THE STATE AND THE NORDIC WELFARE STATE

Course: Introduction to the Nordic Welfare State

22 September , 2011

Johanna Rainio-Niemi

University of Helsinki

johanna.rainio@helsinki.fi

Why the state? Why not welfare? Much of the standard literature does not focus on the state Nonetheless: the state is there, implicitly, explicitly, ”naturally”

- The most central frame within which systematic and encompassing welfare policies

have been developed, discussed, compared (post 1945)

- Simply: no ”welfare state” without the component of the state

- Contemporary literature (in general): the state ”taken as granted”// treated as self-

evident

- Theoretical literature: from an excessive preoccupation with the nature of the

welfare state (ca. 1970s) to the virtual disapperance of the state from the

vocabularies (ca. 1990s)

- Public debates (since 1990s): general uneasiness with, especially, the concepts of the

state welfare reforms legitimated with needs to overcome of the burdens of the

past, its state-centredness

- From the ”welfare state” to ”welfare society”

Return to the black box of the state

The state is not self-evident, not at all

warrants more attention than has been the case

”return to the black box of the state” can provide new perspectives to

histories of welfare policies

…regarding the post-1945 period

…regarding histories before and after

why was the state seen to be so important in the post-1945 period?

how were the state-centred systems made (the making of the welfare state)

profoundly political questions….

The lecture considers

Historical trajectories

Analytical trajectories

Neo-Corporatism

The NORDIC model: key characteristics

(Europeanization and the Nordic welfare state?)

New openings in the study of the politics and policies welfare

Central questions / angles

Public vs. Private / Third Sector / Civil Society /Church

The State/ Public vs. Market /Private Economy vs. Social

Interventionist vs Laissez-Faire Democratic vs. Undemocratic

Big vs. Small Strong vs. Weak

Active // Preactive // Reactive // Passive

Two additional aspects

STATE BUDGET AS A MIRROR OF THE WELFARE STATE How big is the public sector? (expansion since 1945) Functions of the state: development and structure Mirrors the strenght of interest groups / political parties in society Where does the money come from? (note: public sector as an important area of employment too)

THE POLITICS OF LEGITIMACY Welfare policy is one of the most concrete and most visible outputs of the state = the

measure of state effectiveness that really matters Tax basis, willingness to pay taxes system performance

Historical trajectories: the big picture

From the liberal nightwatch state to a modern welfare state From poor-relief, assistance and protection to a much more systematic and

encompassive policy frameworks that cover a much wider field of issues

Beveridge Plan (Dec. 1942) as a blueprint of the modern welfare state national insurance to cover periods of non-employment (sickness, unemployment,

old age) + safety net for those who were not covered by the insurance / without

resources

defeating the ”five giants” (disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness, want) through

comprehensive health and education provision, a coherent housing/house-building

policy and measures to prevent the unemployment

radical propositions public policies / the state should be in response

how to fund these responsibilities?

From the Beveridge plan to the Nordic Model

National frames of legislation; ”the state” should take care in a systematic

and coordinated manner generated opposition // government was not ready to commit to the plan

public support was remarkable; could not be neglected altogether

did not materialise as such but led to the creation of national frames of legislation

on education, family allowances, healt care, national insurance, assistance etc.

the idea remained!

failure of the Beveridge plan as a starting point for the international fame of the

Nordic models of the welfare state (esp. Sweden)

The elements of the Nordic models for the welfare state

Traditions of equality // democracy // literacy rate Consideration of economic and social aspects at the same time: two sides of

the same coin ”socio-economic” as the core of the welfare policies // welfare state

Centrality of work // right (duty) to work //

Advanced legislation in many fields since the 19th century

Centrality of social democracy folkhemmet --> state as home of the

people

The principle of universalism

Nordic model 2/2

The famous cross-class compromises (workers – business - agriculture) of

the 1930s Were responses to the great depression and the rise of authoritarian

governments across Europe the strategy worked relatively well

Sweden was able to stay out of the WWII, too

Provided good starting points for becoming the model for countries that

were desperately looking for political , social and economic stability

Remember: this was a post-war situation // experiences of the WWII / of

the 1930s // WWI

Towards the post-1945 welfare STATE

There was a true strive for making all aspects of social services public; for

the increased role of the state “Everyone believed in the state. In part this was because everyone feared the

implications of a return to the terrors of the recent past and was happy to

constrain the freedom of the market in the name of the public interest”

“Whatever their other differences, political parties in power shared “a

common faith in the activist state, economic planning and large scale public

investment” (Judt Tony, Ill Fares the Land, 2010)

Trend was towards collective bargaining, economic and public policy

planning, progressive taxation and the provision of publically funded social

services (a’la Nordic countries)

Need for institutions and arrangements designed for the making of policy

compromises required from all sides (a´la Nordic countries)

Tensions beneath the making of the post-1945 welfare state

The process was nowhere straight-forward or simple Big questions: how to fund and share the expenses // how to target policies

Constitutional issues (cf. Austria, the U.S.) Limits to the state power, division of public authority between, for instance,

various levels / units of governance.

Consider: different traditions regarding the state’s ideal relation to civil society:

1. civil society and citizens need to be protected from the state (distrustful /

suspicious tradition)

2. citizens and the state’s administration need to be protected from civil society

(cf. nordic tradition of seeing civil society / private sector / family / market as

major sources of inequality)

The Nordic alliances

The historical alliance between the King and the land-owning peasants Participation in pursue common affairs through well-established and

structures of local governance (parishes / communes) The age of associations that mobilised the people Associations activities were in harmony with the state’s policies: civil

society mobilisation and the development of the state’s infrastructural

capacities and legitimacy were endorsing one another Absence of clear-cut boundaries between the state and civil society Instead: dense networks of institutional interdependencies between the

two and well-mobilized networks of associations that cover wide section

of society The specificity of the Nordic tradition: the state is seen as strong but

almost never discussed as being opposite, or antagonistic, to civil society

The Nordic “paradox” of strong state and strong civil society (Rainio-Niemi 2010)

The tradition of the strong state and an almost seamless fusion of it with

an equally strong civil society is a recurrent, primary theme in the

literature on Nordic political cultures (variations, of course)

“public/private mix”

Nordic view of the state as an instrument of popular will which is used to

control the private forces of market and family. (decommodification):

Welfare state = folkhemmet = people and state as one State and society used interchangeably; not as dichotomies

Sweden as the benchmark / synonym of the Nordic welfare state //

Finland as the exceptional case (more on this by other lecturers)

”In other words, a high degree of responsiveness by the state and

the incorporation of different demans into the state structures

through citizen organisations were two sides of the same coin, of a

kind of state-society alliance. Voluntary associations became the

mechanism in the interest mediation, with the so called

participatory corporatism as one of its later manifestations. Hence

the traditionally prominent role of associations other than service

providers in the Nordic countries, in fact their prominent role as

core elements in the whole political culture”

Salamon L.M. / Anheier H.K. (1998) Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the non-profit sector cross-nationally.

In: Voluntas 9, 213-248.

Neo-corporatism

Wide-based and centralised system of interest representation in all major

fields of industrial and occupational life Representatives of the central confederations of the trade unions, agrarian

producers, employers and the main business associations systematically

involved in the making of economic, social, public, welfare policies

Policy coordination and negotiation between the government, the central

business and labour market interest groups and political parties in parliament

”National passion for consensus” (Katzenstein 1985)

Democratic (neo-)corporatist versus authoritarian variations of corporatism

State corporatism vs. societal corporatism

Critical perspectives since the 1970s

Instead of the virtues of accessibility and participation, or policy coordination

and cooperation, the critics pointed to trends such as corporatisation,

technocratisation and bureaucratisation of public policy making

The influence of “extra-parliamentary” forces’ on government policies together

with state-intervention were seen to have detrimental effects on liberal

democracy

The semi-public authorization of the most powerful organizations reduced the

plurality of associational life // disregard for liberal democratic norms of

citizen participation and accountability

Trust-building exercises amongst the leaders of the most powerful associations

behind the “closed doors”

Challenging of the welfare state

Criticism against neo-corporatism is interconnected with the increased

criticism of the welfare state especially of the state’s role Mid-1970s as a turning point: the putting of an end to the endless expansion

In the field of theory: 1970s and early 1980s marked by massive debates on

the welfare state and its nature

Since 1980s ability to combine welfare and economic success? (democratic corportism,

Katzenstein 1985) On the other hand: Nordic welfare state as ”the most prominent example of

the ”pathology” of welfare states which has led to a general ”atrophy” of

civil society, entrepreneurship, citizens’ self-initiative, respect of diversity

etc.

Fragmentation of theory and practice

Towards more nuanced views (Esping-Andersen): the various models

respecting the different national contexts In course of the 1990s

Historical turn

- criticism of the monolithic, theoretical and a-historical models, embedding

into national contexts ( slight tendency towards a “nationalisation” of the

histories of the welfare policies) Transnational turn Beyond the nation state?

Cf. Christoph Conrad’s article

A turn away from the state...

Distance from state-centred ways of seeing, analysing, understanding and

conducting of welfare policies and politics

In reserach: Increased interest in citizen opinions, traditions, multilayred

historicity, religion, gender, every day life, NGO’s, institutions etc. (on

religion see Pirjo Markkola’s article)

In public debate: from the welfare state to welfare society, role of the third

sector networks, church (cf. Markkola)

Ongoing re-negotiations in the field of welfare policies

Renegotiation of the boundaries between public and private

- Who is responsible for what, who should pay; how much and for

what?

The aspect of Europeanization of economic policies an unavoidable

unravelling of the “socio-economic”?

the reconfiguration of the Nordic welfare system (Finland the only

country belonging to the Euro-zone)

Ongoing processes: the following angles are topical again….

Central questions / angles

Public vs. Private / Third Sector / Civil Society /Church The State/ Public vs. Market /Private Economy vs. Social Big vs. Small Strong vs. Weak Interventionist vs Laissez-Faire Democratic vs. Undemocratic Active // Preactive // Reactive // Passive

Plus: The transforming role of national authorities within the EU /

amidst the trends of globalisation? ”the state” of the post-1945

period’s welfare state is a different state than ”the state” of today