New Risks, New Welfare: The Transformation of the European Welfare State

Abstract

Modern welfare states developed primarily to meet the ‘old social risks’ that confront the mass of the population during a standard industrial life course – retirement pensions, health care services, sickness and disability provision. Most analysis of the current wave of reforms focusses on these areas, and tends to emphasise retrenchment, restructuring, and decommodification. This book deals with the ‘new social risks’ that have now emerged alongside old social risks from changes in family life and work patterns – needs for child and elder care, new rights for women in relation to paid work, measures to ease the transition into paid work, particularly for unskilled people, and the problems of social exclusion arising for some groups from policies like pension privatisation. It offers an original approach of the implications for national and EU level social policy‐making and contributes to theoretical work in this area. The detailed national case studies are written by national experts and are based on analysis of policy during the past 15 years and more than 250 interviews with key policy actors. The book is organised in a common framework that enables comparison of the significance of different national welfare state regimes and political institutions. The book shows that (1) The recognition of new social risks and the structuring of policies to meet them are constrained by existing patterns of old social risk provision; (2) The politics of new social risks differs from that of old social risks. Most people are aware of needs in relation to the latter, leading to widespread pressure for more provision. The groups affected by new social risks are smaller, less politically cohesive, and less able to push for change; (3) New social risks policies offer the opportunity for governments to ‘transform vice into virtue’ by expanding the labour force and encouraging previously dependent groups (disabled and unemployed people) into productive work. For this reason, such policies are at the forefront of the EU level welfare reform agenda.