204 WINFRIED SÜß
ing at sociopolitical problems, and the strategies adopted to deal with
these issues. Three developments stand out in particular: fi rst, subse-
quent interventions in social problems were supposed to be augmented
by “active social policies” that would work to counteract such problems
proactively. This generally more scientifi c approach to social policy was
also geared toward fi nding long-term answers. Second, social policy was
supposed to focus less on individual problems and more on society as a
whole, which considerably increased the expectations that social policy
should infl uence social relations. Third, social policy was tightly bound
up in the Keynesian management of the economy. As a result, the welfare
state came to be seen as a necessary prerequisite for stable, long-term
economic growth rather than as a roadblock to economic development.
From 1969 onward, the social-liberal coalition continued with this pol-
icy course, but it set a slightly diff erent tone by focusing more on social
participation and equal opportunity. This brought accelerated growth in
social expenditures once again, although the political actors involved of-
ten underestimated the fi nancial momentum of their reforms while over-
estimating their political steering potential. For example, this is what
happened in health care with the hospital fi nance reforms of 1970/1972.
Although these policies sought to modernize this long-neglected sector,
they introduced a fi nancing model that drove up costs but was not easy to
alter easily given the federalism of the West German system.
For the most part, the expansion of the welfare state was fi nanced by
social security contributions deducted from earned income. So, despite
favorable economic developments, employees’ contributions to the social
security schemes rose from 12.7 percent to 14.6 percent between 1966
and 1974. In a sense, this move was quite risky because it linked the
funding of the welfare state even more closely to economic development
and coupled it even more tightly to the male-dominated “normal employ-
ment” model. Above all, the ability to fi nance the welfare state in the long
term was only secure if a few optimistic assumptions about the country’s
economic future held out over the long run: stable economic growth, full
employment, a stable division of work along gendered lines, and stable
demographic structures. In many respects, the Keynesian welfare state
that emerged after 1966 was a fair-weather phenomenon that rested on
unquestioned assumptions about the social, demographic, and economic
stability of Western societies.
It became increasingly clear in the 1970s just how much the welfare
state was aff ected by changes in these basic constellations. First, the plu-
ralization of family types that had been fostered by social policy, changes
in gender roles, and the demographic aging of the population forced the
government to take action because it could no longer be assumed that