Globalization, Political Discourse, and Welfare Systems in Comparative Perspective: The Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the US.

The welfare state in industrialized countries is challenged by a number of developments: the globalization or internationalization of the economy, changing demographics, a transformation from industrial to post-industrial economies, as well as social and cultural changes. Although all of these variables might be important for specific changes in social policy arrangements, in this paper I will only address the effects of globalization on social policy arrangements in the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, and the US. The starting point of my paper is the hypothesis that the specific perception of globalization and the constructed links to social policy arrangements within the political discourse will have to be taken into account, when analyzing the effects of globalization. Furthermore, it will be argued that focussing solely on the state’s activity within the social policy realm might lead to distorted and misleading results. Finally, I discuss the different dynamics of welfare systems in the era of globalization in a broader theoretical framework. It will be argued that the concept of path dependency, which has often been used to describe recent welfare state developments, underestimates the changes that have taken place in the German, Japanese, and US-American welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]