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What's Globalization Got to Do with It? Economic Interdependence and the Future of European Welfare States1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Colin Hay
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Abstract

The appeal to globalization as a non-negotiable external economic constraint plays an increasingly significant role in the linked politics of expectation suppression and welfare reform in contemporary Europe. Yet, although it threatens to become something of a self- fulfilling prophecy, the thesis that globalization entails welfare retrenchment and convergence is empirically suspect. In this paper it is argued that there is little evidence of convergence amongst European social models and that, although common trajectories can be identified, these have tended to be implemented more or less enthusiastically and at different paces to produce, to date, divergent outcomes. Second, I suggest that it is difficult to see globalization as the principal agent determining the path on which European social models are embarked since the empirical evidence points if anything to de-globalization rather than globalization. The implications of this for the future of the welfare state in Europe and for the USA as a model welfare state regime are explored.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , 2006 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2006

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented as an inaugural lecture at the University of Birmingham and as the keynote address at the opening conference of the GENIE Network, University of Cyprus. The work presented here arises out of recently completed research on ‘Globalization, European Integration and the European Social Model’, which formed part of the ESRC's ‘One Europe or Several’ Research Programme (project grant L213252043). The author is indebted to Government and Opposition's referees and editors for their generous and perceptive comments on an earlier iteration.

References

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