The welfare State (WS) as a subject of research âis as colossal as the giants of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness it is charged with eradicatingâ (Leibfried 2010: xxxiii). This is due in some measure to the relatively recent growth of a particular field of research: WS politics . There are four themes in this research: analyses of the emergence and development of welfare States; theories of WS crisis ; studies of WS resilience, and the extent to which retrenchment takes place in spite of political and institutional resistance. The present study makes a contribution to the third and fourth of these themes by analysing the development of social security in the Republic of Ireland from 1981 to 2016. Social security here refers to the cash benefits administered by the Irish Governmentâs Department of Social Protection.1
The causes of WS change are the subject of a wide and controversial research literature, and Ireland offers an interesting and neglected context in which to study the dynamics of change. To begin with, the emergence of the âCeltic Tigerâ economy in the 1990s posed a sharp contrast with the decade of fiscal crisis and mass unemployment of the 1980s. This invites a range of questions about social security, notably; did the economic crisis in the 1980s trigger retrenchment and, if so, was the retrenchment rescinded in the prosperous 1990s and later? Likewise, when the âBust to Boomâ trajectory of Ireland âs economy went into reverse in 2008, did this usher in cost-cutting adjustments or qualitative, systemic reductions in social security?
Politics too may have changed. At a general level, the political salience of social policy issues increased. Furthermore, a new political party, the Progressive Democrats (PDs), was formed in 1985 with an explicitly liberal agenda, a âEuropean Liberal â party in the words of one of its founders (Collins 2005). This new party adopted a neo-liberal stance on social and economic policy . The financial and economic crisis in 2008 prompted the electoral collapse of the dominant party, Fianna FĂĄil , and the success of some Left and independent candidates in the 2011 election. Intriguingly, Fianna FĂĄil , substantially recouped its electoral losses in the 2016 election and embarked on a form of coalition with the other centre-ground party, Fine Gael , which was punished electorally for austerity policies - although not specifically for its social security policies.
Perhaps LeftâRight politics did emerge in Ireland at this time and influence the development of social security. This could certainly be argued, if Castlesâ and McKinlayâs (1979a; 1979b) analysis is accepted: that what matters in welfare politics is not only the strength of the Left, but the presence or absence of a party of the Right. The electoral ramifications of Ireland âs economic crash and associated austerity offer a fertile ground for observing the politics of austerity - politics that are supposedly distinctive (Pierson 1996). What patterns of retrenchment do governments impose? Does retrenchment invariably carry an electoral cost? Whatever the answers to these questions, the period in question is characterised by considerable political variation, with no less than six different combinations of parties , spanning the political spectrum, participating in governments.
In relation to cultural change, Catholicism as a religious practice waned significantly in the last three decades, reflecting the general trend to secularism in European and western Christian societies. Did this affect social security in particular and, if so, how? Some observers of the Irish WS point to Catholicism as one of its original, defining features and an obstacle to the expansion of social security. Did the decline in the Churchâs role remove one obstacle to progress or strengthen the hand of those disposed to retrenchment ?
Globalisation was perhaps the most dramatic change of all. Ireland became one of the most globalised economies in the developed world during the Celtic Tiger era, so-called. Some analysts suggest that globalisation has challenged the WS and led to retrenchment . However, the impact of globalisation is increasingly questioned. The theoretical significance of the Irish case should not be underestimated. If globalisation is a powerful, direct force, it will surely have affected social security in a small, open, highly globalised economy, given the supposedly âliberal â nature of the WS in Ireland .
The debate about WS change now focuses as much on national as global factors. It is accepted that indigenous pressures on the WS are important. Other scholars (Hemerijck 2013; Bonoli 2013) have documented these national pressures - ageing, changing family structures, and the transition to a post-industrial economy. Equally, national institutions and the interplay of ideas and institutions will mediate pressures for change. There was some debate in Ireland among policy actors about how social security might change: some of the debates reflected new principles and systems, while others implied incremental change. Subject to considerable empirical qualification, it appears that Irish social security was slow to embrace radical ideas . Is it possible, therefore, that ideas have played little role in the evolution of social security and that institutions in their widest sense precluded significant change?
During last the quarter century, a body of scholarship with a distinct relevance to social security policy change in Ireland has emerged; institutionalism . This approach demonstrates that it is not possible to explain change by simply observing âexternalâ pressures like globalisation or âinternalâ forces such as socio-economic interests or population ageing. Coherent accounts of change combine an analysis of WSâ particular places in the globalised economy with detailed accounts of internal pressures for change and of how institutions respond. These studies show that there is some scope for politics and institutions to resist change and to shape the direction and timing of change.
Institutional approaches emphasise the importance of State structures. For example, Skocpol (1995) showed how the American political system creates obstacles to social policy innovation. In similar vein, Bonoli (2000) compared the way different State structures and interest group representation in three countries resulted in different responses to the common problem of ageing and public pension sustainability.
Institutionalism focuses on the interplay between ideas and politics and can show how policy makers respond to new ideas or adapt them to existing contexts. Hudson and his colleagues (2008) studied the way both Britain and Germany invoked the new Third Way social policy popularised by New Labour in Britain in the 1990s. In the British case, the Third Way agenda of âactiveâ social policy as a response to the challenges facing the WS was enthusiastically implemented: welfare payments were restricted and made more conditional, for example. âActiveâ social policy and activation , although adopted as an idea by the German Chancellor and the policy elite, came to mean different things in the German context. Here, it entailed a strengthening of the established, corporatist social insurance system combined with moderate tightening of the work requirements of labour market outsiders such as the young unemployed.
The institutional approach uses the metaphor of âpathsâ, and this metaphor draws attention to the sequences and historical contexts in which policy choices are made. Past policy choices create institutions such as social insurance funds or occupational pensions ; they also create new political actors and interests such as welfare claimant groups. In short, even in the face of objective imperatives to change, policy makers cannot make policy de novo, as a policy path previously chosen may not be easily repudiated: policy change may be âpath dependentâ.
This is not to suggest that change never takes place. The insights that path dependency gi...