The four global worlds of welfare capitalism: Institutional, neoliberal, populist and residual welfare state regimes

What welfare state regimes are observed when the analysis is extended globally, empirically and theoretically? We introduce a novel perspective into the ‘welfare state regimes analyzes’ – a perspective that brings developed and developing countries together and, as such, broadens the geographical, empirical and theoretical scope of the ‘welfare modelling business’. The expanding welfare regimes literature has suffered from several drawbacks: (i) it is radically slanted towards organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries, (ii) the literature on non-OECD countries does not use genuine welfare policy variables and (iii) social assistance and healthcare programmes are not utilized as components of welfare state effort and generosity. To overcome these limitations, we employ advanced data reduction methods, exploit an original dataset that we assembled from several international and domestic sources covering 52 emerging markets and OECD countries and present a welfare state regime structure as of the mid-2010s. Our analysis is based on genuine welfare policy variables that are theorized to capture welfare generosity and welfare efforts across five major policy domains: old-age pensions, sickness cash benefits, unemployment insurance, social assistance and healthcare. The sample of OECD countries and emerging market economies form four distinct welfare state regime clusters: institutional, neoliberal, populist and residual. We unveil the composition and performance of welfare state components in each welfare state regime family and develop politics-based working hypotheses about the formation of these regimes. Institutional welfare state regimes perform high in social security, healthcare and social assistance, while populist regimes perform moderately in social assistance and healthcare and moderate-to-high in social security. The neoliberal regime performs moderately in social assistance and healthcare, and it performs low in social security, and the residual regime performs low in all components. We then hypothesize that the relative political strengths of formal and informal working classes are key factors that shaped these welfare state regime typologies.

Introduction

This synoptic introduction guides the reader through the major themes in this comparative analysis of the developed welfare states. It first outlines the origins of the welfare state and its development down to 1940. It then considers the impact of the Second World War on social policy and traces the apparent successes of expanding welfare state regimes in the thirty years that followed the war. It then assesses the critique and challenges that arose for this welfare state settlement from the mid-1970s onwards and the idea of a ‘crisis of the welfare state’. These challenges were simultaneously ideological, political, economic, and demographic, and are sometimes seen to have created new circumstances of ‘permanent austerity’. The contemporary welfare state faces a set of challenges very different to those which arose after 1945 in which the near-future context is set by the continuing impact of the Great Recession after 2008 and the new world of social policy created by COVID-19.

Education

The analysis of the political and institutional connections between education and other parts of the welfare state is an expanding field of scholarship. The chapter starts by discussing the complex relationship between education and socio-economic inequality from a comparative and historical perspective. Discussing the variety of education regimes with a focus on OECD countries, the chapter goes on to highlight differences in the relative importance of education as part of more encompassing welfare state regimes. Furthermore, the chapter identifies different education regimes characterized by features such as levels of spending, the distribution between public and private education spending, the importance of vocational relative to academic education, and institutional stratification in secondary education. These education regimes correspond to a significant extent with established welfare state regime typologies. The final section of the chapter discusses factors that might explain the emergence of distinct and different educational regimes, such as historical legacies, religious heritage, and the balance of power between organized interests and political parties, as well as political institutions.

Association between informal employment and mortality rate by welfare regime in Latin America and the Caribbean: an ecological study

ObjectiveWe aimed to estimate the association between informal employment and mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by comparing welfare state regimes.DesignEcological study using time-series cross-sectional analysis of countries. Informality was estimated from household surveys by the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies in collaboration with the World Bank, and the adult mortality rates for 2000–2016 were obtained from the WHO databases. Countries were grouped by welfare state regimes: state productivist, state protectionist and familialist. We calculated the compound annual growth rate for each country and performed linear regression between the informality and the adult mortality rates stratified by sex and welfare state regime.SettingSeventeen countries from LAC with available data on informality and adult mortality rates for 2000–2016.Primary outcome measureThe association between informality and mortality by welfare state regime.ResultsBetween 2000 and 2016, mortality rates decreased an average 1.3% per year and informal employment rates 0.5% per year. We found a significant positive association between informality and mortality rates (women: R2=0.48; men: R2=0.36). The association was stronger among the state regime countries (women: R2=0.58; men: R2=0.77), with no significant association among the familialist countries.ConclusionInformal employment negatively impacts population health, which is modified by welfare state regimes. Addressing informal employment could be an effective way to improve population health in LAC. However, linkage with public health and labour market agendas will be necessary.

Social Investment, Employment and Policy and Institutional Complementarities: A Comparative Analysis across 26 OECD Countries

Raising employment has been at the heart of EU strategies for over twenty years. Social investment, by now a widely debated topic in the comparative welfare state literature, has been suggested as a way to pursue this. However, there are only a couple of systematic comparative analyses that focus on the employment outcomes associated with social investment. Analyses of the interdependence of these policies with regard to their outcomes are even more scarce. We empirically analyse the extent to which variation in employment rates within 26 OECD countries over the period 1990-2010 can be explained by effort on five social investment policies. We additionally explore the role of policy and institutional complementarities. Using time-series cross-section analyses we find robust evidence for a positive association between effort on ALMPs and employment rates. For other policies we obtain mixed results. ALMPs are the only policies for which we observe signs of policy interdependence, which point at diminishing marginal returns. Additionally, our analysis demonstrates that the interdependence of social investment policies varies across welfare state regimes. Together, this indicates that the employment outcomes of social investment policies are also contingent on the broader framework of welfare state policies and institutions.

States of violence: Exploring welfare state regimes as violence regimes by developing a violence regimes index

The aim of the article is to examine if and how the welfare state regime typology translates into a violence regime typology in a European context. It builds on the concept of violence regimes (Strid et al. 2017; Hearn et al. 2020) to empirically examine whether the production of interpersonal violence constitutes distinct regimes, and how these correspond (or not) with welfare regimes, gender regimes, and with other comparative metrics on violence, gender equality and feminist mobilisation and transnational actors. Its main contribution is to operationalise the concept of violence regimes, thereby moving from theory to a first empirical measurement. By first constructing a new composite measure of violence, a Violence Regimes Index, based on secondary administrative and survey data covering the then 28 EU member states, countries are clustered along two axes of violence: ‘deadly’ violence and ‘damaging’ gender-based violence. This serves to examine if, and how, the production of gendered violence in different states constitutes distinct regimes, analogous to welfare state regimes, as well as to enable future research and further comparisons and contrasts, specifically related to violence and the welfare state. By providing an empirical measurement of violence regimes in the EU, the article then contributes further to the debates on welfare, welfare regimes, and violence. It specifically contributes with discussions on the extent to which there are different violence regimes, comparable to welfare regimes, and with discussions on the relevance of moving from thinking about violence as an institution within other inequality regimes, to thinking about violence as a macro-regime, a way of governing and ruling in its own right. The article concludes that the exclusion of violence from mainstream social theory and research has produced results that may not be valid, and offers an alternative classification using the concept of violence regimes, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the concept.

Why Precarious Work Is Bad for Health: Social Marginality as Key Mechanisms in a Multi-National Context

The expansion of precarious work in recent decades has motivated a large body of research on its implications for health. While considerable work has focused on whether precarious work undermines health, much less is known about why it matters. To fill this gap, this paper offers and tests a conceptual model whereby the effects of precarious work on health are mediated by social marginality, specifically reduced self-efficacy, weaker social integration, and lower social capital. All three mechanisms are understood as both social consequences of precarious work and important determinants of health. Empirically, we use data from the European Social Survey and investigate (1) conditional direct effects of precarious work on self-rated health and (2) extent of mediation via the three mechanisms. Furthermore, we assess the generalizability of the model across five welfare state regimes that prior work has deemed to be important moderators of the health–precarious work relationship. Results indicate precarious work has significant conditional direct effects and indirect effects through all three mediators that significantly reduce effect of precarious work on health. This is robust in the general sample and for four of five welfare state regimes. These findings highlight a previously unexplored vector connecting precarious work to health and indicate that the effects of precarious work on perceptions of self and social relations is a key link to poorer health. The study also expands conceptualization of the broad role of socioeconomic status for health inequalities and furthers understanding of the mechanisms at work.

Welfare Considerations Underpinning Healthcare Workers’ Decision About Migration: The Case of Slovenia

This chapter explores the complex interplay of welfare-related considerations of healthcare workers underpinning their decision to emigrate. The concepts of welfare used here refer to the subjective perceptions of wellbeing of individual workers as well as statutory procedures and policies in place to provide them with social security and public services within different welfare-state regimes. Given the fact that healthcare workers are themselves providers of welfare to those in need of medical treatment and care, the chapter also discusses the workers’ ethical considerations about leaving patients behind on the one hand and pursuance of providing healthcare in other countries on the other. Hence, it explores how the provision of welfare to others builds into their own imaginaries and feeds the rationale behind the decision to migrate. The chapter builds on the findings from 27 semi-structured interviews conducted with healthcare workers who emigrated from Slovenia. Furthermore, the Slovenian case is used to illustrate the impact of their ground-level subjective decisions on systemic and normative frameworks in times of persistent shortages of healthcare workers in Slovenia.