities, of the role of policy learning in effective policy responses, and of the role of values and discourse in the politics of adjustment. While these chapters show that there is no convergence in welfare‐state institutions and that there is no single solution or formula for successful adaptation, they also demonstrate that there are multiple paths towards a successful adjustment of advanced welfare states to international economic pressures.