National Welfare States, European Integration and Globalization:A Perspective for the Next Century

Abstract

Where are we at with European integration in the context of increasing world market interdependence? How does European integration already affect national welfare states? How does the asynchronic realization of the four market freedoms in building the Single Market affect the developmental potential for a European vision of welfare? Is Europe a special case in world market integration? Does the Western European case offer unique chances for defending its welfare state cultures-if not any more at the national, then now at the European level? Are these chances special compared with other integration efforts such as NAFTA? Questions such as these are confronted in this essay. The author sees the twenty-first century as a special window of opportunity for re-embedding the post-World War II welfare state compact at the European level, though this will not take the form of a déjà vu, of a "European welfare state". Rather it may take the form of a mixture of European "re-insurance" of basic welfare elements, "integrated" welfare state reform efforts EC-wide and sectoral "buffer insurance" ( for example for European Monetary Union in the area of unemployment). Such steps require a constitutional move towards a full economic and fiscal union. Compared with the USA Europe will otherwise never be able to "get its act together". An EFTA will not do in Europe, on such saturated welfare state terrain.Social disintegration is not a spectator sport-those on the sideline also get splashed with mud from the field. (Rodrik : )

Dissolving the Public Realm? The Logics and Limits of Neo-liberalism

“…This subservient and enabling conception of the public realm is what aligns New Labour with US centred neo-liberal globalisation -and what disjunctures it from the 'European social model' (Ginsburg, 2001;Leibfried, 2000;Taylor-Gooby, 2001b). But its stronger conception of the public realm (as something more than just corporate welfare) separates New Labour from US neo-liberalism (Kingfisher, 2002;Whitfield, 2000).…”

Social Assistance Benefits and European Coordination

“…The interaction between the EU and member states policies is called Europeanization (Vink, 2003). Europeanization can have both a direct and an indirect impact on national social protection systems, where direct effects result in implementation of EU social policies, whilst indirect effects entail the creation of a single European social model (Leibfried, 2000). In the field of social protection policy, especially with respect to social assistance benefits, the EU influence on national policies can be observed via the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy, and later the Europe 2020 Strategy.…”

Welfare Regimes and the Incentives to Work and Get Educated

“…Despite the fact that European market integration has been remodelling welfare states which increasingly find themselves bound into and caught up in a complex multi-tiered policy-making system which links the national social policies more closely together (Leibfried, 2000), differences in national welfare systems are as strong as ever. Esping-Andersen (1990) distinguishes between four different basic welfare regimes: 'Mediterranean' or 'Southern' (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece), where family policy is relatively underdeveloped and the range and coverage of benefits less widespread than in the other regimes (Esping-Andersen and Sarasa, 2002;Hamnett, 2009).…”

“…However, as the population ages, European countries and regions "confront the same social and demographic problems that all developed welfare states do: falling birth rates and increasing longevity subvert the financial structure of most pension insurance systems. Medical progress and increased longevity lead to a continuous growth of health costs" (Leibfried, 2000: Scandinavian Social-democratic welfare states also guarantee higher levels of pensioner income security and are generally considered better prepared to meet the challenges of ageing than countries with alternative welfare states (de Beer, 2007). c)…”