importance of local government to the development of the Social Democratic
welfare state.
Welfare States, Decentralization, and Local Government Typologies
In delineating typologies of local government systems, a number of recent
scholars have pointed to dimensions of decentralization that such wellrecognized
comparative concepts as federalism have failed to take into
account. By and large, these typologies have been delineated on the basis
of cultural traditions rather than systematic institutional comparisons
(Lidström 1998). Comparison among typologies nonetheless suggests a
relation between local government and the welfare state that is particularly
strong in Social Democratic welfare states.
The nature of this correspondence emerges from a comparison of the
established typologies of welfare states with various indicators of decentralization
and local government systems. Table 2 lists the four types of
welfare states in Evelyne Huber and John Stephens’ classification, along
with the corresponding three types in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) original
one. As the Huber and Stephens classification represents the most recent
one and is based on the most comprehensive set of indicators, the analysis
that follows will generally rely upon it. Of the four countries that these
authors did not classify, Greece, Portugal, and Spain have often been
described as a separate “Southern European” type of welfare state (Castles
1995; Ferrera 1996). Huber and Stephens also place Japan in a distinctive
category of its own.
Even considered in terms of a simple version of federalism (Elazar
1995), or in terms of Arend Lijphart’s (1999) limited extension of federalism
to encompass additional elements, the Social Democratic welfare
states stand out from the other standard types. Although Christian Democratic,
Liberal, and even Wage-Earner welfare states include both federal
and unitary states, the Social Democratic welfare states are all unitary.
Similarly, Lijphart’s classification places all four of these states at 2 on a
5-point scale that assigns a 5 to the most purely federal countries. Compared
with this consistent reading of relative centralization, other types of
welfare states again vary widely.
To compare how different types of welfare states have decentralized to
local government itself, however, necessitates a much more far-reaching
set of indicators than these. Lijphart’s (1999) indicator of “decentralization”
takes local government only partly into account. In unitary states he
considers it part of decentralization, but in federal states it makes no
difference. All federal countries receive the highest score for decentralization
without any reference to their local government institutions. Yet
federal subnational governmental units could in fact maintain more centralized
relations with their localities than unitary states do with theirs.
In the last 20 years there has been no shortage of typologies of local
government systems. These typologies generally attribute the Social