1/28/2008
Jason Beckfield, Harvard
Regionalization and Retrenchment: The Impact of European Integration on the Welfare State
Sponsored by CWES/co-sponsored by SIA
Two central questions have sparked much debate over the European welfare state. Is there evidence of long-anticipated retrenchment? If so, is globalization the cause? This presentation redirects these debates by showing that there is evidence of retrenchment in Europe, and that regional integration - not globalization - accounts for it. Regional integration is conceptualized as the construction of supranational political economy in negotiated and bounded regions through political institutionalization and market expansion. Regional political integration should constrain the welfare state through policy feedbacks, the politics of blame avoidance, and the adoption of classical-liberal policy scripts, while regional economic integration should constrain the welfare state by expanding labor markets and undermining labor unions. These arguments are assessed with time-series cross-section models and data from 13 European Union (EU) and non-EU states. The results show that (1) there is evidence of retrenchment, (2) regionalization is significantly associated with retrenchment, and (3) the effect of regional integration is dampened in the strongest welfare states.
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