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DOI: 10.1177/0001699392035004081992 35: 334Acta Sociologica 

Peter BaldwinAdvanced 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.),

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- Jan 1, 1992Version of Record>>

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334

workers out of employment. These ter-

ritorializing trends in combination with the

continued one-party system and the lack

of real democracy provided an excellent

breeding ground for a new wave of ethno-

nationalisms that also fed on each other: in

Kosovo, among Serbs, in Slovenia, and so

forth. One essential pointin

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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335

that can be drawn: that there is no con-

sistent correlation between welfare state

development and competitive sluggishness,but also that there generally has been no

clear competitive benefit, seen in statistical

terms, to well-developed social policy; that

while there has been pressure to enhance

competitiveness, this has not uniformly or

necessarily led to across-the-board cutbacksin social policy.The country studies, in turn, flesh out

such generalities. Each appears to have

been written according to the same recipe,with only a few variations. The French case

strays furthest from the path, the German

refuses to discuss telecommunications,which, along with automobiles, is one of

the two specific industrial cases otherwise

considered in each. Each national studyshows the way that competitiveness has

become an increasingly important concern,

but at the same time demonstrates that the

image of a Reagan or a Thatcher choppingaway at the supposedly strangling under-

brush of welfare entitlement oversimplifiesthe issue. In the United States, for example,the effect of welfare cutbacks has been less

to deprive regularly employed workers of

their job-related benefits than to cut theentitlements of the marginal and poorest,who have least to do with the issue of com-

petitiveness, and thus to accentuate the

two-tier nature of the American welfare

state. Gough’s chapter on Great Britain

argues that more than simply worries about

economic competitiveness was packed into

Thatcher’s ideological baggage and that

some of the goals pursued by her govern-

ment in fact ran at cross purposes to thehope of making Britain more economicallymuscular. Competitiveness and a return to

the nightwatchman state, in other words,

were not always aims that could be recon-

ciled. The German Christian Democrats,m turn, are portrayed as moderate welfare

scourges, compared at least with their more

radical  Anglo-American counterparts.

Representatives of a broad spectrum of

right-of-center interests, influenced by longtraditions of Christian socialism and willingto accept an interventionist role for the

state, they have been content to advocate

tinkering with social policy rather than

slash-and-burn. Moreover, the German

economy has been performing sufficientlyadmirably that the whole competitivenessdebate has taken on significantly less apoca-

lyptic tones than in Britain, the United

States, or - witness the imbecilities of a

Cresson - in France.

The only nation that stands out is

Sweden. The other countries under the

glass here are ones for which the efficiency/equality dilemma has been posed by the

economic stresses of the 1980s. Each has in

some way sought to address such problems,and social policy has to some extent in each

been made the scapegoat for lackluster

economic performance. In Sweden,however, no such tough choices, Therbomwould have us believe, have had to be

faced. Taking 1986/87 as his benchmark,

Therbom portrays Sweden as having beensingularly able to unite generous welfare

coverage, low unemployment and vigorousinternational competitiveness - as havingbeen, in other words, a country able to

sidestep the whole dilemma that informs

this book. And yet, after the last election

and the Bildt government’s proposedreforms, surely all bets are off. Will not

this chapter and those parts of the overall

conclusion based on it need to be exten-

sively rewritten, if not entirely reformul-

ated, in any future edition of this volume?

That is the danger of contemporary history:one’s contemporaries often turn out to be

less predictable than one thought.

Peter Baldwin

University of California, Los Angeles

Michael Shalev: Labour and the Political

Economy in Israel. Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1992.

I have read many books on the history of

modem Israel, those written both for the

lay reader and the academician. Of these,I found none more comprehensive and to-

the-point than Labour and the Political

Economy in Israel by Michael Shalev. In myview, Shalev is the first author to provide a

whole new way of looking at the history of

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