Within economic and sociological literature, research relating the process of the internationalization of the capitalist economy and social protection system reforms within developed countries abounds. The main goal of this paper is to carry out a critical review of such literature as it deals with the challenges that Welfare States pertaining to this "new" socio-economic environment have to face. . Our goal is to discuss to what extent "globalization" restricts national governments' policy-making options. This diminishing of scope and options leads to a convergence in macroeconomic policies and consequentially, a convergence in the ways in which the State's relationship to the social fabric unfolds. Existing literature presents arguments that can be divided into two currents. The first group of works, which we will refer to as "minimalist", argues that Welfare State policies have a characteristic which is difficult to modify, since they can be seen as "blame-avoidance" policies in which no politic actor is encouraged to take responsibility for possible changes. Thus, although there may be fiscal incentives for a reduction in the role of the State, there would be no reduction in state efforts to confront social dilemmas.. Running counter to this position, the "maximalist" viewpoint focuses attention on the qualitative changes in social protection that result from new patterns of State-society relations and their role within the economy. In this regard, although public spending on social policies has been largely unaltered, there has been a change in the nature of intervention, dislocating it more toward policies of "helping those in need" rather than focusing on equal rights. We argue that differences in diagnostics result from normative and conceptual views of the Welfare State.
Welfare State; globalization; political institutions; convergence theory; capitalist restructuring