The Working Class and Welfare:
            F
            rancis
            G
            .
            C
            astles on the Political Development of the Welfare State in
            A
            ustralia and
            N
            ew
            Z
            ealand Thirty Years On

There has developed an abundant literature on the social and political determinants of social policies, but few have addressed the question of how state policies, once implemented, affect the system of stratification in civil society. This article examines the political consequences of social policy in Denmark and Sweden, countries in which a social democratic labor movement has predominated for decades. Superficially, these two highly developed welfare states appear very similar. Yet, the political and social contexts in which their social policies have evolved differ substantially. I shall demonstrate the argument that the traditional welfare state approach may be conducive to a new and powerful political conflict, which directly questions the legitimacy of the welfare state itself, unless government is successful in subordinating private capitalist growth to effective public regulation. In Denmark, where social democratic governments have failed to match welfare state growth with more control of private capital, social policy has tended to undermine the political unity of the working class. Consequently, the Social Democratic Party has been weakened. Social welfare programs, in effect, have helped create new forms of stratification within the working class. In Sweden, social democratic governments have been quite successful in shifting a decisive degree of power over the private market to the state. This has helped avert a crisis of the welfare state, and has also been an important condition for continued social democratic hegemony and working-class unity. I conclude that social reform politics tend to be problematic from the point of view of the future power of social democratic movements.

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The Political Economy of the Welfare State in Latin America

10.1017/cbo9780511510984 ◽

2007 ◽

Cited By ~ 70

Author(s):

Alex Segura-Ubiergo

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Latin America ◽

Welfare State ◽

The Political ◽

The Welfare State

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Managing Decentralization: The Strategy of Institutional Differentiation in German Industrial Relations

German Politics & Society ◽

10.3167/104503099782486770 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 52-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Wolfgang Schroeder ◽

Rainer Weinert

Keyword(s):

Collective Bargaining ◽

Welfare State ◽

Social Organization ◽

Industrial Relations ◽

Collective Bargaining Agreement ◽

The Political ◽

Process Of Change ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Institutional Differentiation ◽

The Welfare State

The approach of the new millennium appears to signal the demiseof traditional models of social organization. The political core ofthis process of change—the restructuring of the welfare state—andthe related crisis of the industrywide collective bargaining agreementhave been subjects of much debate. For some years now inspecialist literature, this debate has been conducted between theproponents of a neo-liberal (minimally regulated) welfare state andthe supporters of a social democratic model (highly regulated). Thealternatives are variously expressed as “exit vs. voice,” “comparativeausterity vs. progressive competitiveness,” or “deregulation vs.cooperative re-regulation.”

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