Government Ideology, Economic Pressure, and Risk Privatization: How Economic Worldviews Shape Social Policy Choices in Times of Crisis (Changing Welfare States)

For nearly forty years now, governments in rich democracies have been shifting labor market risks from the state and employers to employees, cutting the generosity of social programs even as they tightened restrictions on eligibility. This book analyzes those changes in eighteen countries and shows that the most important factor in explaining whether cuts are made is the economic worldview of a particular government. While the economic pressures that are typically pointed to as the causes of these reforms do exist, Alexander Horn shows that they are nonetheless secondary to ideology.