Welfare policy reforms in contemporary Europe : the ideological shift in the European social democratic parties

Abstract

This dissertation is intended as a contribution to the debate now going on in many countries about the future of social democratic politics. This debate is of great importance since the reasoning behind it is the dissolution of the welfare consensus that dominated in industrial countries up to the late 1980's and the remarkable social, economic and, above all, technological changes that helped bring this about. Social democracy is becoming much less distinctive from other political philosophies.