about node goterglo

Project Outline

Social rights are an important element of citizenship. It is for this reason that studies of democracy must also consider the role of social policy and of welfare regimes. This is true at national as well as at European level.

The question as to what the future European social policy agenda will look like in the future cannot be answered without considering the future of welfare regimes which are nationally organised. Following policy studies and new institutionalism, policy fields like welfare regimes can be characterised with regard to their ideational framework or ideologies to problem solving (values, norms especially regarding justice and inequality) and their institutional practices (practical decision rules, compliance / implementation procedures, routines).

In a European comparative and forward-looking framework, (national) welfare regimes may be converging or diverging albeit differentially with regard to their ideational framework and institutional practices. Thus there are four competing hypotheses that need to be tested:

• H1: (National) welfare regimes are converging in terms of ideational framework as well as in terms of institutional practices.
• H2: (National) welfare regimes are converging in terms of ideational framework but diverging in terms of institutional practices.
• H3: (National) welfare regimes are diverging in terms of ideational framework but converging in terms of institutional practices.
• H4: (National) welfare regimes are diverging in terms of ideational framework as well as in terms of institutional practices.

The objective of our NODE project is to test which of the above four hypotheses is true. Each of the above hypotheses has different implications in terms of the European social policy agenda as well as European governance, including with regard to different constitutional arrangements and the open method of coordination.

The project is organised in three phases:

• Phase 1 (July 2003 to December 2003) is concerned with the charting of the ideational frameworks of contemporary welfare regimes. Besides state-of-the-art review, we have proposed to rely for this purpose on a discourse analysis of the workings of the Working Group Social Europe of the European Convention. A preliminary analysis undertaken for the purpose of the proposal writing revealed that the deliberation of this working group are quite revealing both about the emerging European social policy agenda and the underlying philosophies of national welfare regimes. The objective of the discourse analysis will be to chart the different positions and examine whether the national positions are stronger or weaker than the positions of different political orientations (along the left-right dimension).
• Phase 2 (January 2004 to December 2004) comprises the empirical part of the study concerned with institutional practices of (national) welfare regimes. The objective here will be to study the implementation of specific policies especially with regard to entitlement and accessibility. The areas under investigation will be unemployment benefits and social assistance targeting the elderly. The countries / cities under investigation are Austria (Vienna / Linz), Norway (Oslo) and France (Paris). An overview of the situation (based on the secondary analysis of existing data or literature) will also be attempted for the UK and Poland.
• Phase 3 (January 2005 to June 2005) is the last phase of the project, during which we should be focusing on exploitation and dissemination. Insofar as science communication of policy exploitation is concerned, we proposed to organise a strategic dialogue with policy-makers and stakeholders in order to elaborate on the basis of our findings and deliberations with relevant actors possible futures regarding the European social policy agenda.