This article examines how European Union member states expanded and adapted their social protection policies over the first 14 months of the Covid-19 pandemic and how their approaches varied based on their welfare regimes, legacies and institutional path dependencies.
To examine the social protection measures adopted by EU member states over the first 14 months of the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020–May 2021), this article draws on two datasets: the World Bank's Social Protection and Jobs Responses to Covid-19 database and the International Monetary Fund's Fiscal Policy Database, which tracks the announcement and implementation of key fiscal measures (January 2020–September 2021).
EU countries largely adopted social protection measures aligned with their broader welfare regimes, though intra-regime variation highlights the influence of national policy legacies. Social democratic and continental welfare states relied on their tax-benefit systems and labor market policies, while liberal, Mediterranean and some post-communist states were compelled to expand social assistance given their fragmented welfare systems and structural issues, including persistent unemployment, poverty and in-work poverty dating back to the Great Recession. Although nearly 70% of the measures drawn from the World Bank database were classified as “new” at the time, their design reflects incremental expansion rather than fundamental reform of social protection systems.
The article contributes to the literature on welfare states by showing that, although crisis responses were shaped by existing institutional logics and welfare traditions, the rapid and transboundary nature of Covid-19's spread prompted rapid social learning and policy adaptation, revealing flexibility that exceeded European countries' path-dependent constraints.
The article contributes to the literature on welfare states by showing that, although crisis responses were shaped by existing institutional logics and welfare traditions, the rapid and transboundary nature of Covid-19's spread prompted rapid social learning and policy adaptation, revealing flexibility that exceeded European countries' path-dependent constraints.
