Title: New Social Risks and Welfare State Reform Is the Future American?
1New Social Risks and Welfare State ReformIs the
Future American?
- Peter Taylor-Gooby
- P.F.Taylor-Gooby_at_kent.ac.uk
2The Welfare State
- A distinctive European project
- Ineluctable challenges
- Technical
- EU
- Moral
- WS as an interruption market liberalism as the
normal business of the West - Relevant to Norway rich, equal, cohesive
3(No Transcript)
4(No Transcript)
5(No Transcript)
6The technical critique
- Rising costs diminishing resources
- Ageing, dependency and household changes
- Labour market, globalisation and government
capacity
7Assessment
- Regimes not convergent
- Innovation continues
- No obvious race to the bottom
- Permanent austerity?
8EU The view from the ECB
- Greater flexibility in labour, product and
financial markets together with sound fiscal
positions and wage moderation will support the
objective of maintaining price stability and will
create stable conditions to foster employment
creation. Such an interaction of policies is
the best possible way to enhance the long-term
welfare of the citizens of the Euro
area Duisenberg 2002
9EU Assessment
- Direct social policy harmonisation unsuccessful
- SEA and pension restructuring in 1990s
- Primacy of a dynamic knowledge-based economy
- But soft law, ECJ, OMC preserving key national
differences - Future uncertain
10Declining possibility of welfare
- End of history, Hegelian empiricism
- Social capital individual and institutional
trust - Not obviously correlated with welfare spend
- Not obviously lower for state provision
11 Trust state and private services (UK)
NHS hospital 59
Private hospital 65
State school 70
Fee-paying school 79
State pension 50
Private pension 56
12Why Europe is not the US Alesina
- Geography and race an unreconstituted C18th
liberal constitution, a divided working class,
limited left politics - Scientificity of statistical method the 50
claim - Influences European debates
- Diversity the impact of globalisation on the
citizenry
13The point
- US-Europe differences have more to do with the
racial divisions than cultural differences. As
Europe has become more diverse, Europeans have
increasingly been susceptible to exactly the same
form of racist, anti-welfare demagoguery that
worked so well in the US. We shall see whether
the generous European welfare state can really
survive in a heterogeneous society
14Goodhart in Prospect Feb 2-004
- .sharing and solidarity can conflict with
diversity an especially acute dilemma for
progressives who want plenty of both solidarity -
high social cohesion and generous welfare - and
diversity - equal respect for peoples, values
and ways of life the left's recent love affair
with diversity may come at the expense of the
values and even the people that it once
championed
15 Diversity and social spending Alesina 64
Race fractionalisation -7.54
Per capita GDP 1.92
Majoritarian -2.31
pop 15-64 0.33
Latin American -2.42
Caribbean -3.00
Asian -0.09
Constant -25.00
R sq. 0.69
16Politics matters in Europe
Correlations with social spending Correlations with social spending
Race index -.17
Left in govt. .58
Race, controlling for Left in govt -.06
17Politics, diversity etc in Europe
Race fractionalisation -.30
Left parties in cabinet .51
Pluralism .13
Pop 15-64 -.24
R sq .46
18The distinctiveness of Europe
- Various arguments imply that the future is
American - European traditions of welfare seem to be
surviving thus far - US political traditions set against state welfare
- European traditions can resist such trends
19Choice and welfareUK version