Extract

Reforming, recalibrating and retrenching mature welfare states have been never-ending stories in Western societies and the welfare state literature since the two oil crises. Much ink has been spilled on the general electoral risk of reforming mature welfare states (e.g. Pierson 1994, 1996; Boeri et al. 2001), the importance of institutions (e.g. Bonoli 2001; Starke 2008) or the role of policy-makers, parties and party systems in welfare state reform(e.g. Ross 2000; Kitschelt 2001; Green-Pedersen 2002). A particular focus in this literature has been on Bismarckian welfare states, often characterized as ëfrozen continental landscapesí unable to enact structural reform despite the view that this welfare type was the most vulnerable regime during the process of post-industrialization (Esping-Andersen 1996, p. 27; Pierson 2001; Palier and Martin 2007). Often writing from a historical institutionalist perspective, scholars argued that Bismarckian welfare states exhibit special features and institutions that make them the most resistant regime to change (Bonoli and Palier 2007; Clegg 2007; Palier and Martin 2007; Palier 2010).