The book investigates the processes of welfare state reform in the UK and Germany between the late 1970s and 2003. Adopting a programme-level perspective, it systematically compares processes of retrenchment, expansion and restructuring in three core social policy domains. The book suggests that unemployment support and public pension programmes have been subjected to retrenchment and restructuring, while family policies have been extended in both countries. However, patterns of retrenchment and restructuring differ across countries and programmes. Arguing in favour of multi-causal explanation ... More

The book investigates the processes of welfare state reform in the UK and Germany between the late 1970s and 2003. Adopting a programme-level perspective, it systematically compares processes of retrenchment, expansion and restructuring in three core social policy domains. The book suggests that unemployment support and public pension programmes have been subjected to retrenchment and restructuring, while family policies have been extended in both countries. However, patterns of retrenchment and restructuring differ across countries and programmes. Arguing in favour of multi-causal explanations of reform processes and outcomes, the book stresses the relevance of three sets of explanatory factors: shifts in party policy preferences and power relations, three institutional variables and contingent factors impinging on policy direction and profiles. Within pension policy, the relevance of different institutional characteristics and the respective balance between private and public forms of retirement suggest that the concept of ‘path dependence’ is particularly instructive. By contrast, differences in programme structures and their role within national political economies prove to be most relevant for the understanding of changes in unemployment support policy. Less institutionally embedded and expanding, the trajectories of family policies have to be seen in the context of dynamic party policy preferences.