The EU as a Cognitive and Normative Entrepreneur : The Europeanization of Welfare Reforms

Bruno Palier (1)

1 CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS)

When studying recent welfare state reforms, do we need to look at the European level? What is at stake with the multiplication of European strategies in the social policy domain? Does a reference to Europe provide us with a new understanding of national welfare state reforms? What kind of influence may these European processes have on welfare state changes? The recent literature on welfare state transformation neglects the European level as an explanation for recent national reforms. Scholars searched for the causes of welfare reforms in globalisation or domestic factors, not in Europe; and analyses of the actual reforms have focused on institutional constraints in order to understand the remarkable continuity and remaining diversity of the European welfare states (...).

Domains: Political science

Bruno Palier. The EU as a Cognitive and Normative Entrepreneur : The Europeanization of Welfare Reforms. 2008. ⟨hal-01070796⟩