THE STATE AND THE NORDIC WELFARE STATE

1. 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

2. 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”

3. 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….

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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)

12. 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: • civil society and citizens need to be protected from the state (distrustful / suspicious tradition) • 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)

13. 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

14. 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)

15. Salamon and Anheier’s definition of the Nordic model • ”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.

16. 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

17. 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”

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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)

21. 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…. 

22. 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