Distinct or Extinct?

Efforts during the 1990s to test the dismantlement hypothesis led to a rather broad consensus that the welfare state was not being dismantled or retrenched in a fundamental manner. Instead, a process of gradual reform and revision – re-design or re-calibration - was judged to be taking place. However, as most studies either covered only one or a few countries, or a single welfare state dimension, it remains unresolved whether reforms affected the differences between welfare states or types of welfare states: Did reforms lead to convergence on the European scene?
This article offers an empirically-based answer to this question. It gives an account of how reforms affected the patterning of European welfare states towards the late-1990s, based on key findings from a large scale project comparing welfare state adjustment and its consequences in several dimensions among Western European welfare states over the past two decades.