The Welfare State: Internal Challenges, External Constraints

Abstract

No account of recent development in west European politics would be complete without an in-depth consideration of the present and future of the welfare state — for three main reasons. First, welfare institutions and programmes are central to the functioning of European economies and labour markets and are underpinned by long-standing political and financial commitments, popular support and vested interests. Second, in recent years the welfare state has risen to the top of the political agenda, not just because of attacks made on it by the neoliberal right in certain countries but because it now faces a number of unprecedented challenges, both from within domestic political economies and from the external economic environment. And third, controversy around attempts to put in place a European ‘social dimension’ has exposed the different conceptions of social policy among member states and revealed the limits to European intervention.

This chapter contains material and arguments developed at greater length in Rhodes (1996a).