Conf licting administrative traditions – a political-economic perspective
Conf licting administrative traditions – a political-economic perspective

Summary/Abstract: Social policy formation does fundamentally rely on the outcome of the debate about the future of the European welfare state. From the perspective of the political-economic approach, social policy formation is a dependent variable for both the European integration policy and the national administrative traditions. However, the national state does not act in a sovereign manner either in relation to the European Union (EU) or to domestic member actors. All of them are confronted with the so-called “trilemma” aspect, a term first introduced by the US social scientist Torben Iversen (2005). In this paper, I follow up on his analysis and show the difficult choices that confront policy makers on the different administrative levels because of this trilemma and its trade-offs. New Public Management ideas are dominant and for the time being confront other ruling administrative social traditions of Western Europe. In this paper, I conclude that a European agreement on social choice, related to the overcome of trilemma, must be accomplished to save the welfare state model as we know it. The traditional Nordic welfare state model can serve as an example.

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