Pauli Kettunen The Multilayered Historicity

of the Nordic Welfare State

NordWel Summer School Hanasaari, 21-26 August 2008

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Argument for a cross-disciplinary history of the present

paradoxical images of current change: globalisation as a national challenge

critique of neo-institutionalism critique of the search for origins critique of reductionism historicity: pathdependency and contingency historicity: histories and comparisons as a reflexivty of

social practices ”the Nordic model”: new meanings to old institutions?

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Globalisation and the making of competitive national ’us’ the notion of ”Nordic model” as a target of external challenges the notion of ”Nordic model” as a response to external

challenges defining globalisation as a national challenge “the webs of structural power operating throughout the world

system” (Susan Strange) ”the critique of national gaze” (Ulrich Beck) nationalism inherent in global economic competition “competition state” (Philip Cerny, Wolfgang Streeck, Ronen

Palan & Jason Abbot etc) ”from the Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian

workfare state” (Bob Jessop)

“History matters”?

“history matters” (Douglass C. North) neo-institutionalism: history as a dimension of national

economic performance capacity “history” tends to become synonymous to national

specificities taken-for-granted distinction between the nation-state

actor and the external environment of action.

The search for origins?

the current interest in the “origin” of the Nordic welfare state

the 19th century processes of modernisation or structures of pre-industrial rural community

socialism or nationalism the rise of Social Democracy in the 1930s or the

Reformation and the making of Lutheran state church in the 16th and 17th centuries

critique of “the obsession with origins” and “the idol of origin” (Marc Bloch)

the beginning does not explain the phenomenon the presentism of the idol of origin

The multi-layered historicity of the present

does not simply try to explain what we see in our present but also to make explicit something that we did not see

the ways in which the different historical layers, developed in different periods of time and mediated through mentalities, traditions, values, epistemic practices and social movements, are present in the Nordic welfare states

“A history of the present is concerned with that which is taken-for-granted, assumed to be given, or natural within contemporary social existence, a givenness or naturalness questioned in the course of contemporary struggles.” (Mitchell Dean)

The Nordic welfare state as a history of the notion of society conceptual history as a history of the present ’society’ as ”a givenness questioned in the course on

contemporary struggles” historical layers of the Nordic ‘society’ modernising nation-state society as an agent society as public power and synonymous to the state society of virtuous circles wage-work society adjusting universalist social citizenship

and the normalcy of wage work and salaried work (cf. the thesis of “decommodification” by Gosta Esping-Andersen)

Critique of reductionism

old functionalistic reductionism deriving social reforms and regulations from the needs and problems of industrial modernisation

a newer variant of reductionism: the welfare state as a “project”

how to take into account the temporal incongruity between discourses and institutions

how to dismantle the politics inherent in social and economic political decisions

how to take into account the relationships between planning (knowledge) and conflicts and compromises (interests)

how to take into account the varying agents of social security

Histories and comparisons as reflexivity of social practices

the tension of experience and expectation in modern historical and political consciousness (Reinhart Koselleck)

”risk” in social policy historicity: institutional and discursive preconditions that

enable and limit the agency, on one hand, and an insecurity and openness of the horizon of expectation, on the other hand

path dependency and contingency intertwined cf. path dependency and convergence (international) comparisons as a form of reflexivity “histoire croisée” (Michael Werner & Bénédicte Zimmermann) “transnational history”, “Sozialpolitik transnational” (Christoph

Conrad) international comparisons in the making of the Nordic model of

national welfare state

New meanings to old institutions?

globalised capitalism and the questioning of the Nordic notion of society

old institutions of the welfare state modified to serve new functions for competitive national community

discussion on “models”: encounters between transnational capital and national institutions

social policy as “a productive factor” (the Lisbon strategy of the EU)

the Janus face of the social: subjects of innovation and objects of activation

continuities and discontinuities in the search for “social capital” and in “activation policies”