The welfare state in liquidation?

This paper is about the most recent reforms of cash benefit systems and the sociopolitical debate in eight European countries. The welfare state and the social security system rank high on the political agenda. After many years of economic crisis, with increasingly widespread unemployment and changed family patterns, the welfare system that developed in most western European countries since the end of the Second World War is the focus of attention. In a world of increasing international trade, with competition from countries — in eastern Europe and Asia as well as the United States — which have not developed such comprehensive systems of social security, one of the main issues in the debate is whether western Europe can afford to maintain welfare at the existing level, or whether it is necessary to make fundamental changes. But the discussion also centres on what can be called the welfare state's own internal problems.