Convergence or Resilience? A Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of the Welfare Regimes in Advanced Countries

Abstract

Following the seminal work of Esping-Andersen, many studies have identified a variety of welfare regimes in Western Europe and North America. This study examines a set of quantitative social indicators, using hierarchical cluster analysis, in order to identify such regimes, which display specific arrangements between markets, the state and families in the production and distribution of the resources required for the well-being of people. Indeed, these empirical analyses reveal the existence of the three regimes originally identified by Esping-Andersen - social-democratic, liberal, and conservative - to which one must add, as many authors had pointed out, a fourth, distinct from the latter, the Latin regime. These results pertain whether one turns to data from the 1980s or the 1990s. The data also reveal strong and durable relations of presumably mutual causality between the configuration of social programmes in the various societies under analysis, the social situations which largely result from these social programmes and, lastly, the level of civic participation which leads (or not) people to collective mobilization, which in turn shapes social programmes. The authors' comparative analysis allows them to identify Canada's place in the worlds of welfare capitalism.