This book examines how the Netherlands managed to create and maintain one of the world’s most generous and inclusive welfare systems despite having been dominated by Christian-democratic or ŸconservativeŒ, rather than socialist dominated governments, for most of the post-war period. It emphasizes that such systems have strong consequences for the distribution of income and risk among different segments of society and argues that they could consequently only emerge in countries where middle class groups were unable to utilize their key electoral and strong labor market position to mobilize against the adverse consequences of redistribution for them. By illustrating their key role in the coming about of solidaristic welfare reform in the Netherlands, the book also offers a novel view of the roles of Christian-democracy and the labor union movement in the development of modern welfare states. By highlighting how welfare reform contributed to the employment miracle of the 1990s, the book sheds new light on how countries are able to combine high levels of welfare generosity and solidarity with successful macro-economic performance.
- Cover
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Preface
- Part I - History and Theory
- 1. The Dutch Welfare Puzzle
- The Uneven Trajectory of Dutch Welfare State Development
- Unions, Employers, and the Importance of Broad Worker Solidarity
- The New Politics of Welfare Reform in the Netherlands
- The Organization of the Book
- 2. The Politics of Social Solidarity
- Welfare Reform and the Logic of Solidarity
- Christian Democracy and the Political Foundations of Social Solidarity
- Organized Labor and the Question of Inclusiveness
- Solidarity in the Age of Retrenchment
- Part II - The Politics of Welfare State Expansion
- 3. Welfare Reform in the Age of Austerity
- Immediate Postwar Measures
- The First Major Reform: The Introduction of the Unemployment Insurance Act
- The Organization of Social Insurance
- 4. Welfare State Expansion and the Confessional Preoccupation with Personal Responsibility and Self-Help
- Slow Progress on Most Fronts
- The First Landmark Act: The Introduction of the General Old Age Act
- 5. Completing the Social Insurance System
- The Confessional Turnabout and the Introduction of the General Assistance Act
- Health Insurance Reform and the Limits of Solidarity
- Improving the Generosity of Unemployment Insurance Protection
- Equal Opportunity and the Introduction of the Act on Disability Insurance
- 6. Catering to the Low Paid
- The General Old Age Act and the Introduction of the Social Minimum
- Towards a Truly Inclusive Welfare System: The Introduction of the Net-Net Link
- The Rapid Expansion of Social Care and Social Housing Programs
- Part III - The Politics of Retrenchment
- 7. The Emergence of Welfare Without Work
- The Dutch Disability Insurance Program and Its Use for Redundancy Purposes
- Dealing with the Return of Long-Term Unemployment
- Labor Redistribution and the Introduction of Industrial Early Retirement Schemes
- 8. Tackling the Inactivity Crisis
- The Struggle Over Retrenchment
- Towards a More Coherent Retrenchment Agenda
- The 1987 Reform of the Social Insurance System
- 9. Towards an Active Welfare State
- Tackling the Disability Insurance Crisis
- The Long Road Towards Administrative Social Insurance Reform
- The Purple Government’s Work Strategy
- 10. Population Ageing and the Need for Further Reform
- The Reform Agenda of the Second Balkenende Government
- The 2005 Overhaul of the Health Insurance System
- Old-Age Provision and the Challenge of Population Ageing
- The Changing Landscape of Social Welfare Provision
- Part IV - Conclusion
- 11. The Political Determinants of Solidaristic Reform
- Reconsidering the Uneven Trajectory of Dutch Welfare State Development
- The Future of the Dutch Welfare State
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Figures and Tables
- Figure 7.1 Labor force participation rate of men aged 55 to 64 in various countries (in percent) from 1965 to 2000
- Figure 7.2 The number of disability benefit recipients per 1,000 active labor market participants by age in various countries in 1990
- Figure 8.1 The social minimum compared to average wages in industry, 1970-1995
- Figure 10.1 Public spending on old-age pension provision, health care, and other social programs as a percentage of the gross national product from 1980 to 2015
- Table 7.1 The number of benefit recipients of various social insurance programs, the general assistance program and early retirement schemes, 1970-1990 (in thousands of recipients)
- Table 7.2 Number of participants in various early exit pathways as a percentage of the number of non-employed men aged 60-64, 1975-1990
- Table 10.1 The use of the wage indexation mechanism since 1980
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