The Regulatory Rescue of the Welfare State

Abstract

The regulatory state and the welfare state can be described in terms of contrasting pairs of 'types of policies' and 'types of politics' following Lowi (1972). The paradigmatic regulatory type of policy is market coordination, and its type of politics is nonmajoritarian, technical and supranational. The welfare state has redistribution as its paradigmatic type of policy, and the dominant type of politics is majoritarian, party-political and national. This paper dissects these distinctions. Public sector reforms mean that regulatory types of policy can increasingly be found within welfare service provision. Different arrangements for labour market coordination are integral to different welfare state regimes, and at the same time these regulatory arrangements are concerned with combating market failure and promoting efficiency. There are abundant examples of technical, expertocratic policy-making within the welfare state and a high level of supranational policy exchange. Delegation is important to the institutionalisation of the welfare state, as are nonmajoritarian commitments to social rights, secured for example for migrants. These findings cast doubt on the characterisation of welfare state policy-making as political and partisan. It is suggested that the interpenetration of regulatory politics enhances the robustness of the welfare state in the face of international market integration, while at the same time biasing policy towards the promotion of efficiency and suppressing the importance of solidaristic political values.

Regulating-for-Welfare: A Comparative Study of “Regulatory Welfare Regimes” in the Israeli, British, and Swedish Electricity Sectors

“…One such goal, incompatible with the new regulatory regime yet still politically and socially salient, is that of welfare and income redistribution through the utilities. The accepted view of this issue is that the utilities and other state‐owned enterprises “were not part of the welfare state as it is conventionally understood,” and their privatization, as Deborah Mabbett argues, “had little direct effect on the welfare state,” other than in terms of indirect strains on social provision (Mabbett, forthcoming). This article argues, however, that the importance of welfare aspects in the utilities is greater than has been understood so far.…”

The boundary conditions for regulation: Welfare systems, state traditions, and the varied governance of work safety in Europe

“…Indeed, Mabbett (2010) argues that the regulatory state might potentially come "to the rescue" of the welfare state in times of austerity by achieving redistributive goals through functionally equivalent forms of regulation rather than direct public expenditure. Levi-Faur (2014) coins the term "regulatory welfare state" to capture this functional equivalence, insofar as regulatory instruments of rule making and enforcement can have redistributive purposes that substitute for fiscal redistributions classically associated with the welfare state.…”

The regulatory state and beyond

“…The communications sector actors have in common a trend towards oversight by reference to rules, displacing discretion, whether the rules and oversight are coming from ministries or agencies. Furthermore, the deployment of regulatory state mechanisms is not restricted to economic sectors, but also includes the redistributive functions of the state (Levi-Faur 2013Mabbett 2011).…”