The Dual Transformation of the German Welfare State

199 Pages·2004·1.195 MB·English

by  Peter Bleses, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (auth.)

The Dual Transformation
of the German Welfare
State
Peter Bleses and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
New Perspectives in German Studies
General Editors: Professor Michael Butler, Head of the Department of German
Studies, University of Birmingham and Professor William Paterson, Director of
the Institute of German Studies, University of Birmingham
Over the last twenty years the concept of German studies has undergone major
transformation. The traditional mixture of language and literary studies, related
very closely to the discipline as practised in German universities, has expanded
to embrace history, politics, economics and cultural studies. The conventional
boundaries between all these disciplines have become increasingly blurred, a
process which has accelerated markedly since German unification in 1989/90.
New Perspectives in German Studies, developed in conjunction with the
Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, has been designed
to respond precisely to this trend of the interdisciplinary approach to the study
of German and to cater for the growing interest in Germany in the context of
European integration. The books in this series will focus on the modern period,
from 1750 to the present day.
Titles include:
Peter Bleses and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
THE DUAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE GERMAN WELFARE STATE
Michael Butler and Robert Evans (editors)
THE CHALLENGE OF GERMAN CULTURE
Essays Presented to Wilfried van der Will
Michael Butler, Malcolm Pender and Joy Charnley (editors)
THE MAKING OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 1848–1998
Paul Cooke and Andrew Plowman (editors)
GERMAN WRITERS AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE
Dealing with the Stasi
Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Karl Kaiser (editors)
GERMANY’S NEW FOREIGN POLICY
Decision-Making in an Interdependent World
Jonathan Grix
THE ROLE OF THE MASSES IN THE COLLAPSE OF THE GDR
Margarete Kohlenbach
WALTER BENJAMIN
Self-Reference and Religiosity
Henning Tewes
GERMANY, CIVILIAN POWER AND THE NEW EUROPE
Enlarging NATO and the European Union
Maiken Umbach
GERMAN FEDERALISM
Past, Present, Future
New Perspectives in German Studies
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The Dual Transformation
of the German Welfare
State
Peter Bleses
Research Fellow, Law Department,
University of Oldenburg, Germany
and
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Social Policy Research,
Bremen University, Germany
© Peter Bleses and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser 2004
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004978-1-4039-1784-3
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DOI 10.1057/9780230005631
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bleses, Peter.
The dual transformation of the German welfare state/Peter Bleses and
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser.
p. cm. — (New perspectives in German studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Germany—Social policy. 2. Welfare state—Germany.
I. Seeleib—Kaiser, Martin. II. Title. III. Series.
HV278.B58 2004
330.12’6—dc22
2004044699
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04
Contents
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Part I The Policy Dimension
1. Evaluating Policy Change: Some Theoretical and
Methodological Remarks 9
2. Historical, Normative and Institutional
Foundations of the German Welfare State in the
Golden Post-World War II Era 14
2.1 Historical background 14
2.2 Norms and institutions 17
2.3 Summarising the social policy concept 27
3. Socio-economic Developments since the Mid-1970s 29
3.1 Economic discontinuities and the (preliminary)
end of full employment 29
3.2 The standard employment relationship on the retreat 33
3.3 The end of the strong male breadwinner model? 36
4. The Changing Normative and Institutional Design of
Social Policy 40
4.1 A quantitative perspective 41
4.2 A qualitative perspective 47
4.3 The dual transformation of the German welfare state 89
Part II The Political Dimension
5. Theories Explaining Welfare State Change 97
5.1 Political and institutional explanations 97
5.2 Socio-economic explanations 104
v
vi Contents
5.3 Evaluating the political, institutional and
socio-economic explanations 109
5.4 A constructivist approach 110
6. Changing Interpretative Patterns 114
6.1 Globalisation limits social policy 116
6.2 Markets, personal responsibility and the welfare state 117
6.3 The labour market policy discourse 119
6.4 The pension system within the political discourse 127
6.5 Debates on family policy 134
6.6 New interpretative patterns guiding
social policy reforms 140
Part III Conclusions
7. Can Germany still be Considered a Conservative
Welfare State? 145
7.1 Reforming the welfare state – summary of the
main policy changes 146
7.2 Explaining welfare state change 150
7.3 The German welfare state from a
comparative perspective 151
Notes 155
Bibliography 168
Index 187
List of Tables
1.1 Modes of social policy intervention based on the
work–welfare nexus 11
4.1 Development of monthly child allowance
benefits: 1970–2002 80
4.2 Development of child tax allowances: 1962–2002 82
4.3 Supply of childcare facilities (number of places as
a percentage of age group): 1975–1998 85
5.1 Public support for state responsibility in various
policy areas of the welfare state (%) 108
vii
List of Figures
3.1 Annual economic growth rates: 1966–2002 30
3.2 Number of registered unemployed: 1965–2002 31
3.3 Number of labour market participants: 1970–2002 32
3.4 Unemployment rates: 1950–2001 33
3.5 Female labour force participation rates by age: 1971–2001 37
3.6 Female labour force participation rates in East and
West Germany: 1991–2001 37
4.1 Social spending as a percentage of GDP: 1975–2001 43
4.2 Employers’ contributions to social insurance schemes
as a percentage of gross wage: 1975–2003 44
4.3 Social spending in east and west as a percentage
of GDP: 1991–2001 45
4.4 Expenditures for selected social policies by function
as a percentage of GDP: 1995–2001 47
4.5 Percentages of registered unemployed receiving
unemployment insurance and unemployment
assistance benefits: 1975–2002 54
4.6 Participants in measures of ALMP (training and
re-training, public employment programmes): 1991–2002 58
4.7 Early retirement due to unemployment: 1975–2001 72
5.1 Foreign trade (exports and imports) as a percentage
of GDP: 1975–2002 106
5.2 Challenges, political discourse, interpretative
patterns and policy responses 112
viii
Preface
Welfare state reforms have been at the centre of German domestic pol-
icy debate for the past several decades, and in recent years this debate
has gathered momentum. While international comparative analyses
have for many years stressed the continuity of the German welfare
state, numerous social policies have in fact been undergoing continuous
reform. The common argument has been that policy development is
guided by incremental reforms rather than by substantive institutional
changes. Despite recently revived interest in the welfare state, many
studies have been limited in their scope, concentrating on specific
reforms in a limited number of welfare state programmes over relatively
short time spans.
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the many social policy
reforms which have been enacted within the realms of wage earner-
centred and family-oriented social policies since the mid-1970s. Our
analysis is guided by the question of whether social policy development
has been dominated by continuity or by change. In contrast to numer-
ous accounts which focus on individual arenas within the welfare state,
we argue that we have indeed been witnessing substantial overall policy
changes. We characterise the German welfare state as one which has
been undergoing a dual transformation. Furthermore, we demonstrate
how the theories traditionally used to explain welfare state development,
namely, socio-economic, institutional, and the ‘parties matter’ theories,
cannot sufficiently account for the nature and direction of Germany’s
social policy changes. Finally, we identify the emergence and eventual
dominance of new interpretative patterns within the political discourse
as the primary cause for the substantive policy changes.
The initial idea for this book originated in the late 1990s, at a time
when both of us were working on different research projects at the
Centre for Social Policy Research (CeS) at Bremen University (Bleses/
Seeleib-Kaiser 1998; 1999). Our collaborative work was put to the test as
we both left the CeS only shortly after the idea was hatched. From 1998
to 2002 Peter Bleses worked at the Institute of Sociology at Leipzig
University, before joining the Law Department at the University of
Oldenburg. Between 1999 and 2002 Martin Seeleib-Kaiser was DAAD
Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Duke University,
Durham (North Carolina), before once again joining the CeS and the
ix