ABSTRACT
There is widespread agreement that changes in European welfare systems in the last two decades have been both diverse and transformative, extending across all social policy sectors and regime types. In this chapter, we draw on the timely and rich resource of the 28 country studies combined in this Handbook to map the complex picture of social policy reforms between 1998 and 2018, investigating the fields of old-age, health, labour market, and family policy as well as social assistance. We find that European welfare systems’ reform paths reflect national peculiarities to a large degree, being characterised by a complex picture of different reform directions, ideas, and types of change, with policy reversal constituting a significant and frequently overlooked characteristic of reform. While, looking backwards, a ‘permanent austerity’ is not to be seen, the comparative assessment does not suggest a clear direction into which European welfare systems are going from here.
