ABSTRACT
Esping-Andersen's breakthrough in comparative welfare research in the late 1980s inspired two streams of comparative research in welfare regime analysis. First, there was a big wave of research studies that resorted to the comparison of real types; that is, they lacked or did not want to apply ideal-types. Then, by the mid-2000s, more and more attention was given to the idea, theory and method of setting up ideal-types in comparative welfare regime analysis: see in particular Arts and Gelissen, Meier Jaeger, Aspalter, Scruggs and Allan. Each yardstick measures one particular key characteristic of the welfare regime in question. The researcher tries to match each specific set of characteristics of each welfare regime, to a larger and smaller degree, to each special characteristic of the welfare state system at hand. The set of key welfare regime characteristics, the bundle of yardsticks, does not have to measure exactly the same dimensions or key characteristics in all the cases involved.
