Welfare States and Employment Regimes

Abstract

These three volumes were the result of a five-year research program initiated by the Nordic Council and funded by the Council, the five Nordic national governments, and the research institutes and departments in the five countries involved. The initiative had three purposes: 'to explore the Scandinavian welfare state model; to understand more of the so-called crisis of the welfare state; and to make a contribution to the sociology of the welfare state' (The Study of Welfare State Regimes, hereafter Regimes: p. xi). The project drew on a wealth of data: OECD and ILO collections, national labor force surveys, level of living surveys, the Luxembourg Income Studies (LIS), time budget surveys, and the Nordic Welfare State Exit-Entry Data Bank, to mention but a few. Each volume is introduced by the same essay, 'Welfare States and Employment Regimes' by Jon Eivind Kolberg, the editor of the three volumes, and G0sta EspingAndersen, with the only variation being the concluding section which provides an overview of the volume in question. Since there is (unfortunately) no conclusion summing up the findings of the three volumes, this essay serves as a conclusion also. Thus, a brief outline of its argument is in order. The essay begins with the observation that comparative studies of the welfare state have focused too much on the determinants of variations in welfare states; be it expenditure in the case of the first generation of studies or social rights in the case of the second generation of studies. They 'argue that the welfare state . . . has significant repercussions on other institutions, such as the labor market, the class structure, the relationship between the sexes, the normative structure, and the system of distribution and redistribution' (Regimes: p. 4). Moreover, it is not enough simply to consider the welfare state as an independent variable since these other institutions in turn affect the welfare state. Thus, the patterning of interaction between these institutional complexes, that is, the formation of distinct 'welfare regimes', is the focus of the studies. The authors argue that it is the interaction of the welfare state and the economy, and more narrowly the labor market, that ties these complexes, from gender relations in the household to systems of distribution, together. To get a first cut on the welfare state regime configurations, Kolberg and Esping-Andersen then go on to investigate welfare statelabor market interactions focusing on (1) exit to unemployment and retirement, (2) paid absence, (3) entry into employment. On the basis of their survey, they hypothesize that welfare state regimes and employment regimes coincide. They identify three employment regimes: a Nordic model with low levels of early exit, high levels of paid absence, and high welfare ? Scandinavian Sociological Association, 1994