Family Policies in ‘Hybrid’ Welfare States after the Crisis: Pathways between Policy Expansion and Retrenchment

Abstract

The economic crisis has significantly challenged national welfare states and has often led to retrenchment. The question arises how countries have reacted to the crisis in the area of family policy – not directly connected to rising unemployment and also not as demanding for state spending as for example the pension system. This article analyzes family policy reforms during the crisis in three small European welfare states – Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Focusing on the ‘rationale’ behind the reforms, it aims to explore how family policy was affected by the crisis and whether the crisis gave rise to new policy pathways and ideas in the area. The exploratory case studies of reforms conducted in the three countries between 2009 and 2013 show that everywhere the pre‐crisis policy pathways were also continued in the period of crisis. The reforms were framed by diverse paradigms related to national‐specific contexts along with newly emerged austerity arguments. The Czech Republic shows a continued focus on a neo‐liberal paradigm, utilizing the crisis to introduce further residual measures, i.e. mostly negative re‐familializing reforms, mixed with de‐familializing policies based on the workfare paradigm. Strong crisis‐related discourse in Slovenia was accompanied by diverse austerity measures, which strengthened the social dimension of family policy and weakened a de‐familialistic effect of the pre‐crisis reforms. Austria, much less affected by the crisis, continues to combine social investment and ‘freedom of choice’ paradigms, introducing an ambivalent amalgam of positive familialistic and de‐familialistic family policy reforms.

Your position in society matters for how happy you are

“…The changes in Eastern Europe and the financial crisis in Southern Europe (see e.g., Blum, Formánkova, & Dobrotić, ; Rothstein, ) could, together with their having weaker welfare states, be a reason for the lower happiness levels found in those countries, in addition to the lower levels of equality and trust also found in those countries. However, the welfare state may have a positive impact on happiness in Eastern Europe, too, for example by delivering a high quality of health care.…”

Ageing Policies in Slovenia: Before and After “Austerity”

“…We will focus on the changes in policies for older people with the introduction of the austerity measures and how this affected the quality of life of older people in Slovenia regardless awareness process raised by the EY2012. We will examine the development and changes in the ageing policies in Slovenia within the recent policy discourse of the main trends in welfare policies such as de-familialization and refamilialization (Blum et al, 2014), individual responsibility, increased selectivity (Taylor-Gooby et al, 2017) and delegated governance (Morgan & Campbell, 2011;Greve, 2015).…”

Budućnost slovenske socijalne države: pogled iz savjetodavnih foruma

“…One of the proposed solutions here was child care organised by companies. Additionally, some participants emphasised the so-called freedom of choice that could be interpreted as a positive or negative re-familiarisation trend (see Blum et al, 2014). The negative elements of defamilialization pursued by social investment policies are for example the abolition of benefits that enabled mothers of small children not to work.…”