engleski

Family Policies in ‘Hybrid’ Welfare States after the Crisis – Still spending on new social risks policies?

The economic crisis has significantly challenged national welfare states and has often led to retrenchment. The question arises how countries have reacted to the crisis in the area of family policy – not directly connected to rising unemployment and also not as demanding for state spending as e.g. the pension system. The article assesses the changes in the field of family policies during the crisis in three small European welfare states – Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. The three countries represent ‘hybrid’ models of the welfare state, at least with regard to their family policies. This means that policy- makers in these countries may stem from different policy paradigms in certain time periods or policy fields. Having this in mind, the paradigms and discourses chosen by policy- makers to justify the family policy reforms undertaken during the crisis are analyzed. The findings show that the three countries have implemented very diverse crisis measures in family policies, related to different (shifts in) policy paradigms and discourses. While the Czech Republic has moved into implicitly familialistic, neo-liberal reasoning, Slovenia has maintained the social-investment paradigm, despite a strong crisis discourse. Austria, much less affected by the crisis, continues to combine social-investment and familialistic paradigms in its family policy reforms.

welfare states; crisis; family policy; Austria; Czech Republic; Slovenia; frame analysis

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