Ideas and welfare state reform

Welfare state reforms have attracted growing attention from scholars interested in the role of ideas as an explanation for social change and stability. In this chapter, we map ideational contributions to the scholarship on welfare state reform. It first discusses the ‘ideational turn’ before turning to ideational typologies, ideational forms of institutionalism, and ideational research on incremental yet transformative policy change. This is followed by a critical assessment of recent ideational scholarship, which has shaped key debates about social policy change, from work on the neoliberal justification of welfare restructuring to the social investment paradigm. By focusing on different ideational factors that can explain reform, our analysis shows that ideational scholars have durably impacted welfare state research. The final section discusses the outlook for ideational research by stressing three issues: the COVID-19 pandemic, the implications of AI for social policy, and the relationship between welfare and environmental risks.