Abstract

Since the late twentieth century, European and North American scholars have mainly focused on welfare state retrenchment or “restructuring,” especially since Paul Pierson’s Dismantling the Welfare State (1994). This book on reforms that were unpopular emphasized that welfare states were “immovable or resistant objects.” Nevertheless, welfare states have in fact changed drastically, whether through potential path-departing procedures and/or incremental change (Thelen, 2004; Streeck and Thelen, 2005). Jacob Hacker’s contribution to these debates focused on “policy drift” (2004). He argued that the lack of actual reform given demographic evolution and economic transformations should be considered as a major form of change masked by apparent inertia.