European Social Model: No Convergence from the East

Abstract

Quantitative evidence based on social expenditure suggests that since Esping-Andersen’s seminal study on welfare regimes, there has been a certain general convergence towards a European Social Model (ESM). The data, controlled for cyclical and demographic effects, show that, in recent years, social expenditures of EU-15 member states have converged, whereas in the mature non-EU welfare states this has not been the case.

In this long-term quantitative view, a tentative suggestion would be that Europeanization might be prevailing over path dependence of distinct models. However, the data also show a certain deviation from the model - the post-communist new member states (NMS) form a distinct group. This is confirmed by a cluster analysis based on social benefit generosity. To provide a background to these findings and, especially, to highlight the avenues for further investigation, the paper also looks at the institutional arrangements in the NMS. In particular, it draws attention to pension systems as a particularly sizeable component of the welfare state to illustrate how far most of the post-communist EU members diverge in terms of the institutional arrangements of their welfare systems.

It seems, then, that while the ‘deepening’ of European integration in other policy areas has been accompanied by a convergence towards a ESM in the EU-15 countries, the ‘widening’ of the EU has meant, at the same time, that there is now a group of states within the EU that diverge significantly from the dominant model.

Keywords: Deepening and widening, EU integration, European Social Model, social policy, welfare regime, pensions