Did welfare states change radically from welfare towards workfare or was such a shift absent and was welfare state change regime specific instead? This paper assesses this question for sixteen advanced capitalist democracies for the period 1985-2002, using an innovative method, fuzzy-set ideal type analysis. This study shows that the mainstream welfare state literature's prediction of no radica...

International Integration, Risk and the Welfare State How does international integration affect the welfare state? Does it call for a leaner or an expanded welfare state? International integration may affect the distortions caused by welfare state activities but also the risks motivating social insurance mechanisms. This paper addresses these potentially counteracting effects in a fully specifi...

Building on the social science literature, we hypothesized that population health indicators in wealthy industrialized countries are 'clustered' around welfare state regime types. We tested this hypothesis during a period of welfare state expansion from 1960 to 1994. We categorized data from 19 wealthy countries into 4 different types of welfare state regimes (Social Democratic, Christian Democ...

Within a two-sector-two-country model of trade with aggregate scale economies and unionisation, a more generous welfare state in one country increases welfare in that country and can have positive spillover effects on the other. Furthermore, synchronised expansions of social security are more welfare enhancing than unilateral ones. Our results counter the fears that a race to the bottom in soci...