Volte-Face on the Welfare State: Social Partners, Knowledge Economies, and the Expansion of Work-Family Policies

• DOI: 10.1177/00323292211014371
• Author: Magnus Bergli Rasmussen,Øyvind Søraas Skorge
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292211014371

Politics & Society

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DOI: 10.1177/00323292211014371

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Article

Volte-Face on the

Welfare State: Social

Partners, Knowledge

Economies, and the

Expansion of Work-Family

Policies

Øyvind Søraas Skorge

Bjørknes University College and Institute for Social Research

Magnus Bergli Rasmussen

University of Oslo and Bjørknes University College

Abstract

To what extent organized employers and trade unions support social policies is

contested. This article examines the case of work-family policies (WFPs), which have

surged to become a central part of the welfare state. In that expansion, the joint role

of employers and unions has largely been disregarded in the comparative political

economy literature. The article posits that the shift from Fordist to knowledge

economies is the impetus for the social partners’ support for WFPs. If women make

up an increasing share of high-skilled employees, employers start favoring WFPs

to increase their labor supply. Similarly, unions favor WFPs if women constitute

a significant part of their membership base. Yet the extent to which changes in

preferences translate into policy depends on the presence of corporatist institutions.

These claims are supported with statistical analyses of WFPs in eighteen advanced

democracies across five decades and an in-depth case study of Norway. The article

thus demonstrates that the trajectory of the new welfare state is decisively affected

by the preferences and power of unions and employers.

Keywords

welfare state, work-family policy, corporatism, gender gap, knowledge economy

Corresponding Author:

Øyvind Søraas Skorge, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Bjørknes University

College, Lovisenberggata 13, 0456 Oslo, Norway.

Email: oyvind.skorge@bhioslo.no

1014371PASXXX10.1177/00323292211014371Politics & SocietySkorge and Rasmussen

research-article2021

2022, Vol. 50(2) 222–254

The transition from a Fordist to a knowledge-based economy has entailed an unprec-

edented surge in higher education enrollment and labor market participation among

women. Yet, because of childbearing, establishing a family entails higher labor market

risks—such as job and wage loss and skill depreciation—for women than for men.1

Work-family policies (WFPs), including daycare services and parental leave, aim to

reduce those risks by enabling both spouses to return to and participate in the labor

market while having children. During the period of Fordism, lasting into the 1970s,

political parties, trade unions, and employers’ associations almost without exception

defended the male-breadwinner welfare state.2 Despite initial opposition, however,

advanced democracies have, with ample variation in both timing and magnitude,

implemented WFPs over the last few decades. What can explain the variation in WFP

instigation?

A series of incisive studies documents the importance of electoral politics—includ-

ing the strength of left-wing parties; increasing political competition between blocs

over working women’s votes; and women’s entrance into parties, parliaments, and

cabinets—for the introduction and expansion of WFPs.3 Others argue that in the con-

text of extensive budgetary constraints, WFPs remain one of the few viable policies

for which social democratic parties can claim credit.4 The effect of the electoral chan-

nel on WFPs is thus well documented. Few studies, however, examine the preferences

and influence of unions and employers, particularly how and why their positions on

WFPs evolve over time.5 Indeed, although women’s integration into education and the

labor market is often seen as the driving force behind the changing political dynam-

ics, it is commonly assumed that WFPs fall outside the realm of labor organizations’

interest and influence. We lack a systematic analysis of the social partners’ changing

attitudes toward, and hand in, WFP reforms.

To that end, this article makes a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the

literature. Theoretically, our study specifies the condition under which unions and

employers change from opposing to proposing WFPs. We propose that the rise of

knowledge economies—characterized by skill-biased technological change, increases

in education levels, and the reversal of the gender gap in higher education6—is a key

source of the changing cross-class coalitions underpinning the new welfare state.7 As

women begin to outnumber men in higher education, organized employers will call for

expansion of WFPs to ensure that high-skilled, potential employees remain attached to

the labor market after childbirth. For trade unions, preferences for WFPs is a question

of their current and prospective membership base. Only unions in which women make

up a significant share of the members or constitute a promising future avenue for

recruitment will promote WFPs.8 The gender gap reversal and women’s entrance into

unions are, in other words, the sources of an emerging coalition between capital and

labor in favor of WFPs. We thus provide a dynamic argument for understanding the

social partners’ preferences in the new economic situation. Still, the social partners

must be able to influence policy to see their new preference for WFPs realized.9

Corporatist institutions organized at the national level—commonly labeled “macro-

corporatism”—facilitate cooperation and coordination between social partners, as

well as providing them with influence over policy.10

223

Skorge and Rasmussen

By spelling out the mechanisms for employers’ and unions’ changing preferences

for WFPs, this article also illustrates that analyses emphasizing and questioning

employers’ proactive role in welfare state development can offer complementary

rather than competing explanations.11 Among skeptics, Korpi asserts that “employer-

centered research has not yet presented empirical evidence indicating that employers

have been protagonists with first-order preferences for major reforms extending social

citizenship rights.”12 The advocates, on the other hand, document how employers’

associations have had an active hand in the extension of key social policies, such as

active labor market policies.13 Our analysis shows that these two approaches can be

squared by allowing social partners’ preferences to vary over time according to the

composition of the labor force.14

Our empirical contribution is to combine an econometric analysis of WFP expan-

sion across advanced democracies from 1960 to 2010 with a case study tracing the

political dynamics behind all major WFP reforms in Norway.15 Corporatist Norway is

particularly suited for a case-study analysis because it has gone from a laggard to a

leader in both daycare coverage and paid parental leave. In the large-N analysis, we

show that the reversal of the gender gap in higher education and the rise of women

within unions are clearly associated with the expansion of WFPs in countries with

centralized social partners but not in countries where these are weak and fragmented.

This association holds even when we account for women’s parliamentary representa-

tion, government composition, economic and demographic pressures, high-skilled

immigration, EU directives, and possible diffusion effects. In the case study, we use

archival resources and interviews, historical statistics, newspaper articles, party mani-

festoes, and secondary sources to show that women have gone from having a marginal

to a prominent role within unions and that the shift led labor to go from disfavoring to

favoring WFP reforms. We document that employers later underwent the same shift.

Up to the 1980s the employers’ associations were clearly hostile to WFP expansions,

but as women’s share in key fields of higher education started to surge, they gradually

came to prefer WFPs. For instance, we document that the massive paid parental leave

expansion in the 1980s was initiated by the social partners through wage negotiations.

Later, employers and unions have, in a united and coordinated fashion, called for fur-

ther WFP expansions. The article consequently shows that unions and employers have

made a U-turn on WFPs—a key component of the modern welfare state.

Social Partners, the Reversal of the Educational Gender

Gap, and WFPs

What are organized employers’ and trade unions’ preferences for WFPs? The existing

literature on their public policy stances shows that higher centralization of employers’

associations and trade unions increases their support for active labor market policies

and redistribution.16 First, centralization forces employers and unions with diverse

preferences to reach common ground and enables them to solve collective action prob-

lems.17 Second, instead of fragmented groups of firms and employees bargaining for

224 Politics & Society 50(2)