Het aanpassingsvermogen van de Europese Verzorgingsstaat in de eenentwintigste eeuw

This paper section assesses the relative importance of the arguments about the challenges to the welfare state coming from the international political economy (global trade competition, the internationalisation of finance) and from the domestic political economy (rapid technoloical change, the shift from industrial production to services, the transformation of the world of work, demographic change and changing household and family patterns) and the interaction between these external and domestic pressures. As the nature of this interaction manifests itself differently in different types of welfare states, there are different predicament of adjustment challenges facing the national welfare states of the European Union. The final section concerns the prospects for the European social policy integration against the background of the regime-specific problems and domestic and international challenges.