Sébastien Saint-Arnaud and
Paul Bernard
Convergence or Resilience?
A Hierarchical Cluster Analysis
of the Welfare Regimes in
Advanced Countries
Introduction
Global economy, competitiveness, new economy: growth in advanced
societies is increasingly tied to the rapid internationalization of
economic exchanges and to the circulation of information and knowledge, an
outcome of the development of new information and communication tech-
nologies (Thurow, 1997). Globalization and its many facets have helped bring
about structural changes in the economy and, to a certain extent, in the way
governments operate. In this economic globalization context, what has
become of the social fabric? How have citizens and governments adjusted to
the new economy?
The imperatives of economic performance and efficiency and the globaliz-
ation of exchanges are often cited by governments seeking to justify reductions
in their social programme expenditures, thereby eliminating budget deficits
and encouraging foreign investment. These cuts have consequences such as
declines in the efficiency of the health care system (Maioni, 1996) and the
polarization of employment income,1 which in turn swell the ranks of both the
wealthiest and the most disadvantaged members of society, at the expense of
the middle classes (O'Connor, 1997; Jesuit and Smeeding, 2002).
One might well ask whether we are witnessing the generalization of what
Betcherman and Lowe (1997: 39) call the individualization of risk, at a time
when our most pivotal institutions, which once assumed the management of
a number of social risks (via health insurance, social security, collective
bargaining, etc.), are weakening. Even the OECD (2001: 26), known for
Current Sociology, September 2003, Vol. 51(5): 499­527 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com
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championing economic flexibility, is concerned with the consequences of this
new economic context, and particularly about a possible disintegration of
social consensus and declines in social capital.
In order to characterize these transformations, one has to start off from
the fact that individuals use three distinct systems of exchange for procuring
resources to meet their needs (see Bernard, 2001): the market, the state and
civil society (especially the family), which all contribute to the production
and distribution of goods and services. In the market, individuals contribute
work and receive income in return. To the state they make civic and fiscal
contributions, and they are entitled to political, civic and social rights (public
services, transfer payments, etc.). Lastly individuals operate, in both families
and civil society, through voluntary exchanges, each contribution creating
obligations on the part of others, but obligations that are less well defined
than is the case with the market or in dealings with the state (Godbout, 1992).
Depending on ideological orientations, that differ from society to
society, the structuring of these three systems of exchange will give rise to
welfare regimes, i.e. models of social organization. Indeed several studies, and
particularly those of a qualitative nature, inspired by the innovative work of
Gsta Esping-Andersen (1990, 1999a), have confirmed the presence and per-
sistence of important distinguishing characteristics in the organization of
social policies in advanced societies. We undertake parallel analyses here, but,
in our case, using quantitative indicators and methods. This approach allows
us to put to the test several welfare regime typologies, and to examine more
systematically the forms these regimes assume, their recent development and
especially the reasons for their resilience.
A Typological Analysis of Welfare Regimes
Societies belonging to different welfare regimes each express in their own way
the basic principles of social citizenship. According to Bernard (1999), these
principles are the ones that the French Revolution identified: liberty, equality
and solidarity, and they combine in a complex dialectical relationship. As
shown in Figure 1, any vision of development held by advanced societies that
neglects one of these principles is lacking. For instance, in societies where
liberty predominates, economic freedoms rapidly become dominant under
neoliberalism, with its resultant polarization of living standards (leading to a
deficit in equality) as well as community disintegration (a deficit in solidarity).
Societies that mostly emphasize equality may move towards totalitarianism,
as was the case for Communist societies (a deficit in freedom), whereas in less
extreme cases, the uniform bureaucratic treatment of social problems leads, on
the one hand, to the failure of social programmes for want of community
involvement (a deficit in solidarity) and, on the other hand, to fiscal crises (see
500 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

Iversen and Wren, 1998). Lastly, societies that bank too heavily on the prin-
ciple of solidarity may tend towards ideological indoctrination (a deficit in
freedom), which in turn strengthens the domination by those who control the
actions supposedly required for the cause (a deficit in equality).
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 501
DEMOCRATIC
DIALECTIC
liberty
POLARIZATION
AND
DISLOCATION
equality
COERCION
AND
UNIFORMITY
solidarity
PRESS-GANGING
AND
DOMINATION
INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
PLURALIST
DEMOCRACY
PARTICIPATORY
DEMOCRACY
Figure 1 The Democratic Dialectic and its Avatars (from Bernard, 1999)

Although these three principles are in a state of constant opposition and
tension, they do form a whole in which each component is indispensable. For
this reason, Jane Jenson (1998) has argued that social cohesion loses its
meaning if, in trying to temper the social consequences of an increasingly
influential neoliberalism, it shrinks down to calls for solidarity based on
common values. Indeed, no genuine cohesion is possible except where each
and every citizen enjoys access to a minimum of resources, and where relative
equality prevails among them. In short, social exclusion undermines social
cohesion.
One might even argue that welfare regimes are all pursuing this very
social cohesion as they manage, each in its own way, the levels and types of
tension among these three principles. Reducing inequality, a characteristic of
advanced societies, can indeed provide individuals with the means for attain-
ing real freedom,2 while furthering the development of genuine solidarity, in
communities where members all have a say in what happens. But the role of
public institutions is quite different in various societies, and as a result it
shapes in different ways the relationships individuals have with the labour
market and their families.
Comparative studies discussing the differences among welfare regimes
date from the 1960s and 1970s. This period was marked by the emergence of
welfare states in the context of postwar prosperity. Marshall (1964), Rimliger
(1971) and Titmuss (1974) were then looking at the progress societies had
been making in the expansion of social rights. During the following decade,
characterized by economic disruptions in the wake of two oil crises, Castles
(1982), Korpi (1983) and Sko·cpol (1985) endeavoured to understand the
mechanisms that support financing for welfare states despite the obvious
crises confronting these countries.
During the 1990s, when the role of the welfare state underwent a
thorough re-evaluation, work on the resilience of welfare regimes gained con-
siderable prominence. The reference work was, without a doubt, Gsta
Esping-Andersen's (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Based
on an analysis of the arrangements between the market, the state and the
family, this author was able to categorize advanced capitalist societies into
three types of institutional arrangements, each designed to reconcile
economic development with measures to protect citizens against the risks of
the marketplace: the conservative regime (particularly in Germany and
Austria), the liberal regime (primarily in Anglo-Saxon countries), and the
social-democratic regime (in the Scandinavian countries). Using Esping-
Andersen's model, Leibfried (1992), Ferrera (1996) and Bonoli (1997) added
a fourth type to the typology, which they called `Latin', or southern, because
it was found mainly in Southern European countries.3 Figure 2 summarizes
the characteristics of these welfare regimes as they emerge from the work of
these authors.
502 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

In the Scandinavian countries, the emphasis on equality confers a con-
siderable role on the state. In the Anglo-Saxon countries (including, to a large
extent, Canada), freedom holds a more prominent place, and thus markets
become the key institution. Finally, the principle of solidarity predominates
in the conservative regimes of Continental Europe, with their insurance
schemes often based on occupational groups, just as in the familial regimes
of the Mediterranean countries, where the family plays the crucial role in the
maintenance of material well-being. We now examine each of these regimes
in greater detail.
In the social-democratic regime, inequalities produced by the labour
market are reduced by social programme expenditures, which by design apply
universally. Their purpose is not only to fight social exclusion, but also to
foster economic growth (for instance through investments in education and
vocational training). The importance accorded to the notion of resources can
be seen in the social programmes set up to minimize dependence on the market
(the process of decommodification4 of the working population). Moreover, as
Esping-Andersen (1999b: 278) wrote, `the commitment to equality between
the sexes and their massive provision of health care to children and the elderly,
with generous parental leave and benefits for families with dependent
children' makes this a defamilializing regime: it is characterized by a commit-
ment to collectivizing the burdens and responsibilities of raising a family.5 For
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 503
Social-Democratic Liberal Conservative Latin
Solidarity
Maintain:
- Social stability
- Wage stability
- Social integration
Liberty
Minimize:
- Governmental
interventions
- `Disincentives' to
work
Equality
Reduce:
- Poverty
- Inequality
- Unemployment
Ideological
inspiration
Organizing
principle
Focus of the
programmes
Central
institution
State Market Family and occupational
categories
Resources Needs Risks
Universalism
Social rights
Rudimentary
and
familialistic
Insurance:
Access to
benefits
depending on
past
contributions
Residual:
Taking care of the
essential needs of
the most deprived
(means-tested
assistance)
Figure 2 The Characteristics of Welfare Regimes

instance the institutional arrangements under social-democratic regimes,
while recognizing the importance of the roles of the family and the market,
transform the state into a key resource for individuals in the management of
their life courses.
Countries with a liberal regime rely first and foremost on the market
economy to meet everyone's needs, and they avoid as much as possible social
programme expenditures, which would threaten economic performance
(particularly because of disincentives to work). The state thus delineates
residual assistance policies, supplying only minimum levels to the most
disadvantaged through means-tested programmes (Titmuss, 1987). This
places strict limits on the decommodification of the working population, and
the family must rely to a large extent on the market to meet its needs.
Freedom is the primary ideological foundation of the regime, which trans-
lates into the promotion of market sovereignty: theoretically, the market
affords all participants the opportunity to satisfy their needs, even if in
practice such regimes `promote market solutions . . . [but consequently] to
the disadvantage of citizens' entitlements' (Esping-Andersen, 1999a: 74­5).
Conservative welfare regimes emphasize the risks incurred by workers
(and, as a consequence, by their families) during their working life (unem-
ployment, sicknesses, etc.) or afterwards (retirement, death of a spouse). To
compensate, social insurance provides certain benefits, more often than not
in return for social security contributions. But given that `in a social insur-
ance system based on employment, the effects of exclusion from the paid
labour force are compounded by exclusion from the social welfare system'
(Palier and Bonoli, 1999: 406), the process of decommodification of the
working population is possible only for those who belong to the family circle
of someone who has a job. As a consequence, the family becomes the central
actor in the satisfaction of the needs of those of its members who are having
problems; it is the last resort for those excluded from the paid labour force.
The social policies of the state seem all the more familialistic given that they
also perpetuate the traditional model of the male breadwinner. The under-
lying motivation here is thus predominantly solidarity. But in a sense, it is a
class-based solidarity since benefits are related to income levels and, more
generally, to social position. Insurance systems based on employment serve
to reinforce professional social stability and social integration by developing
social networks of mutual support.
Lastly, the Latin welfare regime includes countries located in Southern
Europe. Their redistributive social policies are more rudimentary, but the
jobs of the primary family breadwinners generally include extensive fringe
benefits, which in turn makes adapting to globalization more problematic.
The Latin regime is very familialistic, even more so than the conservative
regime: the family is the basic source of support when people are experiencing
difficulties, and even when they are not. That said, the similarity between
504 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

these two regimes is so great that some authors, including Esping-Andersen,
have refused to consider them separately.
A Three-Pronged Research Objective
In this article we strive to achieve three successive objectives, each more
ambitious and complex than the previous one: first, to validate the welfare
regime typology with quantitative data, something that has not so far been
done in a satisfactory manner; then, to examine the question of the conver-
gence of welfare regimes, which we do by comparing the configuration
towards the end of the 1990s with that prevailing 10 years earlier; and finally,
once we have established the resilience of the welfare regimes during this
period, to use our quantitative data to examine the reasons behind it.
Validating the Typology Using a Quantitative Model
We first need to determine, using new empirical data and a quantitative
model, whether the 20 or so OECD countries enjoying similar levels of
development may be classified using the Esping-Andersen and Leib-
fried­Bonoli­Ferrera typology (the latter adding a Latin regime). While the
determination of these types has been based primarily on the qualitative
study of the main public policies governing social security ­ on occasion also
using a few general additive indices ­ we hope instead to look at a broad set
of social indicators measured during the second half of the 1990s. As will be
seen, our hierarchical cluster analysis leads to a quantitative confirmation of
the relevance of this typology.
Two opposite objections might be raised with regard to such an
approach. On the one hand, it will not yield anything new because the nature
of the regimes has already been determined by other methods. On the other
hand, each country presents a situation far too complex, on the level of social
policy, to be characterized simply by assigning it to a single type.
The answer to the first objection does not draw merely on the system-
atic nature of quantitative approaches, but also, in a much more significant
way, on the inductive nature of the method we are using here. We use a large
number of indicators to portray a variety of aspects of welfare regimes,
without arbitrarily weighting any one more than the others at the outset.
Thus, only the empirical associations that emerge among these indicators will
dictate how the countries are grouped and what regime they belong to. Such
an inductive approach does not make much sense when used alone. But when
various authors have considered a number of different alternatives for classi-
fying welfare regimes, as is the case here, an analysis such as ours can give
some of these alternatives a significantly greater plausibility than others.
The second objection, it should be noted, is directed at the idea of even
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 505

developing typologies as such, not only at the quantitative approach we are
using to do so. Arts and Gelissen (2002) discuss this point extensively, and
they demonstrate persuasively the heuristic potential of such types in a rela-
tively new field of research. To this end, one must avoid `sacralizing' the
types; they are only meant to represent the essential features of the situation
and to reveal the forest rather than the myriad individual trees ­ even if, of
course, these individual peculiarities are undeniable and even if certain cases
remain difficult to fit into only one type. In fact, types and individual charac-
teristics are both recognizable, and they can each reveal things about the
other. It is against the backdrop of broad types, worked out using the full set
of indicators for all countries, that the individual features of each society will
stand out. Most, if not all, societies do fall primarily into one type, though
they may present some features associated with another type.6 In addition,
Arts and Gelissen note, a typology is useful only if we can use it to do some-
thing else. This is precisely what we will do in pursuing the other two objec-
tives of our research.
Verifying the Resilience of Welfare Regimes
Advanced countries are now facing market forces that are increasingly
powerful and independent. The decisions of the main economic actors seem
to escape the sphere of influence of states. What becomes of welfare regimes
in this context? Do governments manage to maintain their own arrangements
among the three pillars of material well-being constituted by the market, the
state and the family and civil society's institutions? Or are we instead seeing
nations converge towards a similar model of social and political organization,
where economic freedoms would predominate, bringing about both an
increasing polarization of living standards and a certain degree of community
disintegration?
From a `neo-institutionalist' theoretical perspective, the path depen-
dency hypothesis suggests rather that political choices are heavily determined
by earlier choices (Myles, 1998). Policies already in place would indeed
benefit from an `increasing returns' phenomenon (Pierson, 2000), mainly
because of the efforts and the costs involved in developing new policies.
`Once established, basic political ideas are generally tenacious and favour
continuity over change' (Palier and Bonoli, 1999: 406). Noël (1996) main-
tains, moreover, that analyses of policy change must focus more on the
erosion of programmes in place than on radical breaks with them, since far-
reaching policy transformations involve costs (institutional conversions,
adoption of new mind-sets, changes in the established order, etc.) that
political parties cannot generally support. Pierson (1997) identifies four
reasons why increasing returns and path dependency are found at the heart
of political choices: (1) the predominance of short-term horizons among poli-
ticians, who must periodically seek re-election; (2) the limited possibilities for
506 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

recognizing or measuring the efficiency of a project; (3) political institutions,
such as constitutions, that are often designed to resist change; and (4) the
complexity of mobilizing large numbers of actors, which is often required to
change things.
Political decisions would thus be dependent on past choices, and they
would shape social situations on the basis of established political culture.
From this perspective, the convergence of welfare regimes as a result of
market requirements is far from automatic, and the hypothesis that regimes
are resilient is just as plausible, if not more so. It is for this very reason that
researchers have turned to the notion of regimes, which expresses both the
comprehensive character, and the likely resilience of different kinds of
arrangements between the market, the state and civil society.
We evaluate here the stability of these regimes by redoing our analyses
using data for the 1980s, which also allows us to validate the typology one
more time. The decade-long period separating these data sets is admittedly
not very long. But it should be noted that our analysis spans a period of
turbulent political, social and economic circumstances in these countries and
at the international level, as Castles (2001: 149­50) has shown. Of course,
stability over a decade ­ or, indeed, over an even longer period ­ is no guaran-
tee of future trends; but stability does indicate, at least, that welfare regimes
are resilient, and it suggests that further work remains to be done on the
causes of their reproduction through time.
Understanding the Resilience of Welfare Regimes
In pursuit of these causes, one has to take into account the dynamics of public
spaces, namely `the arena into which are channelled power struggles and the
interests of established actors' (Lagroye, 1993: 111). These dynamics are
implicitly mentioned in the work on welfare regimes, but we want to make
them much more explicit here and to develop hypotheses from them about
the resilience of these regimes.
Esping-Andersen has never thought that welfare regimes could be
reduced to a simple list of social policies in different countries. On the
contrary, he emphasized from the outset `the historical characteristics of
States, and particularly the history of political coalitions based on class as the
most decisive causes of the variations in welfare regimes' (Esping-Andersen,
1990: 1). He sees three factors as crucial in this connection: the nature of class
mobilization (particularly for the working class), class-based political action
structures, and the historical heritage conferred by the institutionalization of
a given regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 29).
In addition, Esping-Andersen identifies two fundamental characteristics
of welfare regimes: decommodification, discussed earlier, which refers to the
ability of individuals to obtain services and income without having to turn to
the market; and the social stratification that results from social policies, as
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 507

well as the breadth or narrowness of the social solidarity that underlies them
(see Arts and Gelissen, 2002). These two characteristics thus refer on the one
hand to social rights and social policies (stratification), and on the other hand
to their outcomes (decommodification).
In parallel with these distinctions in Esping-Andersen's approach, we
identify and use in our own analysis three components of the dynamics of
public space, which we measure using three distinct sets of social indicators:
indicators of social situations, of public policy and of civic participation by
citizens. Figure 3 illustrates the interrelationships among these three com-
ponents, as well as the associated indicators we used.7
By social situations we mean what citizens experience in the areas of
economic activity and employment, family life, health and education. These
situations are determined, to a significant extent, by public policy (whether
minimalist or more interventionist). Of course, these policies themselves (e.g.
the place of the state, its policies concerning education, health, employment,
material well-being) are in turn determined in two ways by these social situ-
ations. On the one hand, public policies can be efficiently adjusted, to a
greater or lesser extent, to the needs of the population. On the other hand,
policies are influenced by civic participation (through voting, the intensity of
political discussion, union activity, mutual trust and the like); this partici-
pation reflects in turn, although in complex ways, the social situations that
citizens are experiencing.
We might hypothesize, for example, that social-democratic societies give
the state a key role in correcting social inequality, and that this political action
is based on citizen involvement in situations and social issues such as work
arrangements, gender equity, universal access to education and to health care,
etc. Liberal societies, by contrast, have fewer public policies that attempt to
limit the development of social inequality, a feature that over time tends to
yield relatively low levels of citizen involvement in social issues.
We should emphasize here the key role of the civic and political partici-
pation component. It is through the institutions of civil society (that is,
unions, parties, associations, media, etc.) that the demands made by citizens
come to matter. It is because of these institutions that civic issues may be
debated in a public forum, that politicians are called upon to intervene, that
various ideologies take shape, and that the stakes of public political debates
are defined (see Milner, 2001). Citizen participation allows societies with
diverse points of view that are beset with social conflicts to remain cohesive
(Bernard, 1999; Flacher, 2000).
We therefore think that there exists a mutual causality among these three
components: the way political participation gives meaning to social situations
helps orient public policies; these policies in turn transform social situations
and then give rise to new mobilizations and modes of participation. To test
this hypothesis about a causality loop (shown by the arrows in Figure 3), we
508 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

repeat our typological analyses ­ using hierarchical cluster analysis ­ separ-
ately for each set of social indicators that we have identified. If social situ-
ations are actually, to a significant extent, the product of public programmes,
as well as the product of the intensity and type of social participation, then
the indicators describing the social situations should by themselves permit
classifying different countries into categories that reflect the welfare regimes
about which we are hypothesizing. The same division into regimes should
hold when we look at the public policy indicators by themselves, then at the
participation indicators alone, since each set of indicators will bear the
imprint of the other two sets shaping the regime.
If, in other words, we find the same country groupings by regime in our
three typological analyses (each with separate indicators of situations,
policies and participation respectively), that will tell us that these regimes,
once established, so dominate the economic, social and political scenes of the
various countries that they give the same `colour' to their social situations, to
their government programmes and to the civic commitment of their citizens.
The three components reinforce one other, thereby producing a resilience
that, hypothetically, would characterize welfare regimes.
Mediated by path dependency, this resilience is part of the history,
culture and demography of different societies, and it leads them to make the
most of their geographical situation and of their position in the global
economy. It is worth noting that this neo-institutionalist perspective goes
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 509
Institutional mechanisms that support political mobilization:
voter turnout at the latest elections, union membership, daily
newspaper read,level of trust, etc.
Situations:
- Economic (growth, inflation, etc.)
- Labour market (participation rates, unemployment rates,
long- term unemployment, general government
employment)
- Family (female labour participation rate, fertility rates,
average age of women at birth of their first child )
- Health (life expectancy at birth, infant mortality rates)
- Education (R&D: scientists and technicians)
Programmes ( most variables correspond to % of GDP):
- Public administration (governmental outlays and
receipts, final consumption expenditure)
- Health ( public expenditure on health, public
expenditure on health as % of all public, number of
physicians per 1000 persons)
- Social security (social security transfers,
contribution of employers and employees)
- Professional training (public expenditure )
- Fiscal (investment, debt interest payments, income
tax, subventions and other transfers)
- Education (public expenditure on education)
- Number of years (benchmark is 2000) since the
first law on : (1) old age, disability and death, (2)
sickness and maternity, (3) unemployment, (4)
work injury, (5) family allowances.
Public space Path dependency
Governmental
programmes
Political
participation
Social
situations
- History
- Culture
- Demography
- Geography
- Globalization
Figure 3 The Dynamics and Transformations of Welfare Regimes

hand in hand with another, which draws on the resource-mobilization
approach: if welfare regimes persist through time, it is not simply because of
institutional inertia; it is also because the social forces shaped by the regimes
take an active role in ensuring that they perpetuate themselves.
Methodological Considerations
To test the welfare regime typology of Esping-Andersen and
Leibfried­Ferrera­Bonoli, hierarchical cluster analysis is the most appropri-
ate method because it allows grouping countries that have similar character-
istics across a set of variables, thus leading to homogeneous empirical types
(Rapkin and Luke, 1993).8 It is called hierarchical because it divides a set of
cases (the countries) into ever more numerous and specific subsets, accord-
ing to the distance measured among all pairs of cases, taking into account
their position across the whole set of variables under analysis.9 Given that
this inductive method is based exclusively on similarities among the cases, its
results depend on only two factors: on the one hand, the actual structure of
the observed phenomenon, and on the other hand, the methodological
decisions concerning the choice of cases and variables, as well as the statisti-
cal method used to identify subsets. We now briefly examine the rules we
have adopted so as to eliminate all arbitrariness in identifying the observed
phenomenon.
Since we want to compare advanced societies, namely, the societies that
have capitalist market economies and rather broad social programmes, our
analysis must include the full set of these societies and only these. At first we
decided to use the 30 countries of the OECD. But early testing showed that
about 10 of them, among which were Mexico, Korea and Turkey and the ex-
Communist countries (Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic), had much
lower levels of development in this regard; moreover, far fewer standardized
data are available about the social programmes in these countries. This situ-
ation forced us to withdraw them from our analysis (for more information,
see Saint-Arnaud et al., 2000). This in no way compromises our objective of
validating the welfare regime typology, since most other authors have
analysed the same countries we have selected here.
The choice of variables represents the greatest challenge to our analysis,
for it is on this basis alone that the notion of welfare regime will be opera-
tionally defined. We have already indicated that our guiding concern would
be to represent the three causally interrelated components of welfare
regimes: social situations, public policies and political participation. It is
obviously impossible to include all the variables having to do with these
components, since only a limited set appear in the standard statistical
sources.10 But selecting a reasonably diversified sample of them is sufficient
510 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

to be able to characterize the countries and regimes with respect to the task
at hand: we need a sample covering all three components, of course, but also
diversified into a variety of areas (employment, health, education, public
budgets, contributions to social programmes and various forms of civic
participation).11
We must circumvent two difficulties in this connection. On the one hand,
we must not include in the analysis any variables that, although interesting,
might contrast the countries on bases that would be irrelevant to our specific
concern. On the other hand, we must be careful not to incorporate into our
analyses any indicators that directly measure inclusion in one or another
regime, a choice that would lead to fruitless circular reasoning. A recent study
by Obinger and Wagschal (2001) used hierarchical cluster analysis, just as
ours does, and obtained similar results, but it did present, to a degree, both
of these shortcomings.
These authors chose to include in their analyses a set of economic vari-
ables (e.g. GDP per capita, the openness of the economy to imports and
exports, surpluses or deficits in the balance of payments, the proportion of
the workforce engaged in farming) that put more emphasis on the absolute
level of development and economic wealth than on the type of social security
regime: that is, on the configuration of political and fiscal choices that those
societies had made. At the same time, Obinger and Wagschal used variables
measuring the political composition of the government (for instance, the per-
centage of members of the social-democratic, conservative and liberal parties
present in government). This short-circuits the analysis and makes it partly
circular: if the data analysis tells us that in countries oriented towards various
regimes, political representatives explicitly espouse these political orien-
tations, we do not learn much about the resilience of those regimes.
We have avoided these difficulties by restricting ourselves to indicators
that measure exclusively the specificity of social situations, as shaped by
public policies, themselves the outcome of a variety of types of civic partici-
pation (and not the resultant ideological positions measured directly).
Last, as far as the method used to identify subsets is concerned, we have
made four choices that should elicit little controversy. First, we have stan-
dardized all the variables we used on a scale from 0 to 1, to prevent the sort
of skewed analysis that might result if some variables with a broad range of
absolute values were allowed to dominate the data analysis. Second, we have
chosen the classic measure of distance known as `squared Euclidean' to
evaluate the similarities between cases, as it gives more importance to greater
distances, and thus makes it possible to bring out the differences between
countries whose profiles still show high degrees of similarity.12 Third, for the
actual groupings themselves, we have adopted the usual Ward's method,
which minimizes the variance within groups and thus maximizes their hom-
ogeneity. Fourth, in keeping with normal practices for exploratory analyses
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 511

of this kind, we have decided on the number of country groupings in such a
way that they made theoretical sense while offering a parsimonious and man-
ageable representation of reality.13
It should be emphasized that even if hierarchical cluster analysis does not
require validity tests in the strictest sense, since it is an exploratory method
(Falissard, 1996), we did nevertheless perform some checks on the model and
the variables we used. For example, we withdrew each of the individual vari-
ables in turn from our analyses to make sure that no single one of them was
by itself exerting undue influence in the determination of the outcome. By
applying the F-test and Tukey's b-test, we were also able to find out which
variables were significantly contributing to the grouping of cases, and
whether these variables were significant when comparing the groupings (the
results of this last test are shown in Table 1). After applying these tests, we
removed certain variables from the model and redid the hierarchical cluster
analyses, which produced results very similar to those presented in the
following section.
Validating the Typology of Welfare Regimes
Our analysis of the set of indicators for the 1990s reproduced the Esping-
Andersen and Leibfried­Bonoli­Ferrera typology. Figure 4 shows that the
main countries generally considered as liberal indeed form a cluster (Canada,
the US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia), just as do the conservative coun-
tries (Belgium, France, Germany, Austria), the social-democratic countries
(Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark) and the Latin countries (Spain, Italy,
Greece, Portugal). The dendrogram also shows very clearly the similarity
between the conservative and the Latin regimes, which share more charac-
teristics among themselves than they do with the other two, as Esping-
Andersen (1999a: 90) predicted. But the fact that a four-group analysis
conforms so closely to the predictions of Leibfried, Bonoli and Ferrera leads
us to conclude that a regime specific to Latin countries does exist. As for
Iceland and Ireland, whose welfare regimes have been subject to little study,
our analyses suggest that these countries fall into the liberal camp.
Given that hierarchical cluster analysis is an exploratory method,
deciding on the number of subsets to keep is a function of the theoretical
interpretability of the groupings. Although we have actually explored as
many as seven groupings, this additional differentiation yielded no country
groupings that resembled welfare regime typologies already existing in the
literature.14 We have thus limited ourselves to the four groups illustrated in
Figure 4.
512 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

Features of Welfare Regimes
Besides confirming the typology, this first analysis makes it possible to char-
acterize the four welfare regimes using averages on each variable computed
for each of the country groupings (see Table 1). These data thoroughly
confirm the descriptions of these regimes presented earlier.
Thus, liberal countries invest very little in the public sphere; social
security transfers in particular are by far the smallest. Considerable import-
ance is placed, however, on subsidies to private- and public-sector enter-
prises, which are markedly higher than in the other regimes. In the liberal
model, both workers and employers pay very little in social security contri-
butions. By contrast, it is in these countries, with the exception of the social-
democratic ones, that individuals pay the most in taxes. Liberal health
regimes are very costly, if one considers the proportion of public expenditure
on health relative to total public expenditure. Public investment in education
is considerable, although inferior to that in the Scandinavian countries, but it
is very weak in vocational training. As for unemployment, the liberal
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 513
Figure 4 Hierarchical Cluster Analysis Using All Variables (1993­8)
Note: The dendrogram is based on the Ward amalgamation method; distance measure: squared
Euclidean.
Countries
Spain
Italy
Greece
Portugal
Belgium
France
Germany
Austria
Netherlands
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Australia
UK
New Zealand
Ireland
Canada
US
Iceland
Regimes
Latin regime
Conservative regimeConservative regime
Liberal regime
Social-Democratic regime

514CurrentSociologyVol.51No.5
Table 1 Position of the Welfare Regimes (and Canada) on the Social Indicators 1993­8, 1993­7
Mean score for the regimes
------------------------------------­------------------------
Social-
Liberal Canada democrat Conservative Latin
Characteristics of governmental programmes (1993­7)
General governmental total outlays for 1996 (% of GDP)a 38.9 42.8 56.6 48.9 46.1
As % of total governmental outlays
Final consumption expenditurea 44.2 44.3 40.0 32.9 35.7
Social security transfersa 12.9b 15.6 30.1 31.1 34.8
Subsidies 27.7 15.5 16.2 21.8 9.1
Investments 5.3 4.8 4.9 4.5 6.0c
Debt interest payments 11.8 19.8 8.9 9.7 17.9
General government receipts for 1996 (% of GDP)a 38.1 44.1 56.4 48.2 42.1
Income tax of unmarried individual workers as % of gross earnings in 1996a 20.7 22.0 29.0 14.4 10.0
Social security contributions on income of individuals as % of gross 4.1 5.0 7.5 20.8 10.8
earnings for 1996 (based on average single wage of unmarried worker)a
Contribution of employers to social security for the average unmarried 5.3 6.0 14.0 20.2 24.3
single-waged worker for 1996
Public expenditure on health as % of all public expenditures for 1996a 15.6 14.9 10.9 13.0 11.6
Public expenditure on health as % of GDP for 1996a 6.0 6.4 6.5 6.8 5.4
Number of physicians per 1000 persons for 1996a 2.3 2.1 2.9 3.0 4.2
Public expenditure on education as % of GDP for 1996a 6.1 7.6 8.1 5.4 4.5
Public expenditure on training as % of GDP for 1996a 0.2 0.3 0.6 0.3 0.2
Number of years since the first law on old age, disability and death 86.7 73.0 80.8 92.6 73.3
Number of years since the first law on sickness and maternity 58.7 29.0 86.3 95.2 75.5
Number of years since the first law on unemployment 67.6 60.0 84.0 82.4 60.5
Number of years since the first law on work injurya 93.6 92.0 103.0 105.4 93.8
Number of years since the first law on family allowances 58.4 56.0 51.8 59.4 56.3

Saint-ArnaudandBernard:ConvergenceorResilience?515
Table 1 continued
Mean score for the regimes
------------------------------------­------------------------
Social-
Liberal Canada democrat Conservative Latin
Social situation variables (1993­7)
Unemployment rate for 1997 7.2 9.2 8.1 8.9 12.5
Incidence of long-term unemployment (as % of total unemployed) for 1997a 26.2 12.5 25.3 45.4 58.3
GDP annual growth rate in % for the period 1988­98 3.0 1.8 2.1 2.3 2.2
General government employment (as % of total employment) for 1995a 16.2 21.5 29.9 17.1 16.0
Average annual rate of inflation in % for 1996a 2.3 2.4 1.6 1.9 5.7
Overall employment rate for 1997a 49.6 51.9 51.1 46.5 43.1
Female labour participation rate (1997)a 66.6 67.8 74.1 60.4 51.0
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births) in 1995a 6.4 6.0 4.4 5.6 6.8
Total fertility rate for 1996a 1.9 1.6 1.8 1.5 1.3
Life expectancy at birth for 1997 77.7 79.0 77.3 77.6 77.3
Average age of women at the birth of their first child for 1993 26.9 26.8 26.4 26.7 26.2
R&D scientists and technicians (per 1000 people) for 1990­6a 3.4 3.7 5.5 4.0 1.6
Political participation variables (1993­7)
Voter turnout at latest elections 73.3 69.0 78.3 80.6 75.8
Level of trust (Knack and Keefer, 1997)a 45.3 49.6 57.9 32.6 26.3
Daily newspaper read per 1000 people for 1990/6a 271.3 159.0 449.4 258.2 107.9
Union membership for 1995a 38.5 37.4 77.1 31.8 28.2
a Significant variable according to the Tukey's b-test.
b Australia excluded from the computation of score (the value has been estimated).
c Greece and Spain excluded from the computation of score (the value has been estimated).

countries have better results than all the other regimes. They also perform
well concerning the general employment rate and the labour force partici-
pation rate of women. When it comes to political participation, the liberal
model ranks second after the social-democratic regime on all variables except
those dealing with voter turnout, where it ranks last.
In the social-democratic model, investment in the public sphere is exten-
sive: public administration expenditure and receipts, social security transfers
(but not other transfers and subsidies) and education and vocational training
expenditures set this regime apart from the others. It should be emphasized
that the efforts made in education seem to be bearing fruit since these coun-
tries have the highest proportion of scientists and research and development
technicians. This is also the regime that has the highest taxes, which in part
explains the sizeable government receipts. As for employment, the social-
democratic regimes have low unemployment levels, high rates of employ-
ment in public administration and high professional participation rates
among women. Finally, the social-democratic model distinguishes itself from
the other regimes by its high scores on measures of political participation
(voter turnout rates, levels of trust towards others, the number of newspapers
read, and the proportion of unionized wage-earners).
The conservative regime is also characterized by relatively high levels of
investment in the public sphere (current public administration expenditure,
health, vocational training, social security transfers). It also takes in, much
like the social-democratic regime, significant government receipts, but rela-
tively little in the form of income taxes; moreover, social security contri-
butions made by employees and by companies are very high. Both general
and long-term unemployment rates are high (as in the Latin countries). In
addition, the predominance of the `male breadwinner' model results in low
employment rate for women, which keeps the employment rate for the popu-
lation as a whole modest. Finally, although the conservative regime countries
have the highest voter turnout rates, other variables measuring political
participation suggest that it is not very high.
Finally, the Latin regime bears a strong resemblance to the conservative
regime, but public administration expenditure is generally more limited,
though still above that of the liberal countries. A large share of the expendi-
ture takes the form of social security transfers, the largest of all the regimes.
In addition, it is largely employer contributions (rather than income taxes)
that finance these social security programmes. Here, investments in health,
education, and vocational training are the lowest. Both general and long-term
unemployment rates are high, and women have labour force participation
rates even lower than in the conservative model. Lastly, political participation
in the countries belonging to this regime is much lower than the average for
the other regimes.
Only one country is misclassified when its figures are compared with
516 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

more qualitative, classical political analyses: the Netherlands, classified here
with the conservative countries and not, as most authors do, with the social-
democratic countries. Recent work by Esping-Andersen (1999a) suggests,
however, that the Netherlands has a social assistance model (coverage, pro-
gramme structures and generosity in redistribution) similar to the social-
democratic regime, but that other measures, like the extent of social and
family services, indicate greater affinity with the conservative type.
Welfare Regimes in the Mid-1980s
We have evaluated the stability of these regimes through time by performing
additional analyses on the same variables, this time covering the period of the
mid-1980s.15 The results again matched the same typology, as can be seen in
Figure 5. The liberal countries clustered together (Canada, the US, the UK,
New Zealand, Australia, to which, here again, Ireland and Iceland are added),
as did the countries having a conservative profile (Belgium, France, Germany,
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 517
Countries
Germany
Austria
France
Netherlands
Belgium
Italy
Spain
Greece
Portugal
Canada
US
Australia
UK
New Zealand
Ireland
Iceland
Finland
Norway
Denmark
Sweden
Regimes
Conservative regime
Latin regime
Liberal regime
Social-Democratic regime
Figure 5 Hierarchical Cluster Analysis Using All Variables (1986­90)
Note: The dendrogram is based on the Ward amalgamation method; distance measure: squared
Euclidean.

Austria and, again, the Netherlands), the countries having a social-democratic
profile (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland), and finally the Latin countries
(Greece and Portugal). As in Figure 4, the dendrogram displays the similarity
between the conservative and Latin regimes; this proximity explains in part
why Spain and Italy are found under the conservative, rather than the Latin,
regime.
As far as the variables used in our model can tell, the convergence of
economic markets does not seem to have affected the way welfare regimes
are shaped: the four types persisted over a period of about 10 years. It would
thus seem, as Palier and Bonoli (1999: 402) suggest, that once established,
these basic political profiles generally hold together well and promote conti-
nuity rather than change: we see that path dependency predominates, so that
political arrangements sustain through time the distinctions among the
welfare regimes of the countries under study.
Confirming the Typology for Each of the Three Interrelated
Components of Regimes
We have hypothesized that the resilience of the welfare regimes rests on a
mutual reinforcement, over the years, between patterns of social situations,
of public policies and of political participation that characterize each of the
regimes: each component assumes, in each country, a specific form that is in
fact dictated by the development of the regime with which the country is
associated. We thus expect to find the same country grouping when we
examine separately the social indicators corresponding to each of the three
components. Our results conform to these expectations on the whole, with
slight deviations that may be explained in part by the limited number of
variables available in certain cases (especially with respect to political
participation).
Results from the analysis for social programmes are illustrated in
Figure 6. We can discern four distinct models of social and economic policy
organization. The countries of the liberal and social-democratic types are
very clearly identified. Some ambiguity is nevertheless present between the
Latin and conservative regimes. Italy and Spain (of the Latin regime) are
classified with the conservative model, thus leaving Portugal and Greece
alone in one group. An examination of the variables16 shows that Italy and
Spain have social and fiscal policies similar to those of the conservative coun-
tries, while Greece and Portugal have less generous programmes.
Figure 7 presents the analysis of social situations. The typology is quite
clear, and it differs from Figure 4 in three cases only: France falls under the
social-democratic regime, and Portugal and Ireland are grouped with the con-
servative countries. A closer look at the variables shows that France has a high
518 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

rate of employment in public administration and a sizeable contingent of
technicians and scientists in research and development, much like the social-
democratic countries; but this does not mean that it truly belongs to this
regime, for it diverges from it in a number of other indicators for social situ-
ations. Portugal stands out from the averages for the Latin regime countries
because of better employment circumstances (unemployment, paid employ-
ment in general and among women), an area in which it comes closer to the
conservative regime. Finally, Ireland has a few social characteristics in
common with the conservative countries.
In the case of political participation (illustrated in Figure 8), we see three
distinct models of political mobilization ­ a coincidence with Esping-
Andersen's views. The liberal and the social-democratic countries form their
own separate groups, while the conservative and the Latin countries make up
only one. Here again the Netherlands fall into an unexpected category, since
the country aligns itself with the liberal regime; such a result is not unusual
in qualitative policy analyses, and it illustrates the complex nature of this
country.
Thus, a few of the variables we have analysed do not conform to the logic
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 519
Countries
Ireland
UK
Australia
New Zealand
Canada
US
Iceland
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Greece
Portugal
Spain
Italy
Belgium
France
Austria
Netherlands
Germany
Regimes
Liberal regime
Social-Democratic regime
Latin regime
Conservative regime
Figure 6 Hierarchical Cluster Analysis Using Only the Programme Variables (1993­8)
Note: The dendrogram is based on the Ward amalgamation method; distance measure: squared
Euclidean.

of welfare regimes (for example, the rationale presiding over the construction
of a strong state in France), which leads to a few anomalies in the way our
results play out for each of the three regime components. Even so, we see
very close linkages between the organization of social programmes in these
different societies, the social situations that have resulted from these social
policies, and the political participation that mobilizes citizens to shape social
programmes. It thus seems plausible that the stability of these welfare regimes
reflects the strength of these linkages and their resilience when confronted
with the effects of the economic transformations caused by globalization.
Our analyses allow us to reach for a supplementary objective: to situate
Canada among `the worlds of welfare capitalism', to examine its similarities
and its differences with other societies and regimes, to characterize its
possible evolution, taking into account its past (path dependency) as well as
the constraints of its international environment. This is the question we
finally turn to.
520 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5
Countries
Australia
UK
New Zealand
Canada
US
Iceland
Denmark
Norway
Finland
Sweden
France
Spain
Italy
Greece
Austria
Portugal
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium
Ireland
Regimes
Social-Democratic regime
Liberal regime
Latin regime
Conservative regime
Figure 7 Hierarchical Cluster Analysis Using Only the Social Situation Variables
(1993­8)
Note: The dendrogram is based on the Ward amalgamation method; distance measure: squared
Euclidean.

Canada is a Liberal Country, But . . .
Canada, as we have seen in the various figures shown earlier, belongs to the
liberal welfare regime. There is nothing surprising about that, particularly
given its geographical proximity to the US and the magnitude of its economic
exchanges with that country (Banting, 1996). But the data in the second
column of Table 1 give us reason to believe that it is closer, in some specific
respects, to social-democratic, conservative and Latin perspectives.
Public expenditures and receipts represent, in Canada, a relatively small
proportion of the gross domestic product, as in the other liberal countries.
But that proportion is still higher in Canada than in the other members of
the liberal regime, and it comes close to the proportion in the conservative
and Latin countries, although it does not reach the level of the social-
democratic countries. Social security transfers are also very small in Canada,
as in the other liberal countries. In contrast to these latter, however, Canada
uses subsidies and other transfers only very modestly. In the matter of public
receipts, the profile for Canada is similar to that of other liberal countries,
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 521
Countries
Netherlands
UK
Australia
New Zealand
Canada
Ireland
US
Greece
Portugal
France
Spain
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Italy
Finland
Sweden
Denmark
Iceland
Norway
Social-Democratic regime
Conservative + Latin regimes
Liberal regime
Regimes
Figure 8 Hierarchical Cluster Analysis Using Only the Political Participation Variables
(1993­8)
Note: The dendrogram is based on the Ward amalgamation method; distance measure: squared
Euclidean.

given the low payroll taxes paid by employees and employers. Income taxes
are nevertheless slightly higher, a situation that brings us a little closer to that
of the social-democratic countries, while distinguishing us markedly from the
conservative and Latin countries. Moreover, the rate of public administration
employment is also higher than in other regimes, with the obvious exception
of the social-democratic regime.
Canada devotes a significant proportion of its public expenditure to
health, as do the other liberal countries. But it sets itself apart in that its public
outlays for education bring it somewhat closer to the social-democratic coun-
tries. These outlays do not, however, extend to vocational training, in which
the social-democratic states are the only ones to invest heavily.
What is the outcome of these various public interventions in Canada?
Our unemployment rate is closer to that of the conservative and Latin
regimes than to that of the liberal and social-democratic regimes, where it is
limited respectively by low levels of social transfers, and by active employ-
ment policies. Canada has, however, relatively little long-term unemploy-
ment. The employment rate is high, comparable to that for the
social-democratic regimes and a little higher than that for the liberal regimes.
The labour force participation rate for women is also high, as in the last two
regimes. Finally, in the matter of political participation, Canada is a long way
from the situation in the social-democratic countries, coming much closer to
the liberal countries, except with respect to daily newspaper readership,
where it falls almost to the low level of the Latin countries.
In short, Canada is a liberal country, but certain peculiarities set it apart
from the liberal regime. Public interventions in Canada are a little more pro-
nounced, and in certain respects social situations approach, if only timidly,
those prevailing in Europe. But political participation remains relatively low,
particularly if one compares it to social-democratic countries.
Conclusion
In this study we have tried to demonstrate, using new empirical data, that
some advanced societies systematically differ in their choices when it comes
to the interdependence between social expenditure and economic perform-
ance. Despite the influence of macroeconomic constraints (Clement and
Myles, 1994; Banting, 1996; Soskice, 1999), our results confirm the presence
and persistence in these societies of significant distinctions in social policy
organization, in struggles over social inequality, and in the interrelationships
between the state, the market and the family.
Using hierarchical cluster analysis, applied to a set of quantitative indi-
cators, we have validated the typologies of Esping-Andersen and of Leibfried,
Ferrera and Bonoli, which hypothesized the existence of four welfare regimes:
522 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

liberal, social-democratic, conservative and Latin. Comparing results has
allowed us to reject, at least for the period from the mid-1980s to the mid-
1990s, the hypothesis of an overall convergence of regimes resulting from the
constraints of economic markets. We were able to shed light on the stability
of the regimes by analysing in turn each theoretical component of the model:
social programmes, social situations and political participation. The typology
can be reproduced ­ with only slight deviations ­ using data about each of the
components taken separately; we interpreted this parallelism as indicative of
close ties between the organization of social programmes in these societies, the
social situations that are in part the result of social policies, and the political
participation that leads people, to a greater or lesser extent, to work in concert
in order to shape social programmes. The stability of regimes suggests that
current choices closely depend on past choices (path dependency), a fact that
fails to point towards convergence for the future.
Finally, by comparing the results for Canada with the averages for each
regime, we observed an overall similarity with liberal countries. But in some
ways Canada also resembles other regimes, and in particular the social-demo-
cratic one: public interventions are more pronounced there than in the other
liberal countries, which reflects the particularities of our political situation
and the resilience of our own path.
Notes
The support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and of the
University of Montreal is gratefully acknowledged. The article was translated from
the French by Robert Sullivan.
1 At least before taxes and transfers, in the case of Canada.
2 This is in fact the notion that Amartya Sen (1999) advances in Development as
Freedom.
3 Castles and Mitchell (1993) also propose adding another type to Esping-
Andersen's classification, located at the Antipodes and comprising Australia and
New Zealand. These countries would be characterized by state interventions with
respect to inequalities aimed, on the one hand, at the labour market (and indeed
at pre-tax and transfers income), and consisting, on the other hand, in rather
generous, if means-tested, income maintenance programmes. The data on public
policies that are available to us at this point in our research, which emphasize social
programmes expenditures rather than income tax issues, do not allow us to test
this hypothesis here.
4 The notion of decommodification of the workforce refers to the scope of freedom
that social actors have, under a given welfare regime, to sell (or not sell) their
labour on the market to achieve an acceptable standard of living (Martin, 1997).
To be sure, in all advanced capitalist societies work remains the main source of
livelihood for individuals, but it also brings about social inequality. People who
Saint-Arnaud and Bernard: Convergence or Resilience? 523

have no choice but to depend on their labour to meet their daily subsistence needs
find themselves at a disadvantage when dealing with the owners of the means of
production. In order to reduce the social inequality caused by the market,
advanced societies have adopted various decommodification rights. These rights
translate into social policies that allow citizens to opt at will for non-work when
they deem it necessary, without significant losses in employment rights, income,
or general material well-being (Esping-Andersen, 1999b). The process of decom-
modification may take the form of benefits granting access to government services
in education, health care, income security, etc. The degree of decommodification
will vary according to the ideological values (liberty, equality, solidarity) mainly
emphasized in a particular society.
5 To return to Esping-Andersen (1999b), this defamilialization of social policy
constitutes a prerequisite for reconciling work and motherhood for women. A
high level of defamilialization in social policy means that the state is committed to
funding programmes that convert unpaid labour into paid services. Conversely,
familialistic societies (with low or non-existent levels of defamilialization)
maintain that in most circumstances the family is where the social needs of family
members should be met, an orientation reflecting a predilection for the traditional
model in which males are the primary, if not the exclusive, breadwinners.
6 We have occasion to come back to this point towards the end of the article, when
we examine in greater detail the place of Canada in the worlds of `welfare
capitalism'.
7 Obinger and Wagschal (2001) briefly allude to the presence of this mutual
causality in Esping-Andersen's perspective.
8 Among the various methods for grouping variables or cases (for instance, factorial
analyses of different kinds), this is the method of choice, especially since in this
case we have a large number of variables but few cases.
9 Put more simply, it is as though one were asking the model to separate the cases
into the two most internally homogeneous subsets possible, but with the highest
degree of difference possible between them (based on the multidimensional
distance between the cases). Once these two subsets have been determined, one
then performs the same operation again on each of them, and so on down the line.
10 The variables used in this research have been taken from the statistical sources of
the OECD, the UN, UNICEF, the World Bank, work by Knack and Keefer
(1997), the Social Security Online website in the US, and the World Values Survey.
Detailed information on statistical sources is available from the authors on request.
11 A summary list of variables has already been presented in Figure 3, and a more
detailed version is given in Table 1.
12 We did, however, redo our analyses, substituting for the Euclidean squared
distance method the block, Euclidean, Minkowski and Chebychev methods; this
did not alter the original outcome.
13 No rule specifies exactly where to stop the disaggregation into finer and finer
subsets, which would ultimately result in simply recognizing that each case (or
country) has its own specificity. But such an outcome is hardly useful for identi-
fying regimes, and thus similarities among countries, as Esping-Andersen (1990,
1999a) has demonstrated. We justify in greater detail, later on, our choice of the
four-group model.
524 Current Sociology Vol. 51 No. 5

14 It should nevertheless be emphasized that a five-group analysis shows Canada and
the US moving closer together (a convergence to which we return later). It is
moreover noteworthy that in addition to this case, three of the four groups are
regional in nature (the social-democratic countries of Northern Europe, the
conservative countries of Continental Europe, the Latin countries of Southern
Europe). As Banting (1996) argues, the geographic proximity of countries
probably has an impact on the development of their social policies: because of
economic exchanges and of workforce migration between contiguous countries or
regions, certain social programmes (e.g. those having to do with employment,
education and health care) must become more compatible and even comply with
international and interregional agreements, which can, up to a certain point, bring
about a homogenization of social situations.
15 It is difficult to extend this analysis further into the past because before the 1980s
the base data were not uniformly aggregated for a group of countries similar to
the one we have studied.
16 Detailed supporting statistics are available from the authors on request.
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