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The introduction discusses the idea of a mature welfare state, and shows that the welfare state of the 1970s can be regarded as mature basically because few, if any, major changes have occurred since then. Not only did the welfare state stabilize but so also did the embracing welfare regime. Looks at the welfare state crisis and the paradoxes within this, noting (as at the beginning of the book) that the shocks come principally from the labour market and declining family stability, thus bringing growing pressures on the welfare state itself, and implying that it needs to be examined. Suggests that it would be much more fruitful to analyse the crisis as pertaining to welfare regimes. Argues that the essence of the problem lies in the growing disjuncture between existing institutional arrangements and emerging risk profiles: the bottom‐line analytical question is how and under what conditions welfare regimes are being recast to respond to the new—post‐industrial—economic realities. The first two sections look at the public attitudes to the welfare state, and the welfare state as a Trojan horse. The following sections discuss new risks and new equalities of welfare regimes—how they deal with the Trojan horse—under the following headings: Managing the Labour Market; Labour Market Risks and Welfare Regimes; Family Risks and Welfare Regimes; and Welfare State Adaptation to Exogenous Shocks and New Risks.

This chapter traces the impact of the transition on individual welfare by drawing on a variety of institutional and structural indicators comparable across countries and time. It focuses particularly on the emerging labour market risks, unemployment and poverty, how these are distributed across the population, and what policy measures have been taken to protect individuals from these risks. The chapter begins by outlining the system of social protection under socialism in light of the reform challenges that the transition to capitalism posed to social policy makers. It follows with an overview of levels and trends of material welfare in CEE countries since the transition, as well as a description of how income, unemployment and poverty risks are distributed over the population.

The fundamental proposition of the book is that there are two types of social risks, and voters of the Right are mainly exposed to one of them, namely the so-called life-course risks. These risks stem from biological life itself, above all else sickness and old age. The other type of risks relate to the labor market and is much more the poor man's burden. Life-course-related social programs will enjoy much more support among voters of the Right than social programs meeting labor market-related risks. This in turn implies that governments of the Right will be much more supportive of the former than the latter type of programs. The basic argument is complicated by the fact that governments of the Right need to employ complex reform strategies when pursuing their policy goals. These are called marketization via layering and erode and attack, respectively.

This chapter discusses that youth unemployment in Europe has brought about the creation of several policy initiatives to reduce the said predicament. It explains that youth unemployment varies among European countries and declined during the period 1997–2003. The chapter argues that flexibilisation processes have led to the growth of part-time, temporary work and dead-end jobs. This, together with low youth wages, leads to low incomes that are generally insufficient to secure an independent existence. It explains that young minority ethnic people, those from less-privileged social-class backgrounds. and, in some respects, young women, are more exposed to labour-market risks, while middle-class men from majority ethnic backgrounds have crucial advantages in terms of economic, cultural, and social capital to cushion them against risk-laden labour-market activities.