Policy processes

Writing when pressures towards welfare retrenchment were growing, Esping-Andersen observed that ‘a theory that seeks to explain welfare-state growth should also be able to understand its retrenchment and decline’ (1990, p. 32), and stressed the extent to which the coalitions that contributed to its growth also protect the welfare state from decline. This is a theme taken up in his later work, and echoed by many of those following his approach. Gamble has since indicated the ‘irreversibility’ of the welfare state, since the variety of welfare regimes all belong to the same transformation of capitalism where the welfare state ‘has become embedded in both the politics and the political economy of all the Western economies’ (Gamble, 2016, pp. 28–9). The trouble is that there are qualifications that need to be made to this generalization. First, it only applies to the advanced capitalist states, and even within them there are grounds for rejecting the view that all should be called ‘welfare states’. Second, a problem which is particularly evident in Esping-Andersen’s approach, and which Gamble implicitly endorses, is that the notion of distinguishing regimes implies that some will be stronger than others. In other words, regime theory as originally developed primarily offers an explanation of differences in the growth of social policy in a specific number of states. It does not offer much in predictive terms either for the explanation of retrenchment or for events in states very different to Esping-Andersen’s original sample. Furthermore, in its emphasis on patterns it avoids the determinism of the theories it replaced, by an emphasis on the economic, political and cultural factors that have influenced the diverse policies it identifies.