Does Discourse Matter in the Politics of Welfare State Adjustment?

Abstract

In the reform of the welfare state, countries' experiences depend not only on their economics, institutions, and policy responses but also on politics, that is, on governments' ability to gain agreement for reform through discourse, understood as both a set of ideas and an interactive process. This article seeks to show not only how discourse matters but also when it matters, that is, when it acts as a causal influence on welfare reform, altering perceptions of interests and overcoming institutional obstacles to change. It demonstrates this through the examination of three matched sets of cases in which the presence of a coherent discourse contributed to the success of welfare state reform and its absence contributed to its failure. The matched pairs are Britain and New Zealand, the Netherlands and Germany, and Italy and France.