Meso Focus - Disintegrated Welfare States and New Political Cleavages
The potentials for instability inherent in the organizational and inter-organizational structures of welfare states need to be more considered as one of the main challenges of modern welfare societies. Thus we will have to examine, first, the consequences of the hybridization of markets and the welfare state in the wake of the partial privatization of social policy and, secondly, inherent tensions of the welfare state which are due to a lack of institutional integration among sub-fields of social policy or among social policy and adjacent policy fields. On this basis, we will have to gauge the potentials for the emergence of manifest conflicts and electoral cleavages that welfare societies might develop under increased pressure.