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Private Sector Provider Power in Welfare State Politics

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New Private Sector Providers in the Welfare State

Abstract

Do private sector providers become powerful actors in political processes? Previous research gives ambiguous answers to this question. The argument outlined in this chapter states that they have developed a stake in certain social policies and can be expected to become powerful in the politics of welfare state reform because of the special position of business as an interest group. However, the power of these actors is constrained by a number of factors, ranging from issue salience to institutional settings. What is more, private sector providers will not be successful on their own but need allies and favourable institutional and structural conditions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dowding (1996, p. 71) has described this type of power as systematic luck: Business gets what it wants without having to act because of the structure of society.

  2. 2.

    See Culpepper and Reinke (2014) for tackling this problem by case selection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Observatory for Sociopolitical Developments in Europe, Institute for Social Work and Social Education, Berlin, Germany

    Jonas Pieper

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Pieper, J. (2018). Private Sector Provider Power in Welfare State Politics. In: New Private Sector Providers in the Welfare State. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62563-8_2

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