Volte-Face on the Welfare State: Social Partners, Knowledge Economies, and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies

IF 4.1 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Politics & Society Pub Date : 2021-05-19 DOI:10.1177/00323292211014371

Ø. Skorge, M. Rasmussen

{"title":"Volte-Face on the Welfare State: Social Partners, Knowledge Economies, and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies","authors":"Ø. Skorge, M. Rasmussen","doi":"10.1177/00323292211014371","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies (WFPs), which have surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make up an increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions. These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected by the preferences and power of unions and employers.","PeriodicalId":47847,"journal":{"name":"Politics & Society","volume":"50 1","pages":"222 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00323292211014371","citationCount":"8","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Politics & Society","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292211014371","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 8

Abstract

To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies (WFPs), which have surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make up an increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions. These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected by the preferences and power of unions and employers.

查看原文本刊更多论文

福利国家的大变脸:社会伙伴、知识经济和工作-家庭政策的扩展

有组织的雇主和工会在多大程度上支持社会政策存在争议。本文考察了工作-家庭政策（WFP）的案例，该政策已迅速成为福利国家的核心部分。在这种扩张中，雇主和工会的联合作用在比较政治经济学文献中基本上被忽视了。文章认为，从福特主义向知识经济的转变是社会伙伴支持WFP的动力。如果女性在高技能员工中所占比例越来越大，雇主就会开始支持WFP来增加劳动力供应。同样，如果妇女在工会会员基础中占很大比例，工会也会支持WFP。然而，偏好的变化转化为政策的程度取决于社团主义机构的存在。这些说法得到了对50年来18个发达民主国家WFP的统计分析和对挪威的深入案例研究的支持。因此，这篇文章表明，新福利国家的发展轨迹受到工会和雇主的偏好和权力的决定性影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Politics & Society Multiple-

CiteScore

5.00

自引率

4.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Politics & Society is a peer-reviewed journal. All submitted papers are read by a rotating editorial board member. If a paper is deemed potentially publishable, it is sent to another board member, who, if agreeing that it is potentially publishable, sends it to a third board member. If and only if all three agree, the paper is sent to the entire editorial board for consideration at board meetings. The editorial board meets three times a year, and the board members who are present (usually between 9 and 14) make decisions through a deliberative process that also considers written reports from absent members. Unlike many journals which rely on 1–3 individual blind referee reports and a single editor with final say, the peers who decide whether to accept submitted work are thus the full editorial board of the journal, comprised of scholars from various disciplines, who discuss papers openly, with author names known, at meetings. Editors are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest when evaluating manuscripts and to recuse themselves from voting if such a potential exists.