7/28/2019 Book Reviews - Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough and Göran Therbom eds., Can the Welfare State Compete A Comparativ… http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/book-reviews-alfred-pfaller-ian-gough-and-goeran-therbom-eds-can-the-welfare 1/3 http://asj.sagepub.com/ Acta Sociologica http://asj.sagepub.com/content/35/4/334.citation The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/000169939203500408 1992 35: 334 Acta Sociologica Peter Baldwin Advanced Capitalist Countries (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991) Can the Welfare State Compete? A Comparative Study of Five Book Reviews : Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough and Göran Therbom (eds.), Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Nordic Sociological Association can be found at: Acta Sociologica Additional services and information for http://asj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://asj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: What is This? - Jan 1, 1992 Version of Record >> at The British Sociological Association on February 5, 2013 asj.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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Book Reviews - Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough and Göran Therbom eds., Can the Welfare State Compete A Comparative Study of Five Advanced Capitalist Countries
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7/28/2019 Book Reviews - Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough and Göran Therbom eds., Can the Welfare State Compete A Comparativ…
Schierup’sanalysis is its implication that the lightningethnification of the Yugoslav party systemin 1990-91 is only superficially similar to
that after World War I; the causes are in
important respects different.
In his concluding chapter, ’Towards a
new exodus’, Schierup draws some scen-
arios for the (1990) future: a technocratic
managerialism that might engender a
populist-authoritarianbacklash or be
transcended by a strengthened civil societywith economic stabilization. The second has
already defeated the first - although it
shows signs of coming back at the (ex)republic level - and the third seems more
distant than ever, even if there are still
movements that try to work for it.
In analyses of what newspapers tend to
call ’ethnic’ conflicts, two opposite pitfallsabound:
takingthis label at its face value, or
trying to eliminate ethnic aspects altogetherso as to lay bare the underlying class con-
flicts. Schierup avoids both. His approachis essentially in terms of class, but his vast
knowledge of Yugoslav society preventshim from uncritically taking over generalmonocausal models at the expense of the
complexity of social reality. Having been in
close contact with Yugoslavia for a quarterof a century, I cannot recall any other book
on it from which I have leamt so much. It
is a must for anyone who wants to under-
stand the roots of the Yugoslav tragedy.
Håkan WibergPeace and Conflict Research, Copenhagen
Alfred Pfaller, Ian Gough and Göran
Therbom (eds.), Can the Welfare State
Compete? A Comparative Study ofFive Advanced Capitalist Countries
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991).
The topic of this book - the extent to which
social policy has recently yielded to the
imperatives of an increasingly competitivemarketplace - is obviously important and
its treatment here, although surrendered to
the never-tender mercies of a committee of
scholars, is remarkably lucid and har-
moniously coordinated.
The overall problem is the relationshipbetween the
marketplacewith its
allocationby activity and social policy’s redistribution
according to need. Has social policy dulled
the incentives of the market and lessened
productivity and competitiveness and must
its reallocative ambitions therefore be
reined in? Or - the other end of the spec-trum of argument represented in this vol-
ume - does the correction of market
infelicities accomplished by social policy in
fact make, at least in the
longrun, for a
more effective productive environment; is
social policy economically rational and not
just redistributive in a zero-sum sense?
This is not exclusively a recent dilemma.
Bismarck, as leader of the nation which
pioneered a significant channelling of
resources into the deferred consumptionmade possible by social insurance, worried
that such burdens on the productive processwould hobble German
employersin their
competition with foreign colleagues who
were not similarly weighed down. More-
over, it is also obviously a false dichotomyif pressed too far. If the market and social
policy were antithetical, then any nation’s
welfare effort would have to stand in direct
relation to its isolation from the world mar-
ket. In fact, the relationship seems to be
almost the reverse, with some of the most
well-developed welfare states also the most
exposed economies. Hence, either there
must be an element to social policy that is
conducive to productivity or - a less likelyalternative - these nations are simply so
dramatically efficient that they can not onlycompete with aplomb on the world market,but do so with the millstone of generoussocial policy around their respective econ-
omic necks.
The introductory chapters, by Pfaller,
Gough and Therborn, lucidly outline theissues at stake, distinguishing between vari-
ous senses ofcompetitiveness andthe trade-
offs as well as the positive relationshipsbetween them and social policy. Theyemphasize the ambiguity of the conclusions
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