복지축소 시대의 복지국가: 이념과 정치

Abstract

The welfare state lies at the core of European democracies in general and social democracy in particular. Historical development of the welfare state after WW II in Western Europe has reflected many characters of political ideology and partisan politics. They are the belief of social right, legitimacy of the state intervention into market, politicization of working class, class politics and class compromise, among others. Especially, it has been much emphasized of the significance of social class in the politics of welfare state in Western Europe. Long recognized as a defining feature of the European democracies, the welfare state currently commands greater attention then ever. Even at a time of worsening inequality, demands for retrenchment have grown more insistent. The social democratic governments in Sweden and the Netherlands have implemented a number of important reforms of social security, both retrenchments and institutional adjustments. The pattern of re-commodification in the Netherlands and Sweden constitutes a puzzle for the welfare state literature. The most influential accounts of welfare state development emphasize the institutional stability of welfare state arrangements because of the political difficulty of reform. Meanwhile, others argue that this retrenchment may fundamentally change the ideology and politics of the welfare state in Europe. This paper argues that the process of decommodification in the era of expansion and recommodification in the era of retrenchment can be studied using the same analytical approach. The issue of class and welfare state politics is still one that provokes vigorous and complex argument even in the era of welfare retrenchment. In European societies, especially in the era of wel- fare expansion, interest groups and political partisanship were in fact largely class-based. Recent welfare reforms in Sweden, the Netherlands, and in Britain pro- vide ample empirical grounds for questioning the idea that a pro- gressive weakening of the class character of welfare state repre- sents a generic feature of the poli- tics of advanced societies. I focus on the role of class and politics as the principal players defending and reforming welfare state. Com- pared to Sweden, the relative weakness of organized labor and social democracy in the Nether- lands is an important factor for explaining the greater degree of recommodification in the Nether- lands than in Sweden.