Scharpf revisited : European welfare governance through the lens of actor-centred institutionalism

Abstract

The scholarship of Fritz Scharpf has inspired a leading strand in the debate on ‘social Europe’, but his arguments deserve more critical scrutiny than they have received. In contrast to his thesis about a ‘structural asymmetry’ that prevents the EU from functioning as a social market economy, national welfare provision has not been systematically undermined by regulatory competition, supranational liberalisation and fiscal rules, whereas there has been more positive integration of social policies than he anticipated. I contend that we can gain a richer theorisation of European welfare governance by challenging Scharpf on his own terms, which entails recovering key elements of his actor-centred institutionalism. From this perspective, I discuss four dimensions along which we should reconsider the relation between European integration and national welfare regimes: the cognitive and normative orientations of decision-making actors, the role of interaction orientations and socialisation, social policymaking as a problem-solving process beyond distributive bargaining, and the bounded legitimation of the EU as a diverse union of welfare states.