How Cultural Change Can Contribute to Institutional Change in Welfare States: Tracing Cultural and Institutional Processes

It has often been argued that welfare state change is the result of economic, political, social or demographic change in a society, or of a shift in power relations between actors with differing interests. Less attention was paid to the influence of cultural change on welfare state change. The paper explores how cultural change can contribute to change in welfare state policies. Its theoretical framework is based on the assumption that cultural change can contribute to welfare state change only if specific types of cultural and institutional processes are initiated by relevant actors; these are either started by relevant political actors or by social groups in the population.

In its empirical part the paper evaluates these theoretical assumptions on the basis of a study of  six  historical sequences in which paradigmatic institutional change took place in the German welfare state. The main focus is on the development of policies towards childcare and elderly care in the time period between 1960 and 2010. It is analyzed how far cultural change in each case contributed to the welfare state change, and which processes were relevant, on the basis of document analysis, statistical data, national survey data and international surveys like ISSP, EVS and Eurobarometer. The findings support the theoretical assumptions. The paper can make an innovative contribution to the scientific debate about the relationship between culture and welfare state.