Globalization, Europeanization and Domestic Welfare State Reforms : New Institutionalist Concepts

This article focuses on the theoretical relationships between globalization, Europeanization, and welfare state changes. It offers an extract of new institutionalist concepts linking external processes to changes of national social protection systems, based on two analytical distinctions. The first concerns the actor model, which specifies how external processes link to welfare reforms. The second differentiation concerns the type of reform trigger at the international level. Both Europeanization and globalization encompass aspects of market pressures and political voluntarism. The effects on welfare reforms are not necessarily the same - therefore it is crucial to make this differentiation in order to develop proper hypotheses.