Journal of European Social Policy

In recent years it has been said that the Dutch welfare state has been made fit for employment growth. This development is praised as part of the so-called Dutch 'Delta model' which since the mid-1980s has been very succesful in labour market terms. Some 20 years ago, when unemployment started to soar, the high level of social security was seen, by contrast, as an aspect of the 'Dutch disease'. Employing a typology based on regulative assumptions of dealing with market risks and aberrations, this paper briefly analyses the subsequent stages of Dutch welfare state development: from a predominantly Christian- paternalist system to social-democratization from the mid-1960s and then to a certain degree of liberalization since the mid-1980s. The structural or institutional inertia of the original system should not be overlooked, however. Comparative investigation reveals that the current Dutch welfare state, in spite of retrenchment measures, still belongs to the most generous ones in the western world, which allows only for relatively low, though rising, levels of poverty and inequality. And it is questionable whether and to what extent retrenchment has contributed to the impressive, although largely part-time-based rise in the Dutch employment rate. In any case non-employment, broadly understood as different from registered unemployment, has not declined in the Netherlands. It has been redistributed to other categories, particularly to the disability scheme. Like other continental countries, the Netherlands still seems to face the dilemma of work and welfare.

How are the distinctive gender regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union changing? What is the impact of the transition - and especially of the loss of state expenditure and state legitimacy - on women as paid workers, partners/wives, mothers, carers and citizens? Have women become more familialized as a result of transition processes? The Monee statistical database of 27 countries, and policy questionnaires to 12, show growing social, economic and cultural diversity. But the soviet legacy and the transition processes give these countries common ground too. Equal rights at work and womenÕs need for paid employment remain from the soviet era. But the gap between rights and practice widens. Legal equality in marriage remains, but domestic violence and the domestic division of labour give evidence of unequal relationships. While the soviet state socialized many costs of motherhood and care work, in some countries families are now bearing much heavier costs. Women as citizens now have more freedoms to organize, but action is more focused on coping and survival than on wider politics: women are - broadly - more familialized, more dependent on family relationships if perhaps less dependent in them.

Book reviews: Rostgaard, T. and T. Fridberg, Caring for Children and Older People - a Comparison of European Policies and Practices (reviewed by Anne Jamieson); Glendenning, C. (ed.), Rights and Realities. Comparing new Developments in Long-term Care for Older People (reviewed by Anne Jamieson)

Book reviews: Rostgaard, T. and T. Fridberg, Caring for Children and Older People - a Comparison of European Policies and Practices (reviewed by Anne Jamieson); Glendenning, C. (ed.), Rights and Realities. Comparing new Developments in Long-term Care for Older People (reviewed by Anne Jamieson)