ABSTRACT
The main components of the French welfare system clearly reflect the Bismarckian tradition of social insurance. From 1945 to the late 1970s, social policies expanded as one of the important parts of the Keynesian compromises that underpinned the ‘Trente Glorieuses’. Social spending was seen as favoring economic growth and employment, social insurance transfers as consolidating social integration and (occupational) solidarity, and welfare state institutions as supporting social peace. Subsequently, however, the economic, social and political functions of the social protection systems have been progressively undermined. After a long period of crisis and resistance throughout the 1970s and 1980s, French social programs are since then being progressively reformed to adapt to the new economic and social environment. As this chapter will show, though, this adaptation is only partial, since it has been implemented through a dualistic strategy of reform. This has divided French welfare and society into two worlds: those still insured by an increasingly contributory complex of public and private insurances, and those dependent on a new tier of basic social protection.
