Surveying the welfare state: challenges, policy development and causes of resilience



three periods Schmidt 2005; Bleses/Seeleib-Kaiser 2004; see for 1998-2003 also Egle et al.
2003; Gohr/Seeleib-Kaiser 2003). The purpose of this section is to illustrate how major
policy programmes evolved over time and identify overall patterns of change (for instance,
periods of cost-containment, consolidation, or structural shifts within programmes). Section
3 then turns to the supposed sources of resistance to comprehensive change. It firstly dis-
cusses the sources of ‘stickiness’ on the level of political institutions and then probes into
those linked to social policy programmes. Central to the discussion will be three policy sec-
tors, whose features are briefly introduced: old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and
health care (see for detailed introductions of social policy programmes Alber 2001; Schmid
2002; Opielka 2004; Schmidt 2005).

2 The Continental welfare state and its German prototype

2.1 Macro-level Characteristics: Wage-Centredness, Familialism, Se-
curing Former Standard of Living and Corporatism

Esping-Andersen’s seminal contribution to the conceptualization of the welfare state was
his work on welfare state regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990), which has since widely been
used in the literature dealing with social policy change and reforms. Part of this literature
has tried to assess the extent to which there has been convergence towards one specific re-
gime type. Along with the Social Democratic and Liberal welfare state types, Esping-
Andersen distinguished the Continental or Conservative welfare state, which is my main
concern here. This type of regime is based on the type of social insurance introduced by
Bismarck in the 1880s and has at least four main characteristics. While explaining these
briefly, I will also point out why they are potentially linked to change resistance.

Firstly, the Continental welfare state is based mainly on the wage-centred social insurance
principle. That is to say, its benefits and services are financed by contributions withheld
from wages, rather than financed by general taxation. Wage-centredness defines both the
nature of the benefit (contribution-based rather than flat-rate) as well as their financing
source (workers and employees rather than the general population). At the same time, con-
tribution-based benefits tend to be associated with ‘earned’ or rather accumulated rights and
may pose legal and technical problems to retrenchment and reforms. In addition, trade un-
ions which represent contributors may be expected to come to their defence. Secondly, this
welfare state type exhibits a focus on familialism, i.e. its programmes and benefits are cen-
tred on the male breadwinner while his family provides a safety net that plays a supplemen-
tary role: it is expected to take over responsibilities that, in other welfare state types, corre-
spond to the state (e.g. the provision of public day care in Scandinavian welfare state) or are
left to the market (e.g. the provision of private day care in Liberal welfare state). Such bias
comes at the expense of the availability of social care services such as they exist in Scandi-
navian welfare states. Thirdly, the Continental welfare state is biased towards granting



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