Politics of Welfare Reform in 21st-Century Western Europe

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Which social policies should be adopted to address the social and economic challenges that Western European societies are facing in the 21st century? How much resource should be spent on correcting unequal market outcomes? Should the welfare state shield citizens from the risks of the emerging globalized knowledge economy, or help them adapt to these new realities? This book studies the political conflict that surrounds these questions, identifying structural and coalitional opportunities for reform across policy fields and regional contexts. The authors show that a point of debate for both voters and political parties is whether to expand the boundaries of welfare programs to address new social risks and to prioritize future economic opportunities - inclusion - or whether to target expenditure in ways that prioritize the current community and its income security - segmentation. To study politicization and reform opportunities in these different fields, the book draws on large amounts of new, specially-gathered data regarding the social policy positions and priorities of citizens and political parties in eight Western European countries. The findings show that the question of inclusion vs segmentation has become a deeply divisive partisan conflict line in European welfare politics, with the potential to internally divide both the political right and the left. It is the first book to systematically assess the implications of mass electoral realignment - including the rise of green and radical right parties - for the politics of European welfare states and opportunities for reform.

Silja Häusermann is Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich, having previously been a Professor at the University of Konstanz and a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. She directed the ERC project 'welfarepriorities' and is the co-director of the UZH University Research Priority Programme 'Equality of Opportunity'. Her work focuses on comparative political economy, inequality, comparative welfare state politics, and party system change in advanced capitalist democracies. Macarena Ares is a Serra Húnter Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Universitat de Barcelona. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute, and was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on class politics, welfare policies, corruption voting, and political socialization. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, the European Journal of Political Research, and West European Politics. Matthias Enggist is a postdoctoral researcher at Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. He holds a PhD from the University of Zurich and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre LIVES at the University of Lausanne. His research interests include welfare politics, welfare chauvinism, public opinion, party competition, and regional inequalities. His work has appeared in the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of European Public Policy, and West European Politics. Michael Pinggera works at the Education Department of the City of Zurich. He was previously a a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich, and he holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. His work has appeared in the European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, and Swiss Political Science Review.