Volte-Face on the Welfare State: Social Partners, Knowledge Economies, and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies

Øyvind Søraas Skorge and Magnus Bergli Rasmussen
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Øyvind Søraas Skorge: Bjørknes University College and Institute for Social Research
Magnus Bergli Rasmussen: University of Oslo and Bjørknes University College

Politics & Society, 2022, vol. 50, issue 2, 222-254

Abstract: To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies (WFPs), which have surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make up an increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions. These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected by the preferences and power of unions and employers.

Keywords: welfare state; work-family policy; corporatism; gender gap; knowledge economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:50:y:2022:i:2:p:222-254

DOI: 10.1177/00323292211014371

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