How New Economic Ideas Changed the Danish Welfare State: The Case of Neoliberal Ideas and Highly Organized Social Democratic Interests

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Larsen, Christian Albrekt; Andersen, Jorgen Goul
• 署名单位: Aalborg University
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0491.2009.01434.x
• 发表日期: 2009
• 关键词: discourse matter; policy paradigms; UNITED-STATES; POLITICS; institutions; REFORM; logic

摘要

The article argues that new economic ideas have exerted an independent causal effect on policy change in three major areas in the Danish welfare state: unemployment insurance, early retirement, and taxation. Thereby the Danish case bears resemblance to the paradigmatic shift from Keynesianism to monetarism in the United Kingdom. However, in the Danish case this paradigmatic shift did not coincide with a political shift to a right-wing government. This makes it possible to disentangle the intimate relationship between ideas and interests. It is argued that the Danish case provides one of the clearest examples of the independent causal effects of economic ideas because the Social Democrats pursued policies that compromised with the party's historically rooted positions and with the preferences of their electorate. Ideas and solutions did not come in one fixed package, however. But the new paradigm established some basic premises that were not up for discussion.