Welfare Reform in the Nordic Countries in the 1990s

This article uses a new method for policy analysis, fuzzy-set theory, which is a framework that allows for a precise operationalization of theoretical concepts. fuzzy-set theory is used to asses the conformity of the Nordic countries to a pre-conceptualized ideal-typical nordic welfare model. This permits us to assess recent welfare reform and judge whether changes are of qualitative or quantitative nature, i.e. whether reform amounts to differences in kind or degree.