The four global worlds of welfare capitalism: Institutional, neoliberal, populist and residual welfare state regimes

Abstract

What welfare state regimes are observed when the analysis is extended globally, empirically and theoretically? We introduce a novel perspective into the ‘welfare state regimes analyzes’ – a perspective that brings developed and developing countries together and, as such, broadens the geographical, empirical and theoretical scope of the ‘welfare modelling business’. The expanding welfare regimes literature has suffered from several drawbacks: (i) it is radically slanted towards organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries, (ii) the literature on non-OECD countries does not use genuine welfare policy variables and (iii) social assistance and healthcare programmes are not utilized as components of welfare state effort and generosity. To overcome these limitations, we employ advanced data reduction methods, exploit an original dataset that we assembled from several international and domestic sources covering 52 emerging markets and OECD countries and present a welfare state regime structure as of the mid-2010s. Our analysis is based on genuine welfare policy variables that are theorized to capture welfare generosity and welfare efforts across five major policy domains: old-age pensions, sickness cash benefits, unemployment insurance, social assistance and healthcare. The sample of OECD countries and emerging market economies form four distinct welfare state regime clusters: institutional, neoliberal, populist and residual. We unveil the composition and performance of welfare state components in each welfare state regime family and develop politics-based working hypotheses about the formation of these regimes. Institutional welfare state regimes perform high in social security, healthcare and social assistance, while populist regimes perform moderately in social assistance and healthcare and moderate-to-high in social security. The neoliberal regime performs moderately in social assistance and healthcare, and it performs low in social security, and the residual regime performs low in all components. We then hypothesize that the relative political strengths of formal and informal working classes are key factors that shaped these welfare state regime typologies.

Új tendenciák a jólét kapcsán. Napjaink jóléti modelljének szakirodalmi elemzése

“…Az Esping-Andersen tipológiájára épülő, s azt további két modellel kiegészítő jóléti állam tipológiától eltérő modellszerkezetet fogalmazott meg Yörük, Öker és Tafoya 2022-ben. A kutatók véleménye szerint napjaink OECD országainak piacgazdasága négy jóléti rezsimtípust különböztet meg: az intézményi, a neoliberális, a populista és reziduális rendszereket (Yörük -Öker -Tafoya 2022). Az állam az újraelosztást mind a négy rezsimtípusban más és más módon hajtja végre.…”

“…Míg az intézményes jóléti államok az univerzális alapokon járó szociá lis programokat helyezik előtérbe, addig a neoliberális rezsimek a piaci mechanizmusokra támaszkodva rászorultsági elv mentén valósítják meg a redisztribúciót. A reziduális jóléti államok -melyek már inkább csak Kelet-Európában fellelhetők -korlátozott szociális védelmet és juttatásokat biztosítanak, a populista rendszerek pedig célzott szociális programokra támaszkodva biztosítanak előnyöket a társadalom egy-egy jól körül határolható csoportjának (Yörük -Öker -Tafoya 2022).…”

Healthcare expansion in Indonesia and Thailand: a causal mechanism and its implications for welfare regimes

“…Furthermore, Thailand emphasises its commitment to development-universalism by providing substantial social assistance and health services to the informal sector, both in an effort to quell activism and mobilise political support. The healthcare regimes in Thailand are also characterised by semi-corporatist welfare systems that were implemented during the post-war period and expanded during the neoliberal era (Yörük, Öker, & Tafoya, 2022). The results of this study contrast with those of previous studies (eg Sumarto, 2020), which attribute Indonesia and Thailand to post-productivism.…”

The squeaky wheel gets the grease: Violent civil unrest and global social assistance provision

“…Political explanations of social assistance programs examine electoral competition, the political ideology of incumbent parties, share in cabinets or parliaments, social movements, protest events, ethnic conflicts, and governmental logic of discipline that influence the provision, distribution and expansion of social assistance programs. Our previous literature review (Yörük et al, 2022 ) illustrates that while studies on party politics constitute the majority of the publications on political determinants/causes, contentious politics is the least popular theme. In addition, publications on the social assistance programs in the Global South are more likely to analyze contentious political factors, whereas the publications in the Global North are more inclined toward party politics.…”