Restructuring Swiss Welfare Politics: Post-Industrial Labor Markets, Globalization, and Welfare Values

In: Simon Hug and Hanspeter Kriesi (eds.) Value Change in Switzerland. Lanham: Lexington Press: 143-68, 2010

29 Pages Posted: 22 Oct 2015

See all articles by Silja Häusermann

Silja Häusermann

University of Zurich - Institute for Political Science

Stefanie Walter

University of Zurich - Institute for Political Science

Date Written: 2010

Abstract

We argue that this context of post-industrialism and welfare state restructuring affects the values of “labor” with regard to income redistribution and social insurance. Welfare values, i.e. stable preferences with regard to a desired outcome in terms of the distribution of risk and wealth in a society, become more heterogeneous, giving rise to new conflict lines, which cross-cut the traditional class cleavage. There is indeed a growing literature both in the fields of political economy (e.g. Rehm 2007, Mares 2003, Iversen and Soskice 2001) and welfare state research (e.g. Rueda 2005, Bonoli and Häusermann forthcoming) arguing that today’s welfare politics are not only fought along the lines of vertical class stratification anymore. In this chapter, we focus on two new structural conflict lines that are supposed to gain saliency in structuring people’s welfare values: labor market status (insiders vs. outsiders) and exposure to international competition. Both characteristics may foster intra-labor conflict and blur vertical class conflict patterns. The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, we examine whether these new welfare conflict lines surface in the Swiss case, and on the other hand, we analyze to what extent party choice and party political conflict patterns in Switzerland remain linked to conflicts over welfare values.

Keywords: globalization, deindustrialization, preferences

Suggested Citation

Häusermann, Silja and Walter, Stefanie, Restructuring Swiss Welfare Politics: Post-Industrial Labor Markets, Globalization, and Welfare Values (2010). In: Simon Hug and Hanspeter Kriesi (eds.) Value Change in Switzerland. Lanham: Lexington Press: 143-68, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2497464

Silja Häusermann

University of Zurich - Institute for Political Science ( email )

Dep. of International Relations
Seilergraben 49
CH-8001 Zurich
Switzerland

Stefanie Walter (Contact Author)

University of Zurich - Institute for Political Science ( email )

Dep. of International Relations
Seilergraben 49
CH-8001 Zurich
Switzerland

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