The Effect of Globalization on European Welfare States

Increasing international integration is going to make European welfare states somewhat more alike - no doubt about that. The intra-European integration is creating less different economic conditions between the countries. And the increasing economic interaction with Asia is putting pressure on them all to lower costs and/or go for high value-added export production. This paper argues, however, that increasing alikeness in a number of respects may not amount to convergence (i.e. the development of similar institutions), and that the different welfare states are going to retain their specific characteristics for quite a long time. The argument is based on a perception of societal convergence as a complex process, a characterization of the differences between welfare states as being deep-rooted differences of culture - and on a hypothesis that cultural change on such an aggregate level is a very slow process.