Violating a settled welfare paradigm imposes punishing electoral costs on reformers.

Evidence

Disposing quotas for farm workers from CEEC would mean that politicians had to give up taken-for-granted assumptions of welfare policy, for example, that German unemployed are, at least in principle, willing to take these jobs. The Agenda 2010 policy of the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder illustrates how difficult it is to introduce a fundamentally new policy that includes a sharp break with formerly indisputable assumptions of social policy. ‘Fordern und Fördern’ (demand and support), one of Schröder’s central catch phrases, for instance, reflected the new insight that at least sections of the unemployed may need higher incentives (as well as additional training) to seek jobs. This break with traditional basic assumptions of German (and especially social-democratic) welfare policy came at very high political costs and resulted in a step-wise pullback of the new government from this position. Furthermore, a broad public discussion about social justice came up and gave voice to the still dominant old paradigm. The political success of the newly founded party ‘Die Linke’ as well as a more pronounced social profile nearly all German parties have tried to develop over the last three years both demonstrate the huge power that the old discourse still exerts. All in all, the recent developments can be interpreted as a reaction of politicians to still dominant mental models in German politics and society with regard to the regulation of the labor market and an attempt to avoid political costs resulting from deviant standpoints. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 1013

Categorization

• XREF: Dovetails with the recorded highlights on deregulation and welfare-state legitimation from the Frankfurt School material and the German reunification chapters.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The Schröder Paradox’ — why the chancellor who reformed welfare destroyed his own party, and what Die Linke’s rise reveals about the electoral price of breaking a paradigm.