The Study Of Soclal Policy Reform Of Western European Socialist Party Since1990S

Throughout the changes of western European countries after World War Ⅱ, the construction、crisis and reform of welfare system based on social policies are in the core position. As an enormous social redistribution project, social policies produce an essential effect on economics and politics in western European countries. In1990s, faced with the challenges of economic globalization and European integration, western European countries fell into the economical dilemma of low growth, high inflation and high unemployment. Meanwhile, the serious aging problem, falling birth rate, drastic increasing number of single parent families, and industry structure changing put more and more pressures on financial of social policies. Western European countries have to carry on reform of social policy to increase revenues, reduce expenditure and transform mechanism. However, during this period, socialist party won "Magical Regression" and all political landscape of western European is promising. Companying with reigning position of socialist party is the debate about "The Third Way" in western European area. The core topic of the debate is that, under the condition of economical globalization, European integration and domestic social structure changing, whether socialist party can adjust their goal and strategic tool to adapt to the new changes of economics, politics and social structure or not.In this dissertation, we are in three analytic levels of value goal, policy goal and policy tool to compare the process of social policies reform and its effect. So we take the Labor Party, Sweden Social Democratic Party and German Social Democratic Party for examples. In the field of labour market policies, reform of the western socialist party exhibited significant convergent tendency. All socialist parties introduced activated labor market policy, and reformed the negative relief policy of unemployment insurance, made strict provisions for the qualifications and deadline of unemployment insurance. The differences among British, German and Swedish socialis t party’s reform lies in different level and intensity of activated labor market policy, the supplyment of time limited short-term public jobs were also different. In fiscal expenditure and tax policy, the western socialist parties were highly consistent in the reform target, all socialist parties had accepted the compulsory consolidation of the budget, the pursuit of a balanced budget, at the same time paid attention to reduce the tax burden. Of course, different countries showed obvious differences in the financial income and expenditure cutting measures. The British Labour Party, Swedish Social Democratic Party followed the priority to consolidate the budget and other social policy instruments were constrained by the budget consolidate. The SPD had controversy of the importance of budget consolidation,in the case of dissent budget consolidation was located lower than taxes, which is in the secondary position. Reduce the structural fiscal deficit was not successful during the reign of SPD. The reform of tax policy is largely governed by the supplyment policy, the Western European Socialist parties had to consider to reduce the burden of enterprises, enhance economic growth force factors in tax reform, therefore all Western European socialist parties generally implemented the lower taxation on the enterprise in the tax reform, especially taked special care for small and medium-sized enterprise. Reduced the tax burden of enterprises to stimulate economic development. The significant difference between the various countries of the Socialist Party’s tax policywas tax reform measures of high-income groups. SPD significantly reduced tax on high-income groups, the British Labour Party remained the tax rate of high-income groups, only the Swedish Social Democratic Party increased the tax on high-income groups. In the core areas of social policy-social security, it can be observed that countries have a lot of commonality in the direction of reform:pension with a trend toward the development of a multi-pillar system, the state pension transition from the strongest pillar of the pension system to based pension, status of various corporate and private forms of pension security has improved. In the health field, a system of regulation of disparate elements had been brought to the original security system. and in the system of private organizations increased the state regulation. In the field of family policy, social spending expanded. people could better coordinate professional and family life by providing more social services. In the field of education policy, western socialist party increased investment in education, improved the quality of education. In the field of housing policy, protected the rights of residents of housing, helped economically disadvantaged groups to solve the housing problem. Although existing the common reform trends, the specific areas of the social security reform measures varied by country, it is because the new policy tools must be integrated into the existing structure of the different countries. Compared to labor market policies and fiscal and tax policy, the Socialist Party government reform measures in the field of social security policy had the biggest difference and path dependence.Under the pressure of the external environment, the western European socialist party’s reform had some convergence in some areas, but they didn’t have a united policy, way and mode of the reform. The examples we take represent three styles of social policy reform of socialist party. One kind of the reform is continuing to follow the traditional pattern of social democratic social policy, without changing the traditional policy goals, but has an adjustment of policy tool, such as the German SDP’s reform. The second reform Is adhere to the traditional social democratic social policy goals, but use the new tools to realize the traditional goal, the original social policy is rationalized, the significance of this type of reform is Sweden SDP. A third type of reform is not only changed the traditional social policy goals, but also reform policy tools which are not match the motivating factors, the reform of Britain’s Labour party is the representative of this type.The western European socialist reform had some degree of convergence, also showed some strong path difference. Because the socialist government’s reform is under the background of different political variables. The comprehensive function of these political variables influences the reform path of social policy of Social Party, and expand or narrow their action space. Finally it decides whether the reform goal is success or not. Therefore, the topic of this paper is to use analytic methods of institutionalism to discuss how political variables influence western European Socialist Parties to have some convergent and different ways in social policy reform and how they produce various kinds of effect.There are four categories of political variables that influence socialist party’s social policy. The first category is the EU level’s regulation. The European Union as a supranational entity, standardizes its member countries’ social policy, so it has a convergent effect on western socialist party’s social policy. The second category is the socialist party’s own action. Including whether the party platform being inovated, party organization structure being conducted to improve the strategy ability of the party, whether the party can quickly solve the inner conflict. Faced with the challenges of international and domestic environmental changes, Sweden Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party with strong leadership, and the will form a centralized organizational structure compared to the SPD clearly has stronger adaptability and the ability to resolve conflicts. This ability makes the British Labour Party and the Swedish Social Democratic Party are in accordance with the new conditions, so that social policy reform coordinated to the party platform. The heterogeneity within the SPD is very prominent, both in the party platform and organization, SPD are not ready for social policy reform. The third kind is the motivating factors about election. Voter classes’ preference, attitudes of the interest group, especially the support of the Union is necessary for the socialist party’s reform. The structure of the party competition structure narrows or expands the important options of socialist party’s social policy reform. British Labour Party occupy the obvious advantages in the public concerned topic-health and education."third way" has succeeded in attracting the middle class, expanded its mass base, therefore, the Labour Party has successfully occupied the center of British politics, resistance to Labour Party’s social policy reform at the level of the voters was small. Sweden has universal social policies which created a massive close-knit group of voters, making it easier to obtain a higher level of policy mass political support. But the Swedish electorate often concentrated in a relatively generous, universal social policies around, so the Swedish Social Democratic Party faced voters’ constraints, its social policy shrinked not obvious. SPD’s social policy reform touched the interests of voters, led to confrontation and cooperation of domestic political forces, the against attitude of the reform constraints Social Democratic Party’s reform. According to the attitude of interest group’s, the British Labour Party claims to meet the interests of interest group’s, Labour Union are neither the resources nor the limit. the Swedish Social Democratic Party cooperated with interest groups on social policy reform, the Social Democratic Party’s reform had the Labour Union’s acquiescence. the Labour Union strongly opposed to SPD’s social policy reform. In the competitive landscape of political parties, the British Labour Party has the most huge action resources, Swedish Social DemocraticParty’s action space relatively cramped, but political competition to the Social Democratic Party of Germany provides the most narrow channel operations.The fourth class is the institutional framework and policy legacy. Domestic political system may provide the opportunity for the reform of the socialist party, also it can be a veto point of reform. Different patterns of welfare system restrict the path choice of socialist party’s reform. The previous government’s heritage which the socialist party takes over has important meaning for the socialist party’s policy choice. Britain Labour Party, Sweden Social Democratic Party and Germany SPD face different political systems and different structural opportunities in their respective countries. Britain’s political structure allows government having enough power to implement policies against minorities, which means the British lack of effective veto points, so the British Labour Party is facing a minimum institutional constraints. Although the the Swedish Social Democratic Party composed a minority government, but the veto of the political system is relatively weak for the government’s reform policy. The SPD faces numerous institutional veto players, so it’s reform had the most difficulties. On the welfare system mode, the British liberal welfare model can contribute to Labour’s social policy adjustments. Swedish universal welfare model makes Swedish Social Democratic Party had obviously much more difficult about social welfare cuts than in the liberal welfare model, in order to cope with the pressures of domestic financial and economic globalization. and German conservative welfare model based on the characteristics of occupational welfare system will hinder social policy cuts, so the Germany Social Democratic Party in order to carry out social policy reform must have the ability to respond to the unique obstacles. Comparison of the British Labour Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany at the start of the initial state of the ruling, Labour Party won the most favorable policy legacy, good economic situation development, and social policy reform has begun. Swedish Social Democratic Party has inherited the legacy of relatively favorable, the former government had social policy reforms which paved the way for Swedish Social Democratic Party, the poor economic conditions can become a recognized resource which guide people support Swedish Social Democratic Party’s social policy reform. The SPD had a huge obstacle to fight with the legacy of the previous government. Under the budget deficit, social insurance deficit, high unemployment economy, former government cut welfare reform policies have not successfully implemented, these had increased the difficulty of the SPD social policy reform.Each kind of variables will affect the possibility of the government to make and administrate social policy. These variables summing together determine the socialist action space in a certain extent, the push the socialist party’s social policy reform into a particular direction, so the convergence of the socialist party’s reform in different countries is unlikely to occur. The New Labor has the least amount of institutional constraints, so the Labor party’s policy reform is most radical; Sweden SPD faces more restrictions than the Labor party, and the traditional social democratic social policy is most persistent; German SDP faces the most restrictive factors, so its reform is the most difficult one.Although the process and effect of western socialist party’s social policy reform has been affected by the international and domestic factors, but it does not mean that the new order of the welfare state with social democracy orientation is no longer possible. How to maximize the overall interests of the state and people, how to obtain public understanding and support, how to keep the reformed system of social policy having continued vitality, these are severe test for the party’s implementing social skills and ruling ability. If the socialist party can integrate the innovation of social policy reform and prudent recognition of national and international background, build a recognized by the general public and systemic social justice blueprint, then social democratic social policy can also be effective in the new period.