Transcript Document

New Social Risks and Welfare State Reform
Is the Future American?
Peter Taylor-Gooby
[email protected]
The 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
ly
UK
Sw
ed
en
Sp
ain
Po
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d
Ita
Fr
an
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Ge
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an
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No
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US
Social trust: WVS
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
UK
Sw
ed
en
Sp
ai
n
Po
la
nd
ly
an
y
Ita
G
er
m
Fr
an
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No
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US
80/20 ratio: LIS
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
ly
UK
Sw
ed
en
Sp
ain
Po
lan
d
Ita
Fr
an
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Ge
rm
an
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No
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US
GDP per capita ($000 pps)
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
The technical critique
• Rising costs; diminishing resources
• Ageing, dependency and household
changes
• Labour market, globalisation and
government capacity
Assessment
•
•
•
•
Regimes not convergent
Innovation continues
No obvious ‘race to the bottom’
‘Permanent austerity?’
EU: 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
EU – 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
Declining 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
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
Why 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
The 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
Goodhart 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
Diversity and social spending Alesina 64
‘Race’ fractionalisation
Per capita GDP
Majoritarian
% pop 15-64
Latin American
Caribbean
Asian
-7.54*
1.92
-2.31
0.33
-2.42
-3.00
-0.09
Constant
-25.00
R sq.
0.69
Politics matters in Europe
Correlations with social spending
‘Race’ index
-.17
Left in govt.
.58**
Race, controlling for
Left in govt
-.06
Politics, diversity etc in Europe
‘Race’ fractionalisation
-.30
Left parties in cabinet
.51**
Pluralism
.13
Pop 15-64
-.24
R sq
.46
The 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
Choice and welfare:
UK version