Abstract:
New Zealand and the United Kingdom underwent extensive attempts to ‘roll back' or dismantle their welfare states in the 1980s and 1990s. Following the electoral defeat of these welfare-retrenching governments in the Iate 1990s, Labour governments were returned to office in each country. Each of these governments claimed they were different from their predecessors and provided as evidence their adaptation of a ‘Third Way’ policy platform. They argued that this approach differed from that of their neoliberal predecessors as well as earlier social democratic policies. Drawing on policy documents, political speeches, national studies and international statistics, this thesis assesses these claims of difference in each country by analysing two important areas of welfare provision: policies for working-age beneficiaries and for low wage workers. Insights from both political economy and power resources theory are used to examine theoretically and empirically the extent of difference between the policy choices made by each Labour government and their neoliberal predecessors. The thesis argues that in both policy areas, the Labour governments have continued the process of ‘re-commodification’ begun by their predecessors, with welfare provision best captured under the label ‘a new wage-earner's welfare state’ that provides support to those in low-paid work and draws working-age beneficiaries into the workforce. Labour reforms represent a further embedding or ‘rolling out’ of the neoliberal agenda rather than representing some version of modernised social democracy, as each government claimed.