time.”^47 By 1980, distinct models of social protection had indeed
emerged. Long governed by social-democratic coalitions, the Scandi-
navian countries adopted universal programs that fostered equality and
genuinely reduced poverty. In countries with a weak left, such as the
United States, the welfare state remained residual and did not prevent
high levels of inequality and poverty, even when employment and
aggregate market incomes would have allowed better standards of
living for all. When centrist or Christian-democratic coalitions pre-
vailed, social protection became more generous but not as inclusive or
egalitarian as in social-democratic regimes.^48
By the middle of the 1970s, the postwar vision of a universal pro-
tection against the risks associated with unemployment, old age, and
illness had been completed in most advanced democracies, with
varying ambitions. The welfare state was now a solid, indeed almost
immovable, institutional feature of democracy.^49 With this matu-
ration, and in a more difficult economic context marked by rising
unemployment and inflation, the debate between the left and the right
began to change.
Without denying the benefits brought by encompassing social
security and generous social services, the left increasingly criticized
social policies as ineffective and bureaucratic. The welfare state was
indeed unable to modify substantially the distribution of incomes and
chances in a capitalist society, and it mostly compensated for the
consequences of market inequality. No matter how well intended,
social programs hardly dealt with the root causes of injustice. The
new institutional arrangements were also bureaucratic, and at times
repressive, and they imposed rigid social standards and norms of
behavior, at the expense of personal autonomy or more ambitious
visions of change. The right challenged, too, the welfare state as
ineffective, and increasingly presented it as a disincentive to invest and
(^47) Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens,Development and Crisis of the Welfare
State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets, University of Chicago Press,
48 2001, p. 1.
Gøsta Esping-Andersen,Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies,
Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 73–94; Robert H. Goodin, Bruce Headey,
Ruud Muffels, and Henk-Jan Dirven,The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,
Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 240–58.
(^49) Paul Pierson, “Coping with Permanent Austerity: Welfare State Restructuring
in Affluent Democracies,” in Paul Pierson (ed.),The New Politics of the
Welfare State, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 416.
The age of universality (1945–1980) 121