not if ideal types are goals in themselves, but only if they are a means to a goal; namely, the representation of a reality, which cannot yet be described using laws (Klant, 1984). This means that typologies are only fruitful to an empirical science that is still in its infancy. In contrast, a mature empirical science emphasizes the construction of theories and not the formulation of typologies.
They, not surprisingly, see the ‘sociology of welfare states’ as in its infancy. In this sense, typologization is ‘a means to an end – explanation – and not an end in itself’ (Arts and Gelissen, 2002, p. 140). In a similar vein, van Kersbergen and Vis (2014) point out that Esping-Andersen confuses his typological method with ‘ideal type’ analysis, but they go on to argue for the use of typologies as way to ‘reduce complexity for analytical and comparative purposes’. Their argument is that reducing complexity through typologization is the purpose of the exercise rather than a flaw in the approach per se (van Kersbergen and Vis, 2014, pp. 67–74). Simplification, therefore, inasmuch as it is located in the ideas and evidence important for the explanation of differences, is significant in propelling further research. Here lies the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section about why Esping-Andersen’s work is so important.
It is long time since Esping-Andersen’s original book was published, and the central issue is surely that regime theory aims to go beyond simple typification to make suggestions about how to explain differences. In that sense it may be used in ways that are not bound by Esping-Andersen’s theory. The development of regime theory can be separated into two kinds of work. One of these is work that – using essentially the countries featuring in Esping-Andersen’s original theory – suggests alternative ways of identifying regimes. The other is work that explores issues and problems about extending ‘worlds of welfare’ outside the original sample of nations (or those closely similar to them). While these tend to be mixed up together, particularly in the first of Arts and Gelissen’s incisive reviews (2002), some of the issues, notably those concerning gender divisions, arise under both headings, and are considered here in separate sections.
Reshaping the original regime types?
Esping-Andersen’s underlying explanatory approach involves the suggestion that decommodification has been a goal of social democratic parties. He thus correlates the political strength of social democracy in various countries with decommodification. This is a proposition that is challenged in Castles’ and Mitchell’s work (see Castles, 1985; Castles and Mitchell, 1992). In describing Australia and New Zealand as perhaps belonging to a ‘fourth world of welfare capitalism’, Castles and Mitchell (1992) draw attention to the fact that political activity from the Left may, in some places, have focused not so much on the pursuit of post-income equalization through social policy, as the achievement of equality in pre-tax, pre-transfer incomes. Hence the authors challenge what they term ‘the expenditure-based orthodoxy’, which assumes that only higher social spending will lead to more and better distribution of income. Castles’ (1985) earlier work also drew attention to the particular emphasis on protecting wage levels in Australian and New Zealand Labour politics. Castles and Mitchell also make a second point, again about Australia but also with relevance for the UK: that the Esping-Andersen approach disregards the potential for income-related benefits to make a very ‘effective’ contribution to redistribution. Australian income maintenance is almost entirely means tested, but potentially challenges the liberal principles of this mechanism because it is not simply concentrated on redistribution to those with the lowest incomes.
Mitchell (1991) brings to the argument an interest in exploring the relationships between income differences in societies before and after government interventions, suggesting that it is the size of the ‘gap’ between rich and poor, and the extent to which policies close that gap, that needs to be the object of attention, rather than simply aggregate expenditure. She examines income transfer policies in terms of their contribution to both the reduction of inequality and the eradication of poverty – alternative social policy goals which need to be interpreted in their wider political contexts. She also compares income transfer systems in terms of efficiency (the relationship between outputs and inputs) and effectiveness (the actual redistributive achievement of systems).
This work, and that of Mitchell in particular, while offering what is perhaps now a historical account of Antipodean public policy (recently economic liberal trends in these countries have been strong), is important for raising questions about the wide range of influences on incomes, and the variety of policy options available to political actors who want the state to try to manage income distribution. Arts and Gelissen (2002), in their survey of alternatives to the Esping-Andersen model, identify an additional category that some authors have distinguished within the ‘liberal’ regime group, which is called ‘radical’ (see Kangas, 1994) or ‘targeted’ (Korpi and Palme, 1998). Its characteristic is an absence of social insurance, but some evidence of the use of means tests to effect substantial redistribution. It bears some resemblance to the fourth world identified by Castles and Mitchell, and may include the UK and Ireland.
Esping-Andersen’s strong emphasis upon mainstream political processes has been challenged by those who see other ideologies and sources of power as important for the determination of income maintenance policies. Particularly important in this respect have been writers who have been concerned about the lack of analysis of relationships between men and women, and of family ideologies, in Esping-Andersen’s work. There is now a significant literature on this, including early edited collections such as Sainsbury (1994) and Lewis (1993, 1997b), monographs (O’Connor, 1996; Sainsbury, 1996; Daly, 2000; Daly and Rake, 2003), and articles (Lewis, 1992, 1997a; Orloff, 1993; Sainsbury, 1993). Attempts to retypologize welfare states according to women’s interests, such as Lewis (1992), remind us that the ‘solidarity’ of the Swedish model rests upon an expectation that there will be high labour market participation by women, and that this has implications for the state in terms of provisions for care services as well as gender equality in social security entitlements and employment protection. There is much differentiation in the extent to which women’s employment is supported by these provisions, producing and reinforcing patterns of employment, reward and entitlement that are disadvantageous to women both in and out of the labour market (see Chapters 5 and 6 for further discussion).
Gender analyses recognize the political choices being made about how social relations between women and men are translated into policy, including the role the state will play in supporting family life and whether this will manifest itself in the direct provision of care or the provision of cash benefits to enable people to buy care. The answers to these questions have, in practice, considerable implications for the labour market participation of women. The high female labour market participation rates in the Nordic countries have partly been generated by a willingness of the state to pay women to carry out caring tasks which elsewhere have to be carried out by (generally female) parents and relatives themselves. While this approach has benefits for women, it has not significantly influenced the overall gender division of labour (Irving, 2015). A second point of significance that has emerged from the retypologization of welfare states, has added further empirical evidence to the argument that women’s political participation is crucial to the development of social policies in women’s interests. Early on, Siaroff’s (1994) typology of welfare states identified a group of ‘late female mobilisation’ countries (Southern European nations plus Ireland), which were otherwise dissimilar but lacked gender equality across a range of indicators. This critique of Esping-Andersen also draws attention to the importance of familist ideologies in influencing the politics of social security and determining the expectations embedded within it, and more recently has had particular pertinence for analyses of welfare politics in Mediterranean Europe and in East Asia (Sung and Pascall, 2014; Papadopoulos and Roumpakis, 2017). Esping-Andersen’s original sample only featured Italy and Japan from these regions.
The need for geographical extension is taken up in the following section, but it is also important
