The decline of the working-class vote, the reconfiguration of the welfare support coalition and consequences for the welfare state

Abstract

The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this 'middle-class shift' in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences.

Careerists Versus Coal-Miners: Welfare Reforms and the Substantive Representation of Social Groups in the British Labour Party

“…Long-term social changes were eroding the electoral base of left-wing parties in the 1990s. They needed to woo middle-class voters who were seen as increasingly individualistic, suspicious of large-scale government intervention in the economy, and more skeptical of welfare provision for poorer citizens (Heath, Jowell, and Curtice 2001;Evans and Tilley 2012;Gingrich and Hauserman 2015). Labour had spent fifteen years in opposition when Blair won the party leadership in 1994, and as a result he placed a strong priority on winning back middle-class voters who were perceived as having abandoned the party.…”

“…Publicsector workers typically earn less, and they tend to benefit a lot from the welfare state, not least because they are often employed in administering it. This should raise their support for welfare provision from a self-interested perspective (Gingrich and Hauserman 2015).…”

Recalibrating social protection: Electoral competition and the new partisan politics of the welfare state

“…If we look more closely, we see that welfare state politics today are no longer simply about expanding or retrenching traditional income maintenance programmes such as pensions and unemployment insurance, but are also increasingly concerned with measures to address 'new' social risks, such as parental leave, daycare and active labour market policies (Taylor-Gooby 2004;Häusermann et al 2013;Steinmo 2013;Gingrich & Häusermann 2015). Nevertheless, there is little consensus on how we should understand the 'new politics' of the welfare state.…”

“…As a number of scholars have argued, the transition to a service economy is linked to three main social structural trends: (1) a decline in the marginal utility of low-skilled or semi-skilled work, and a tendency of these workers to move into less-protected, peripheral sectors; (2) a reduction in the numerical importance of core, high-skilled industrial workers with high levels of protection; and (3) an increase in educated, disproportionately female service workers whose new social risks are not always adequately covered by traditional welfare state programmes (Estevez-Abe et al 2001;Iversen 2001;Palier & Thelen 2010;Beramendi et al 2015;Iversen & Soskice 2015;Oesch 2015). Given limited fiscal resources, however, these new opportunities are fraught with strategic trade-offs for both left and centre-right parties (Kitschelt & Rehm 2014Gingrich & Häusermann 2015). In addition to the traditionally prominent left-right dimension, which is based on the conflict of state-versus-market, a second, post-materialist libertarianauthoritarian dimension of party competition has emerged (Kitschelt 1994;Inglehart 1997;Kriesi et al 2008).…”

Comparative Social Policy: A Historical Overview of the Field

“…Criticism is also expressed in these two issues. Critical remarks are exemplified by the fact that the nature of class as the basis for political mobilization and coalitions has changed significantly since 1990 (Gingrich and Häusermann, 2015) and that the initial framework promoted by EspingAndersen ignored welfare services and the industrial sector of the economy (Buhr and Stoy, 2015).…”