The End of the Conservative German Welfare State Model

This article investigates change and continuity of the German welfare state at the institutional as well as at the outcome level in the domains of family, pension and unemployment policies. It shows that seemingly path-dependent policy adaptations - largely through drift, layering and recalibration - have led to a paradigmatic and indeed transformational adjustment of welfare state arrangements. The unsettling of institutional arrangements and functional underpinnings of the welfare state in the wake of German unification constituted a critical juncture' facilitating the establishment of new interpretative patterns' that have subsequently replaced previous assumptions relating to the economic benefits of social policies and reordered the aims and goals of the welfare state.