Modernizing post-industrial care policies: conflict lines and coalitional dynamics

In this project, I analyze the role of political parties, business associations and trade unions in the reform of family policies in France, Germany and Switzerland.

 
Project description
(go to publications --> conference papers to download a paper presenting first results along the following lines)

The goal of this project is to develop a model of the politics of institutional change, linking insights from welfare state literature, institutionalist literature and analyses of external pressure (notably europeanization). It also further develops a methodological strategy to study and visualize reform politics both qualitatively and quantitatively (I have started to develop this strategy in my doctoral research). Empirically, the project is focused on reforms in French, German and Swiss family policies regimes between the 1970s and today.
The project speaks in the first place to the most recent neo-institutionalist literature, which argues that far-reaching institutional policy change takes place not only at “critical junctures”, but also gradually over time (see e.g. the works by Streeck and Thelen 2005, Hacker 2004 etc.). This literature focuses on endogenous dynamics of change (i.e. the idea that institutions themselves shape the politics of reform). However, this whole recent literature largely lacks a theorization and empirical analysis of the actual politics of change: Who advocates change and why? Along which conflict lines do actors form alliances for or against change? How are political majorities built, and under what contextual conditions is far-reaching institutional change possible or likely to occur? 

I argue that in order to answer these questions, we need to focus on three aspects: First, we need to trace the preferences, values and behavior of the relevant political actors, notably political parties, trade unions and employer organizations. Second, given the diversity of actor positions, we need to acknowledge that policies – and thus the policy reform spaces – are multidimensional. This means that reforms take place along several lines of conflict, and that actors may combine these different dimensions in ways that allow for political exchange. Finally, alliance potentials do not automatically lead to reforms. Whether actors actually build reform coalitions depends not least on the institutional context. In majoritarian systems, the flexibility for coalition-formation is lower than in proportional systems.

Family policy is an ideal policy field to analyze these dynamics for two main reasons: A) family policy is inherently multidimensional, because it relates to distributional social policy, gender equality, labor market regulation and education policy. Depending on the issue at stake, conflict lines in this policy field may oppose actors in different ways. If several conflict lines are salient in a specific reform process, multidimensionality creates a potential for various actor alliances. B) family policy in continental Europe is one of the few areas of distributional policies, where massive expansive change has occurred, not least under the influence of external pressure by the EU.

The continental welfare state has traditionally been characterized as a male breadwinner model, because women’s and children’s material well-being and citizenship rights depend on the male breadwinner. Since the 1970s, family and labor market instabilities have rendered the male breadwinner model increasingly obsolete as a social reality and a normative goal. Unemployment, divorce and precarious work-conditions have increased the number of individuals – men and women, but mostly women - with discontinuous employment biographies, who are unable to rely on a male breadwinner and who are, at the same time, weakly covered by the welfare state. The Bismarckian reliance on paid employment as the main source for eligibility to social benefits has become more and more dysfunctional. Moreover, the values of individualism and gender equality have gained prominence from the 1970s onwards, when more and more men and women refused to or failed to live up to the traditional gender roles. From the late 1970s onwards, some need for adaptation of family policy to the new needs and demands was widely perceived across the partisan spectrum in most countries.

However, “modernization” of the male breadwinner model can be achieved along different paths (Fraser 2001). I identify three models of family policy modernization (i.e. reforms of the traditional male breadwinner model): the working mother model, the recognition model and the societal transformation model.
The recognition model is based on the idea of decoupling family policy benefits and services from labor market participation. It recognizes care work, i.e. the birth and upbringing of children, as a basis for the eligibility to social rights. Examples of such a reform strategy include universal and equal allowances for all families, independent from income, or birth benefits for non working mothers. However, the recognition model does not aim at gender equality in the sense of more equal roles for men and women in the society. To the contrary, by rewarding care work, the recognition model creates negative incentives for women’s labor market participation. In contrast to the recognition model, the working mother model (see also the dual breadwinner model, Lewis 1997) aims at more equal gender roles by creating positive incentives for female “commodification”. Male and female gender roles become more alike since the typical female employment biography becomes more similar to the traditionally male pattern. The policy reforms belonging to this dimension of modernization provide benefits or services that help to reconcile work and care (day care centers, nannies, etc.). Finally, the societal transformation model aims at the most profound change of social norms, labor market organization and gender roles. It enables both parents to participate equally in the labor market and in care work. Policies supporting flexible work-care organization, such as part-time rights, job sharing or parental leave schemes belong to this category of instruments. In addition, the societal transformation model recognizes new family forms, such as single parent families and relies on parenthood, rather than employment, as the basis for social rights. Similarly to the working mother model, it is gender egalitarian, because it aims at equalizing the male and female work-care balance. And similarly to the recognition model, it upvalues care work as equally important to commodified work.

The four models of family policy can be understood as the quadrants of a two-dimensional policy space. A first dimension relates to the status of commodified work in the distribution of social rights and – more generally - to the legitimacy of public intervention in the private realm of the household. The second dimension relates to cultural values, i.e. to the level of aspired gender egalitarianism. Both the societal transformation model and the working mother model aim at more similar gender roles for both men and women. For each model of family policy, we can derive hypotheses on the political alliance that are likely to support it. The “old left”, i.e. the traditional Social Democracy and trade unions are mainly motivated by their positions on the state-market divide. They struggle for de-commodification and advocate ample state intervention in the redistribution of life chances. However, part of the European left has largely reoriented its ideological stance since the 1970s, under the influence of libertarian values (Kitschelt 1994). The Social Democratic parties in these countries can therefore be expected to privilege libertarian values over the state-market divide. Hence, there is an alliance potential between the old and the new left with regard to the societal transformation model, combining gender equality and decommodification. In addition, the old left – mainly trade unions – may also find a common ground with conservative forces in supporting policies that recognize parental care work by means of public subsidies. Trade unions organize mainly male workers. Hence, they may advocate the decommodifying character of recognition policies, even though the latter are not gender egalitarian. Conservative actors, however, are expected to advocate recognition policies precisely for their traditionalist aspects. I  would thus expect an alliance potential between the old left, Christian Democracy and right-wing conservative parties with regard to the recognition model. The male breadwinner model combines minimalist state intervention with a differentialist conception of gender roles. In the post-industrial context, I expect an alliance potential between liberal and conservative actors with regard to the male breadwinner model, since it upvalues paid work and preserves traditional gender roles. Economically liberal actors, in turn, have rather ample ideological leeway with regard to socially libertarian values. Hence, they might as well join in the support of a working mother model, particularly in post-industrial times, when most women cannot rely on a male breadwinner anymore. Therefore, there is a social-liberal alliance potential between liberal actors and the new left with regard to the working mother model. Moreover, employers organizations are also expected to increasingly support the working mother model, because of a future shortage in skilled labor. Hence, I expect the emergence of cross-class alliances between employers, the new left, and high skill unions in highly feminized sectors with regard to the working mother model.

The above hypotheses deal with the alliance potentials that emerge from the expected positioning of the political actors. They should be distinguished from actual reform-coalitions, which are formed in the back and forth of political negotiation in decision-making processes. Thus, the actual formation of reform-coalitions across countries depends on two additional factors a) exogenous influences – in this case the EU pushing for a working mother model in the context of the Lisbon agenda (the Barcelona targets of childcare infrastructure) and b) country-specific institutions structuring decision-making in the policy space. These factors differ considerably between the three selected countries: Switzerland is not a member of the EU, Germany is under much pressure by the goals of the Barcelona targets and France is a EU-country with a stronger tradition of female employment. With regard to institutions, Switzerland is the prototypical case of a consensual regime, France is more majoritarian and Germany is in between.
In order to investigate the above hypotheses on alliance-building and policy development over time, I examine policy-making since the 1970s, when post-industrial needs and demands appeared on the policy agendas. All successful and failed family policy reform processes at the national level since the early 1970s are taken into account (about 50 reforms total). Each element of reform can be classified according to the direction of reform (male breadwinner, working mother, recognition or societal transformation models). In order to analyse alliance-formation and coalition-building on these reforms, I retrace the main issues and debates of the reforms by means of secondary literature, face-to-face interviews with representatives of the main political actors, and primary sources such as governmental reports, parliamentary debates and reports on consultation procedures. The positions of the actors are coded on all these reform elements on a scale from 0 to 2. 1 means that the actor agrees to the position of the reform bill proposal, 2 means that an actor advocates a less generous policy (non-intervention, low benefits, etc) and 0 that the actor favors a more generous solution (universal, high benefit levels). I then analyse this data by multidimensional scaling and factor analysis, which allows displaying actors and issues spatially. The analyses and graphs show the alliances between actors. Based on qualitative process-tracing of the reform processes, I then explain why certain alliances materialized in particular processes, to what extent institutional logics played a role. Qualitative process-tracing and interviews also allow evaluating the impact of European legislation and pressure as a driving force for the development of family policy in a particular direction.

The analysis of family policy dynamics is then used to gain more general insights on the dynamics of institutional change, and more specifically gradual transformative change. Gradual transformative change (Streeck and Thelen 2005, Mahoney and Thelen 2010) is driven by coalitional dynamics, and my analysis contributes to the understanding of what drives these coalitional (re)configurations across time and countries.