ABSTRACT
FRAGMENTATION OF WELFARE REGIMES If Christian democracy does try to define its political place between free market liberalism and state-oriented socialism, between belief in the market and confidence in the state, then the impact of this movement should be discernable in the organisation and administration of the main welfare institutions. As the Dutch case suggests, a typical Christian democratic version of control over institutions would be private or semi-public organisations that are supervised and subsidised by the state. Ideally, one would anticipate a bi-or tripartite structure in the control of the main social security schemes. As an operationalisation of the dependent variable one might look at the level of bi-or tripartism in a nation by adding the number of central social security schemes (old age, disability and survivor programmes; sickness and maternity; work injury programmes; unemployment benefit programmes; family allowances) controlled by bi-or tripartism (BITRI). The focus is on 1980, because the reasonable expectation is that administrative and organisational characteristics of social security schemes in particular are slow to change since, once vested, institutions tend to be inert. It is important to stress that this measure cannot be taken as referring to ‘corporatism’ understood as a system of interest intermediation between the main societal interests. It may very well be the case that bi-or tripartite control over the social security system coincides with corporatist interest intermediation, but there is no necessary link (see Hemerijck 1993).
