Catching up or Falling behind? the Politics of Labor Market and Family Policy Reforms in Southern Europe

Distributive choices lie at the very heart of most political decisions. This applies especially to welfare state reforms in Southern Europe, where in a context of limited resources and increasing social demands, political parties have had to decide to what extent they want to recalibrate their welfare states towards a social investment logic or to stick with the traditional consumption-oriented welfare logic. Building on an self-collected, extensive database on the actual policy content of family and labor market policy reforms in four Southern European countries over the last 25 years, I code whether reforms can be considered as consumption- or investment-oriented. This allows me to evaluate to what extent Southern European welfare states have witnessed a social investment turn over the last 25 years and how the socio-economic context, the already existing welfare state institutions and the strength of political parties have affected the reform outcome.