National Growth Strategies and Welfare State Reform

Different countries or regions of the world have recently attempted to define a “growth strategy”, aimed at stimulating economic growth and job creation, in which social protection plays a more or less pronounced role. Research in political economy has shown that it is possible to establish consistent patterns between the structures of the economy, economic policies, employment policies, skill formation schemes and social protection systems. However, all these approaches identify types or regimes; they are often too static and too abstract to understand recent developments of economic restructuring, when national political economies face deindustrialization, the new digital service economy and/or financialization. This paper spells out the underlying links between growth and welfare reforms.