Generational Tensions and Solidarity Within Advanced Welfare States

Front matter

GENERATIONAL TENSIONS AND SOLIDARITY WITHIN ADVANCED WELFARE STATES

Generational Tensions and Solidarity Within Advanced Welfare States

This book explores generation as both a reference to family or kinship structures and a reference to cohorts or age sets. The principal objective is branching out this two-part concept through studies of tensions and solidarity within and between generations of advanced and robust welfare states.

Contents

List of contributors x Preface xiii

1 Generational tensions and solidarity within advanced welfare states 1 ASGEIR FALCH-ERIKSEN, MARIANNE TAKLE, AND BRITT SLAGSVOLD

Generation as a multifaceted concept 2

PART 1 The politics of generations 17

2 Welfare state redistribution between overlapping generations — normative theories applied to two contemporary debates 19 AXEL WEST PEDERSEN AND MI AH SCHOYEN

Two contemporary policy issues 22 Presentation of the two theories 25 Application to the two cases 29 Conclusions 32 vi

Contents

3 The age profile of European welfare states: A source of intergenerational conflict?

ANN-HELÉN BAY AND AXEL WEST PEDERSEN

Voter preferences and age-related political priorities: theoretical perspectives and previous findings 39

Outline of the empirical analysis and hypotheses 42

Data and methods 43

Converging or diverging age-related spending profiles? 44 Cross-country variation in voter preferences 47

Disagreement across age groups? 50

Summary 535 Discussion 54 Note 56

4 Solidarity with future generations: Protection clauses in

constitutions MARIANNE TAKLE Introduction 59 Solidarity and constitutions 61 Solidarity with future generations 63 The Norwegian tensions over implications for the welfare state 66 Conclusion — tensions over solidarity with future generations? 72 References 73

PART2

Generations within families

5 Thinking through generation: On parenting and belonging among adult children of immigrants in Norway MONICA FIVE AARSET, INGRID SMETTE, AND MONIKA GRØNLI ROSTEN

Questions of generation and belonging 79 Second-generation parenthood as a vital conjuncture 81 Generation as thought-distinction and structural relation 82 The second generation in Norway 83

Parenthood as vital conjuncture: ruptures, continuities, and belonging 84

Contents vii

Generational ruptures and tensions 84

Generational continuities 86

Belonging to what? 88

Overlapping belongings in advanced welfare states 90 References 92

6 The welfare state and family: Intergenerational tensions and solidarity within the housing sector 96 HANS CHRISTIAN SANDLIE AND LARS GULBRANDSEN

The welfare state and intergenerational dependency within the family 98

Housing — the wobbly pillar of the welfare state 100

Wealth and family transfers — data and analysis 102

Age inequalities in wealth and family support 102 Concluding remarks 106

7 Will more education work? Economic marginalization and educational inequalities across birth cohorts 1955-1980 111 JON IVAR ELSTAD

Previous research 112

Empirical analysis 115

Comments on explanations 119

Final remarks: Will rising educational levels work? 124 Notes 126

PART 3 Historical and ascriptive generations 131

8 The digital generation: Representations of a generational digital divide 133 IDUNN SELAND AND CHRISTER HYGGEN

The digital generation as a social generation 133 Moral panic and mediated youth culture 135 Folk devils on the internet 136

Data and methods 137 viii

Contents

Results 140 Discussion 147 Conclusion 149 Notes 150 References 150

The Baby-boomer generation: Another breed of elderly people? BRITT SLAGSVOLD AND THOMAS HANSEN

Baby boomers as a generation 153 Images of the Baby boomers 155 Research questions: how different are the Baby boomers? 158 Data and measurements 159 Dependent variables 160

Control variables 160

Analyses 160

Results 161

Summary and discussion 165 Limitations 168

Conclusion 169

Social generations in popular culture IDA TOLGENSBAKK

Still a problem of generations 173

Developments in the concept of social generations 174 Globalising local (Anglo-American) terms 176 “Generation” as an emic term 178

Generation on social media 180

Bonding, and bonding through boundaries 181 Conclusion 182

Literature 183

Solidarity and tension across generations in welfare democracies ASGEIR FALCH-ERIKSEN

Introduction 185 Social generation as a modern concept 187 Motivation towards order across generations 188

Mutual understanding and solidarity 190 Generation-specific norms 193

Pluralism and complexity as key source of tensions 195 The welfare state and political solidarity 196

The dynamics of political craftsmanship 198 Conclusion 200

Generational analysis of the advanced welfare state ASGEIR FALCH-ERIKSEN AND MARIANNE TAKLE

Generation concepts in welfare state studies 204

Why generational analysis? 207

Where to apply a generational analysis 208

Solidarity in advanced welfare states 210

Tensions between social reality and the welfare state 211 Generations at the genesis of the welfare state 213 References 214

Index

Contents ix

Contributors

Monica Five Aarset is a senior researcher in the Division for at Childhood, Family and Child Welfare at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research interests include gender, generation, religion, ethnicity, migration, and inclusion/exclusion.

Ann-Helén Bay is a professor at Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in political science. Her main field of research is within welfare policy and political legitimacy. She served as a dean for the Faculty of Social Science from 2016 to 2020 and is now a fulltime professor.

Jon Ivar Elstad has a PhD degree in sociology and is Research Professor Emeritus at NOVA, Centre for Welfare and Labour Research, Oslo Metropolitan University. His research has primarily addressed topics in social epidemiology, inequalities in health, health services research, immigrant studies, and educational differences, mostly by quantitative methods.

Asgeir Falch-Eriksen is a senior researcher at the Department of Health and Welfare Studies at Norwegian Social Research. He has a PhD in political science. His research interests are especially aimed at democratic theory, trust, and legitimacy. He is also a lecturer in social work and in rights-based child protection.

Lars Gulbrandsen is a senior researcher at the Department of Ageing, Research and Housing Studies at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) at Oslo Metropolitan University. He is a political scientist who specializes in family policy, kindergarten, and housing.

Thomas Hansen is a research professor at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and Oslo Metropolitan University. By education a social psychologist, he has worked mainly in the areas of social gerontology and the psychology of aging. His publications focus on aging and the life course, well-being, mental health, loneliness, family relationships, informal caregiving, volunteering, and active aging.

Contributors xi

Christer Hyggen has a PhD in sociology and works as a senior researcher at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA). He specializes in youth unemployment, transition from youth to adulthood, and processes of marginalization and social exclusion.

Axel West Pedersen is a professor at NOVA and the Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy, Oslo Metropolitan University. He has a PhD in political and social science, and his research interests include various branches of welfare state research from historical-comparative studies over studies of welfare opinion to studies of income inequality and poverty.

Monika Grenli Rosten is a senior researcher at the Youth Division at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research interests include parenting, gender, ethnicity, urban marginality, and youth culture.

Hans Christian Sandlie is a research director at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Department of Ageing Research and Housing Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of Oslo. Among his main research interests are housing, life course dynamics, transition from youth to adulthood, migration, family transfers, and social inequality.

Mi Ah Schoyen is a senior researcher at NOVA Norwegian Social Research, Oslo Metropolitan University. She works in the field of comparative welfare state research widely conceived. Her interests include the welfare mix, the politics and social consequences of welfare state reforms, intergenerational solidarity, and the interplay between climate and social policy.

Idunn Seland holds a PhD in sociology and is a senior researcher at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA). She specializes in policy for citizenship and integration in the Nordic welfare state. Her main research interests are education policy, among those policy principles behind religious education and citizenship education. Her methods are qualitative, but she frequently collaborates with quantitatively oriented colleagues.

Britt Slagsvold is a research professor at Norwegian Social Research Health and Welfare Studies (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). She is Dr Philosophy in psychology, has worked as research director for ageing research, and director for research for many years, and is now partly retired. She initiated and headed the Norwegian study of life course, aging, and generation (NorLAG) until 2018, and has published widely within social gerontology and the psychology of aging.

Ingrid Smette holds a PhD in social anthropology and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo. Her research interests include parenting, childhood, and youth in a culturally diverse welfare state.

xii Contributors

Marianne Takle is a research professor at the Department of Health and Welfare Studies at Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research includes studies of migration and solidarity at the European, national, and local levels. She has studied sustainable European welfare societies by analysing linkages between social and environmental policy in selected European countries. In recent years, she has conducted research on solidarity with future generations.

Ida Tolgensbakk is a senior researcher at Norwegian Social Research, Health and Welfare Studies (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University. She has a PhD in cultural history and has published on diverse topics within migration studies, folklore, and popular culture.

Preface

This volume is the product of a concerted effort to elevate a generation perspective in researching social change and the tensions it causes towards and within the welfare state. The book’s team comprises predominantly senior researchers at Norwegian Social Research, at Oslo Metropolitan University, and represents different academic disciplines across the social sciences. The institute has had and will continue to have a considerable effort of research dedicated to developing new knowledge at the intersection between life courses, the family, and the welfare state. The institute has dedicated departments researching childhood, youth, ageing, and life course. It also has a department devoted to health and social services, which are key services to any welfare state.

Generation is sought to capture the different dimensions of time and how it affects social reality within generations, between generations, and between generations and the type of welfare state they reside in. The Norwegian welfare state is dominating as an empirical case. Nevertheless, the purpose is not to have narrow empirical discussions, but to use the Norwegian case as it provides stability as a welfare state and leaves a clearer focus on a generation perspective.

The editors are grateful to Iver Neumann, the previous director at Norwegian Social Research, who gave the green signal to pursue this book. The editors are also grateful to the current director, Guro Odegaard, for seeing this book through. Without the financial support and the priority to develop the book, the project would not have come about.

Note to future generations: This book was developed almost exclusively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Developing a book about generational shifts and social change during the most significant crisis in all our lives has been challenging. Although it is too early to say anything about this global event’s social outcomes, we can safely assume that the impact of the crisis will have effects on generations.

Asgeir Falch-Eriksen, Marianne Takle & Britt Slagsvold Oslo, April 2021

1 Generational tensions and solidarity within advanced welfare states

Asgeir Falch-Eriksen, Marianne Takle, and Britt Slagsvold

An advanced welfare state democracy is an institutionalized collective agreement on solving social problems and coordinating actions. Although welfare state democracies have different shapes, the scope of government is comprehensive, and citizens meet the welfare state services according to their needs and interests as customers, user groups, or clients (Goodin, 1988; Kumlin, 2002). An advanced welfare state penetrates its citizens’ private realm and creates dependencies and expectations that “gives the state its paramount significance” across the social system it governs (Kaase & Newton, 1995). Its paramount significance is a result of processes of democratic law-making, policy development, and budget-making, and leaves hallmarks such as welfare rights, universality, and solidarity. Through time, moulded by popular opinion and civic engagement, the welfare state has established an intrinsic connection to how citizens live their lives and how it secures each citizen’s essential wellbeing and mitigate socio-economic hardships and health complications (Svallfors, 2012a).

According to Baldwin, a welfare state democracy as an innovation has brought about state systems that can carry “the possibility of solidarity” (1990). It alludes to a link between the solidarity of a social system on the one hand and a formal political-normative-embedded concept of solidarity enforced through a welfare state system on the other. Maintaining social solidarity within a functioning welfare state democracy can thereby be understood as the result of transferring mutual trust, a conception of legitimacy that carries collective support, and establish a type of moral obligation into the system of government itself, that is, establishing a type of political solidarity that draws upon the existing social solidarity between peers (Bayertz, 1999). Through democratic procedures of self-government, social solidarity is invested in the welfare state through time and across generations, where enduring political solidarity is necessary to secure a level of fundamental and universal wellbeing through different election cycles, political turmoil, crisis, and societal tensions (Banting & Kymlicka, 2017).

This volume seeks to contribute to this problem-complex, namely, what lessons can be drawn from using a multifaceted concept of generation for generational analysis of the welfare state. By utilizing empirical data to study societal tensions between generations and towards the welfare state, we can elaborate on the type of solidarity that the welfare state carries; it depends upon and ultimately needs to persist across generations. It will, in particular, focus on critical challenges to solidarity confronting the welfare state, such as education, distributional justice, migration, education, and climate changes. The purpose is thereby to conduct generational analysis as a key to open up an understanding of how the welfare state develops, how tensions arise, how they are dealt with, or how they continuously are there to challenge the status quo of the welfare state. Our main goal is to understand tensions and solidarity between generations and between generations within advanced welfare states.

The importance of having a generational approach to the welfare state is more important today than ever. Following only the past decades, significant challenges have confronted welfare states across the world, as economic challenges leaving austerity measures and increasing costs, social and demographic developments with an ageing population and increased migration, rise in poverty levels after the financial crisis, and political developments such as a neoliberal agenda that is instilled to cut public spending, and the climate crisis and a deadly pandemic, are all examples of challenges that threaten the wellbeing of each individual within society, social solidarity itself, and the efficacy of welfare state.

With each following generation, challenges affect differently and pose a multitude of questions. For instance, will the welfare state be able to provide wellbeing for all? Will the rate of young manage to secure the welfare state as the relative amount of elderly increase? Will younger generations and future generations be left with covering the problems and costs of climate change? The challenges have sparked tensions within the social system regarding how different generations are affected by and respond to the challenges and how they become prioritized. Eventually, other large-scale challenges can cause changes in the composition of solidarity or the lack thereof. As tensions arise that can harm the welfare state, it becomes an ongoing task to keep political solidarity operative in the welfare state and aligned with social solidarity across generations.

Generation as a multifaceted concept

Karl Mannheim’s seminal work on generations, “The Problem of Generations”, published first in German in 1923, is still considered the canon for generational analysis. Although his outline is contested (See McCourt, 2012), it is still a fruitful point of departure for our attempt to raise conceptual clarity for how this volume will apply the concept of generation. In his conceptual discussions, Mannheim operates with several different concepts simultaneously. He began with the nutsand-bolts for such a concept. He argued that a generational concept could not by itself ignore the biological rhythm of birth cohorts: “sociological phenomenon of generations is ultimately based on the biological rhythm of birth and death” (Mannheim, 1952). However, although this is the point of departure, using such a positivistic approach to unveiling historical change and the potential of prediction of social change is both simplistic and fallible. Any potential for explaining social change had to develop the concept of generation from the biological rhythm but embed it in a sociological and a temporally spatially delimited space, something he referred to as the generation’s “particular type of social location” (Mannheim, 1952). As Mannheim argued, the youth generation in Prussia at the beginning of the 19th century did not share the exact generational location as the youth generation in China (Mannheim, 1952). Although we can observe an emerging new “global generation” (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009), and global events like COVID-19, challenge the idea of shared generational location analytically, partially dissolving contextual belonging and identity formation, generational location, and the heterogeneity it produces will continue to be a hallmark of social interaction and foundational for conducting generational analysis (Bristow, 2016).

Jane Pilcher (1994) correctly assumes that Mannheim’s exposition of generation harbour many different generational concepts that each can lead to different types of analysis. Mannheim admits this himself as he argues the need for a differentiated concept that can maintain distinctions and provide clear-cut explanations (1952). Pilcher points out that generational location can internally stratify individuals into two main concepts of generation: social generation and kinship generation. While the former refers to the individual’s insertion into the social and cultural currents of time, the latter refers to a geographical and cultural location. Furthermore, we will borrow from Bristow (2016), add a third concept dubbed historical and ascriptive generations. This type is about labelling what can be referred to as generational styles to describe certain key generational traits. The fourth is future generations, which increasingly has become a part of generational studies since the early 1970s (Tremmel, 2009).

(1) Social generations

Social generations refer to cohort-related phenomena, where individuals are born similar years and are age homogenous (Eisenstadt, 1971; Pilcher, 1994). This is what Mannheim refers to as the historical community of “actual generations”. This means that the year you are born, you are also introduced to the world in line with all others born that year and inserted into what Mannheim refers to as the currents of social and cultural forces (Mannheim, 1952). Within each social generation, every member can influence and infuse the rest of the generation wittingly or not. Age and how it progresses reflexively with the social and cultural forces become a significant indicator for who you are as a historically embedded individual. Once your life is on the move through time, your life-course meets the larger sociopolitical environment together with all of your age cohorts. As Mannheim argued, the generational location relative to the historical time carries “certain feelings of behaviour, feeling and thought” (Mannheim, 1952). However, since Mannheim wrote his essay a hundred years ago, society has changed, particularly with regard to mass democracies, rights, and advanced welfare states. On the one hand, the welfare state has become all-encompassing and intervenes in people’s lives from birth to death. It has taken over many previously solved tasks in families, such as childcare and elderly care. This puts constraints on all generations, particularly young people who do not fill key positions in society and the state administration. The welfare state schemes have made young people less dependent on their parents, but they have become more exposed to the state bureaucracy’s anonymous constraints (Elias, 2013).

On the other hand, the degree to which social integrations have brought citizens together in self-governing, that is, democratic, social communities have no historical counterpart. In democratic welfare states, the norm of civic engagement links each citizen to become architects of what needs and what interests the welfare state is set to meet (Goodin, 1988). Hence, an advanced welfare state democracy, where citizens enjoy rights and benefits, cannot assume there will always be passive members of different cohorts. As people move through time, as citizens within a welfare state democracy, they are not passive bystanders who, in a deterministic fashion, become conditioned by the welfare state but are actively engaged in social change. Each citizen can participate actively and reflexively in modernizing and shaping the welfare state to fit new needs in line with modern demands (Rothstein, 1998).

(2) Kinship generations

Kinship generations are depicting the membership in the same historical community and with “certain definite modes of behaviour, feeling and thought” (Mannheim, 1952). Kinship as a generational location is the immediate social context. It does not necessarily involve shared geographic location, but it denotes a social network tied together through thick relationships of trust, i.e. by familiarity (Luhmann, 2000). Generation becomes a matter of particularistic role-understanding, where a person understands who it is relative to age and position in the life cycle and what is expected of them from what generation they belong to within the immediate social context. Kinship generation is also hierarchical and asymmetrical, especially between parents and children and throughout the local community, where individuals carry distinct generational roles. This generation concept is often related to a biological perception of a generation because some type of descent is involved. The mother is in one generation, and the next one is her child. However, the key issue is how such role patterns work across generations as they are embedded as a social type in kinships.

Although every individual belongs to both a social generation and a kinship generation, the two generational concepts have different connections of belonging within the social system — one horizontal and intra-generational, and the other vertical and intergenerational. Whereas social generations are connected to the social roles and phenomena pertaining to birth cohorts, kinship generations have community belonging combined with thick trust relationships (Baier, 1986; Luhmann, 2000). Also, common to both concepts is that generations are reflexively reacting to and contribute to shaping societal circumstances as individuals age, but they do so differently. In social generations, each individual remains the same generation as time goes by, growing older. In kinship, they shift roles and identities across generations as they grow older, and they replace generations, and new expectations are bestowed upon them in new roles. The generational shifts can, for instance, be between child and youth, youth and young adult, young adult and parent, parent and grandparent, and so on. The length of each of these generations can vary through time (Krishnamoorthy, 1980).

As each individual simultaneously belongs to kinship and a social generation, it also tells us how generational norms and expectations shape the individuals, their identity, and how they are inserted and belong in a social system. As social generations go through life simultaneously, each generation unconsciously becomes a unit that can be expected to carry certain norms and that can have different challenges as time goes by. In contrast, each individual’s kinship generation depicts personal roles and thick social bonds, and a sense of intergenerational solidarity.

(3) Historical and ascriptive generations

Historical and ascriptive generations are meant to capture those generation types that, for some reason, are labelled. Those providing such a label usually seek out conjoined birth cohorts labelled according to a particular historical period, depicting strong characteristics of the current time or social change. Locating and capturing generations that reflect cultural expressions, an identity or a conflict that has been a driving force of social change, a political mobilization, and so on has long been imperative to generational analysis (Bristow, 2016; Frith, 2005). To Mannheim, those within a social generation identifying with such a label not only belonged to the same generational unit but also belonged to the generational unit that realized its “potentialities” for social change or carried the cultural or social currents of the time. To Mannheim, a generational unit like this carried a new generational style that “creates new collective impulses and formative principles original to itself’ (Mannheim, 1952).

In this volume, we will denote historical generations as generational styles that qualify the test of a generational self-definition (Bristow, 2016). This self-definition is anchored to distinct social generations reflective of a generational style embedded in social change or phenomena through historic time, “on the trigger action of the social and cultural process” (Mannheim, 1952). Ascriptive generation is also a label and depicts a widespread use of generational analysis. The ascriptive generations are rather brought together, not by the belonging to a social generation and a matter of social change or phenomenon but rather by accidental commonalities (Bristow, 2016).

Whereas historical generations can be illustrated through, e.g. the boomer generation and the digital generation, ascriptive generations, on the other hand, are more undefined and uncoupled from social generations, such as generation Z or Y or millennials or other dubious terms (Bristow, 2016). As will become clear later Chapter 10, the popular use of ascriptive generation has blurred the field of research-based generation analysis with its popular use.

6 Falch-Eriksen, Takle, and Slagsvold (4) Future generations

Future generations are defined as all generations that come after those living. The main reason for including this fourth concept is the realization that today’s generations can affect the future more than ever before and in a great variety of ways. Most prominent is the increasing recognition of the finite nature of the planet’s natural environment, including the atmosphere, the ozone layer, the global system cycles, the climate system, genetic and species diversity, etc. In parallel with recognizing the finite nature of the planet’s natural environment, the concern for future generations has increasingly been included in legislation and policy, but also in generational studies (Tremmel 2009). Behind this attention is acommon concern about highly problematic consequences if present generations transfer irreversible environmental damages to individuals born in the future. There is a broad global agreement that environmental resources need to be sustained for individuals born in the future. As such, the natural environment is increasingly understood as the world’s shared heritage for both current and future generations.

This volume will utilize all the four concepts to conduct a generational analysis of the welfare state to answer many questions. How are tensions between generations challenging an advanced and robust welfare state? How are tensions or solidarity understood when the young and old generations face the common welfare state challenges differently? How can stability prevail as some generations define the politics and composure of a costly welfare state’s polity and others have no voice or representation? The different contributors have explored different ways to study tensions and solidarity between generations within the welfare state by discussing such questions. Hence, this book seeks to unravel causes of change and motivations for change across time, unveil tensions that cause change and de-stabilization.

Reaffirmation of solidarity in advanced welfare states

The democratic and advanced welfare state is a legal-administrative type of government construct that can harbour a normative conception of justice containing mutual trust, democratic solidarity, and redistributive solidarity (Banting & Kymlicka, 2017). The development of the advanced welfare state has gone in tandem with an increased division of labour and specialization. It has historically led welfare benefits to become a matter of welfare rights and public provision of, e.g., elder- and childcare, medical treatment, unemployment benefits, pensions, and education (Goodin, 1986). As they live their lives, citizens interact with everything from street-level bureaucracies in health care services to libraries, to public transport, as customers, users, and clients. Through budgets, letters of assignment, guidelines and routines, and street-level practices, the government is meant to seek out and meet its citizens’ needs. The welfare state must also be understood as a response to a prevalent need for collective coordination and problem-solving, striving for a sense of justice, mutual trust, and solidarity (Habermas, 1996).

Hence, an advanced welfare state can easily be referred to as the most complex expression of social coordination and problem-solving designed through history. Its complexity has further escalated through system differentiation, division of labour, development of new knowledge and technology, and steadily incorporating an ever-expanding pluralism on ways to live life (Giddens, 1990). Today, advanced welfare states include everything from public schools, health and social services, kindergartens, child welfare services, and even communication infrastructure — it is a complete and self-sustained system governed through democratic politics and public spending. Across Europe today, there is vast support for this type of state-construct (Meuleman et al., 2018).

Citizens being motivated towards, or acting in solidarity towards, the welfare state has maintained and enforced the welfare state throughout generations. Since maintaining a welfare state scheme has been on the agenda, efforts have been rather successful in overcoming past tensions and past conflicts. However, the welfare state is a product of each generation as they run their course throughout life. New generations have impacted the welfare state’s design differently, but generations are also shaped by the societal norms they are embedded in. Hence, the welfare state has developed to fit the new needs of new citizens.

One of the most significant challenges for the general support and prevalence of the welfare state is that it is constituted by a stable set of rules, procedures, and decision-making, while the social system it governs is in constant flux. Each generation is constantly on the move, through time, and as their age preferences are altered and new generations are met by a welfare state designed to fit others’ needs. In this way, for a democratic welfare state to maintain its underlying principles, it needs to reinvent itself to fit the changing needs and expectations of the fluctuating social system.

Tensions in the advanced welfare states

All living generations are affected simultaneously by social forces, cultural shifts, challenges, significant events, and crises. This creates tensions depending on different generational locations, as different generations carry different interests and needs that they might want a welfare state to contribute solving. Also, a welfare state is a stabilized set of norms through legislation and government procedures, which creates tensions towards the continuously moving interests and needs within the social system itself (Habermas, 1996). Typically, tensions would not involve a call for significant social change, escalate to a conflict, or leave demands for substantial shifts in welfare state programmes and policies, but predominantly constitute the steady flow of calls for social change that is an incremental adjustment of how social coordination and problems are solved through the parameters of the welfare state itself.