1 Introduction
It is widely assumed that the German welfare state is highly resistant to comprehensive
change, despite considerable social, economic, and demographic pressure for such change.
This assertion is mostly informed by the literature on welfare state regimes (Esping-
Andersen 1990; Esping-Andersen 1996) and the politics of welfare state reform (Pierson
1996; Pierson 2001). Both political and institutional factors are said to be responsible for
the relative stability of welfare states and the German welfare state is by no means an ex-
ception. Pierson (1996), for instance, has stressed that “status-quo-ness”, electoral hazard,
organizational interests and path-dependent mechanisms form obstacles to far-reaching re-
forms. Although these factors are frequently assumed to apply to the German context, to my
knowledge, they have hardly been surveyed in their entirety, that is, across the different
parts of the welfare state.
The present paper strives to fill this gap by assessing whether the supposed mechanisms
behind resistance can be found as to confirm or disconfirm the assertions about German
reform resistance in this respect. It will focus on those reform hurdles associated with the
make-up of the welfare state, both in terms of its overall principles and in terms of its pro-
grammes. It attempts to expose systematically the supposed mechanisms of path-
dependence and other sources of policy stickiness. In addition, it summarizes the political-
institutional sources of resilience. Put differently, the analysis will cover the main macro-
level (regime-level and political-institutional context) and meso-level (programme-level)
characteristics of German social policy arrangements. While reform resistance is also due to
political reasons, such as policy-makers shunning the risks implied by comprehensive re-
form (“electoral hazard”), these are beyond the scope of this analysis.
The paper is structured as follows: the survey of institutional obstacles to reform is pre-
ceded by an analysis of the aforementioned reform pressures, followed by empirical reform
trends. Section 1 presents the main characteristics and principles on which the German wel-
fare state is built. Some of these principles can still be seen more than 125 years after Bis-
marck created the first social insurance programmes. They include the principles of wage-
centred social insurance; familialism; ensuring the former standard of living; and corpora-
tism. The second part of the section covers the main ‘post-industrial’ pressures that are im-
pacting on mature welfare states and the specific reaction of its Continental type, leading to
‘welfare without work’ (Esping-Andersen 1996). In the specific German context, this im-
plies that the effects of external shocks on employment and state finances have been buff-
ered by using social policy programmes (and their budgets). Next, the actual record of so-
cial policy reform will be examined next to see whether it underscores the assertion that
resistance to reform has indeed hindered large-scale reforms. Section 2 thus summarizes
what German governments have done to react to the pressures on welfare states, and re-
views overall policy development since 1975, considering the record of the Social-Liberal
coalition, the Christian Democrat-Liberal coalition and the Red-Green coalition (see for all