The New Politics of the Welfare State? A Case Study of Extra-Parliamentary Party Politics in Norway
| Author | Ann-Helén Bay,Elin H. Allern,Jo Saglie |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271301500302 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
European Jour nal of Social Secu rity, Volume 15 (2013), No. 3 249
THE NEW POLITICS OF THE WELFARE STATE?
A CASE STUDY OF EXTRAPARLIAMENTARY
PARTY POLITICS IN NORWAY
E H. A, A-H B and J S*
Abstract
According to the literature on the ‘new politics of the welfare state’, party politic s plays
a minor role in welfare policy outputs today. In this article, we ask what th e degree of
politicisation is below the leve l of government. Focusing on two speci c policy areas –
pension reform and anti-poverty polic y – and both substantive and procedural aspects
of politicisation in the case of Norway, we identify par ty policies and map intra-party
decision-making prior to the 20 05 general election. We rst conclude that neither polic y
area seemed to be strongly politicised, but nonetheless, there were limits to the ‘de-
politicisation’ of welfare policy even in a consensual state lik e Norway. Hence, we show
– or con rm – that counter-forces might exist between and within political parties in
advanced industrial societie s, yet to varying degrees across welfare policy elds.
Keywords: Norway; par ty organisation; pension reform; politicisation; poverty;
welfare po licy
1. INTRODUCTION
According to the growing literature on the ‘new politics of the welfare state’, part y
politics plays a minor role in welf are policy outputs today. It is widely argued that the
* Elin H. Al lern works in the Depa rtment of Politica l Science at the Universit y of Oslo. Address:
Department of Polit ical Science, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1097 Blindern , N-0317 Oslo, Norway;
e-mail: e.h. aller n@stv.uio.no; An n-Helén Bay works at t he Instit ute for Socia l Resea rch in Oslo. Addre ss:
Institute for Soc ial Research, P.O. Box 3233 Elisenberg, N-0208 O slo, Norway; e-mai l: ann.h.bay@
socialres earch.no; Jo Saglie a lso works at the Inst itute. Address: Ins titute for Social Res earch, P.O. Box
3233 Elisenberg, N- 0208 Oslo, Norway; e -mail: jo.sagl ie@socialresearch.no. Ea rlier versions of the
article were prese nted at the Norwegian Polit ical Science Conference s, Trondheim, 3–5Januar y 2007
and Tromsø, 28–30April 20 08; and the 4th EC PR General Conference , Pisa, 6–8Septemb er 2007. e
authors would lik e to thank Nicholas Aylott, Elisab eth Bakke, Henning Fi nseraas, Sta an Kumlin,
Axel West Pedersen, and t he workshop and panel par ticipants for their us eful comments.
Elin H. Al lern, Ann-Helén Bay and Jo Sag lie
250 Intersentia
eld of welfare policy is weakly politicised, owing to the various demographic and
economic cha llenges of the modern wel fare state. In th is article, we shed ne w light on
the topic by focusing on extra-parl iamentary party pol itics in one particular count ry:
Norway. We set out to investigate the extent of the politicisation of policy positions
and internal policy-making during the early 2000s, rather than measuring changes
over time.
We start by brie y summar ising the scholarly literature on the politics of
welfare policy, and conclude that what happens below the macro-level of the state
is still a largely moot point. e question is whether the alleged low degree of part y
politicisation in this eld materialises bet ween and within the par ties as well. Next, we
examine the concept of pol iticisation and how it can be understood and measured at
lower levels of polit ics. A er th at, we present and discuss our general research design:
an in-depth case study of Norwegian par ties within the elds of pension reform and
anti-poverty policy. We argue that Norway is a n interesting case from a comparative
perspective, not least as one of the major historical examples of extensive welfare
states in Europe. en, we describe and eva luate our data and research met hods.
e following empir ical analysis rst maps party policy positions and di erences,
and secondly, internal policy-mak ing processes. In the nal sections, we discuss our
ndings a nd their implications for future research.
2. POLITICAL PARTIES AND ‘THE NEW POLITICS OF THE
WELFARE STATE’
In the literature on recent welfare policy reforms, Paul Pierson’s work is o en
the centre of attention. Usually su mmarised as t he ‘new politics’ thesis, Pierson
(1994 and 1998) has convincingly argued that politicia ns have been caught in the
cross re between increasing expectations of welfare services among the voters and
an unavoidable need to curb increasing expenditure arising from demographic
and economic developments. As a consequence, the politics of social policy today
centres on the renegotiation, restructuring, and modernisation of the welfare state,
rather than on its dismantling through extreme retrenchment (Pierson 20 01). e
argument also i mplies that a broad political consensus about welfare state reform
has emerged, in the centre, bet ween the status quo and radical retrenchment, a mong
the defenders of the welfare state and t he advocates of dismantli ng social protection
(Pierson 1998: 553 ; see a lso Schludi 2005). us, the class-related partisan politics
– emphasised by the traditional ‘power resources approach’ (Korpi 1983) – is less
important for welfare polic y-making than it used to be. Moreover, the partis an arena
is not the only, or necessarily the most important, domain in which reform policy
is developed today: the corporat ist arena plays an equal ly important or larger role,
according to the ‘new politics’ thesis (Pierson 1998: 556). Contrary to the general
‘partis an theory of policy-ma king’ (Keman 200 6), it is argued that the role of p arties
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