The Continental Social Investment Turn: Sequencing Corrective and Transformative Welfare State Change in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy

Abstract

European welfare states have experienced a binary transformation characterized by recalibration of traditional social protection programs and expansion of employment-oriented social policies, favoring the emergence of dual-earner families. This article sheds a new light on the pathways leading to these transformations in continental Europe. Theoretically, we characterize continental European welfare states as a configuration of complementary and interacting labor market and social policy provisions. We conjecture that such welfare state types are prone to evolve through a sequential process of institutional change where new social policy provisions emerge to correct and enhance the effectiveness of previously implemented labor market policies in pursuit of novel policy objectives. The timing and pace of this sequence is mediated by governments’ cognitive orientations and their responsiveness toward domestic societal interests. Through a qualitative comparative process analysis, we find evidence of our theorized three-pronged sequence of institutional change in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy.