Models of Welfare in Europe and the UK

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Models of Welfare in Europe and the UK

• Lecture Five

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Conservative Welfare Regimes
• Liberal Welfare Regimes
• Social Democratic Welfare Regimes

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Conservative Welfare Regimes
• Corporatist welfare arrangements
• State welfare used to maintain existing class and
  status differentials, encouraging social and
  political stability and continued loyalty to the
  state.
• The state (not the market) delivers welfare but
  not in ways intended to encourage redistribution
  or equalization welfare.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Conservative Welfare Regimes
• Austria, France, Germany, and Italy
• These types of welfare regimes tend to be
  dominant in countries in which Catholic parties
  are strong and parties of the left are weak and
  there has been a history of absol8utism and
  authoritarianism. Because such regimes tend to
  be highly influenced by the Church, they are
  committed to traditional family forms and the
  state intervenes only when the family cannot cope.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Liberal Welfare Regimes
• Emphases on market-based social insurance
• Means-testing in the distribution of benefits.
• Universal transfer payments and social insurance
  are modest and welfare is largely y oriented
  towards a class of the poor dependent on the
  state.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Benefits are limited and stigmatized because this
  welfare model assumes that higher levels of
  benefit will reduce incentives to work.
• Private schemes are encouraged for those who wish
  to go beyond the minimum, and these schemes may
  be subsidized.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• Such regimes are highly differentiated and there
  is a very uneven distribution of wealth within
  such states.
• Examples of liberal welfare regimes are the USA,
  Canada and Australia.
• Esping Andersen argues that the UK fits most
  closely to this model.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• The Social-Democratic Model
• Principles Universalism and equality.
• Encourage Equality across classes based on high
  standards, rather than the minima endorsed
  elsewhere.
• To achieve this services and benefits are
  provided at levels acceptable to the middle class
  and the working class both groups have the same
  rights.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• This model crowds out the market, and
  consequently constructs and essentially universal
  solidarity in favour of the welfare state. All
  benefit all are dependent and all will
  presumable feel obliged to pay
  (Esping-Andersen,1990,The Three Worlds of Welfare
  Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity Press p. 28)

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• The attitude to the family within the model is in
  marked contrast to the other two because the
  state takes on and socializes aspects of family
  responsibilities
• Such as providing support for children and the
  old encouraging individual independence for women
  who choose to work.
• Full employment is central because it makes it
  possible to pay the costs of welfare through
  taxation of the working population. The
  Scandinavian countries are the most typical
  examples of this type of welfare model.

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Esping Andersen Three Regimes of Welfare
Capitalism

• This typology allows us to develop patterns of
  difference across different European States and
  look at broad directions of change. It also
  enables us to look at how different welfare
  models impact on poverty and social exclusion in
  different European states. Esping-Andersen makes
  clear that non of the models he identifies can be
  found in a perfect or pure form and each European
  welfare system may have elements of all three
  welfare models.

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The impact of global economic forces

• Globalisation has implications for all welfare
  states and it is interesting to explore the
  impact that neo-liberal economic forces are
  having on different welfare regimes in Europe.
• Recent European Union reforms such as the
  de-regulation of service industries in Europe
  could have profound consequences as workers from
  former Eastern European Countries are paid
  significantly less than their European
  counterparts and so may begin to comprise larger
  proportions of the workforce within the public
  and private service sectors.